No 44: Whats the difference between a Rugby Player, a Roidhead and an Athlete?

And what impact does this have on old age?

tldr

We need a public health campaign to make us all more supple.

Being good at a sport isnt necessarily healthy, being the biggest guy in the gym doesn’t always make you better at a sport and being an athlete involves being good at moving.

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Are you interested in sport? physiology? elderly care? physio? occupational medicine? military medicine? rehab? T/O? or just being healthy into your old age?

If so, then this short article might make you think about exercise a little differently.

Since, I was about 10 years old, I have loved sports. Almost all sports. I’ve played rubgy to a high level, competed in athletics in international competitions and played a fair few others sports at club level.

For the last 20 odd years, I have liked to think that I was an “athlete” because I did athletics. However, after tearing my pec in 2019 I realised… that I really wasn’t. I had been acting as far more of a Roidhead.

In this article, I want to quickly compare the ethos and training approach between rugby players, roidheads and athletes, and then explain why this will have an impact on a healthy life and old age.

Firstly, rugby players are for me some of the best “all-round” sportsmen. They have to have technical skills to play, must be able to run for 80 mins, sprint reasonably quickly, be agile enough to dodge tackles, strong enough to bounce off tackles when they cant dodge, flexible enough to land without injuries and chunky (muscly) enough to absorb the hits.

This requires lots of different kinds of training, but they can’t really focus on any one area. You see a lot of rugby players in the gym lifting pretty big weights and getting pumped up. But if a rugby player squats 2x their body weight then they are probably regarded as a “big lifter” or one of the strongest on their team. Same for the bench press, its respectably big but wouldn’t win any contests.

Next, take the roidhead. They dont tend to do a sport but just gym for the looks and the ego. Strongmen are more like athletes. So, roidheads tend to think about putting as much weight on the bar as possible or moving the weights as many times as possible. ROM (range of motion) is not essential, technique is optional. The most important thing is to be bigger than everyone else in the gym and be seen to have more plates on the bench press than anyone else.

Lastly, athletes are very different. An athlete is normally trying to optimise one particularly movement, be that cycling, swimming, running, jumping or throwing. It normally involves improving the technique of that event, focussing on small gains in flexibility, range of motion, power, speed and specific strength or endurance. They also go in the gym and try to lift big weights but a coach will normally advise to ensure they have good technique and go through the FROM (full range of motion) to ensure that the “movement pattern” is well practice and strong in all areas.

The focus on the athletes is having the best “movement pattern” and being able to apply the maximum amount of speed/force throughout this movement without being injured.

When I was younger, I used to think that “sports were healthy”. Now, I realise that exercise is healthy, most sports are actually going to cause wear and tear in the long run, especially if you are competitive or play to a high level.

If you look around you at old “sportsmen” most of them are carrying chronic injuries that affect them every day, pain, stiffness, difficulty moving or dressing. I personally think this is an under discussed issues or maybe just under recognised. Too many young blokes take up sport and go hell for leather without thinking of the long term consequences on their health.

What has this got to do with medicine?

Well, since my pec injury, I have had to do a lot of rehabilitation and re-address how I am going to train for sports. I have had to realise that the reason I got injured was because I overloaded the tendon with too much weight, too quickly, too repetitively, without perfectly the technique and balancing the muscles with stretching and mobility work.

I tried to take a short cut of thinking more weight = more strength = better athletic performance. When it infact = more injuries, without mobility.

So, my take home from this is that there needs to be a much bigger public health awareness and focuss on encouraging everyone in the population to work on their mobility. From the very young, to the very old.

When you watch a toddler play. They can squat, duck walk, leopard crawl, fold in half, do the splits, get into all sorts of knots and not really noticed. If they fall funnily, normally they are ok because they are supple. Then in the west, we tell these kids to sit down, stop playing, go to school and they get stiff. Most modern teenagers can’t do any of those movements comfortably. And most adults would laugh at you if you even suggested it.

Very few westerners can squat comfortably. Most of us can’t touch our toes or link our hands behind our backs or sit comfortably on the floor.

The knock on effect of this cultural blind spot is that our sportsmen and women need to learn mobility from scratch and those that don’t are more likely to pick up long term injuries.

Our older population, aren’t doing yoga like in India or Tai Chi in China, and therefore, if they fall over, they get hurt and can’t get back up. Lots of our over 80’s population dont even have the balance or leg strength to stand from a chair without using their arms for help.

For our elderly population, if you fall over and break a hip, then that is a death sentence. The latest data in the UK is that 30 day mortality is 7% and 1 year mortality is 30%. From a fall!

Tsang et al

Most people after T/O surgery, or a work or sports injury are told to do some stretches and then maybe some weights in the gym. But very few people are given a comprehensive movement plan or referred to pilates. People think that 6 weeks of stretches and their injury will be better and they can stop. They dont realise that these exercises should probably be done for life to stop a re-occurence of the injury.

Conclusion

My closing point, is that a lot of these thoughts have been sparked by watching “guru’s” on Instagram. There are some people out there who only focus on moving beautifully and having a supple, flexible body. These athletes can do some incredible movements and are really inspiring. But most of them are just showing us what we should all be capable of!

If you want a long lasting sporting career, or a healthy old age or the best rehab for your patients, then you should probably be advising them to think about improving their mobility. It doesn’t matter if its just stretching, pilates, yoga, MMA, Tai Chi, gymnastics or calisthenics, just do something every day that will make you more supple.