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Sledding athletes are taking their lives

nytimes.com

211–220 of 241 posts

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#211
post #98

TBI seem to have huge consequences that are not connected to the TBI. In the US 2% of the general population is arrested annually. Of those who have had TBI roughly third. A similar one-third rate was found in a community sample of children and adolescents with TBI. In death row inmates it's even more common to have received TBI in childhood. https://www.brainline.org/article/traumatic-brain-injury-pri... https://www…

Among the many other ways our system amplifies recidivism, it's horrifying how common it is for police and prison guards to strike people in the head during confrontations.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it extremely weird when people complain that athletes should stop their sport because "it's bad for them". So is office work. 8 hours of sitting, back pain and the repetitive stress on hands causing arthritis issues isn't that much better. I'd say it's just as physically bad for people, except office work is a life unfulfilled and boring. Office work isn't exactly something you can brag about. I'd rather have…

Agreed, we should not sympathize on behalf of them where they're free to choose to do something else if they wanted. This is a concious choice and it is in the same vein as people would support legalization of recreational drugs - let people make their own decisions. Wanna rock climb and take the risk? We should allow it just like we allow sky diving, climbing the Everest and sailing. This kind of thinking leads to d…

> Wanna rock climb and take the risk? We should allow it

That's different from broadcasting a free soloing climbing tournament across the world, and giving rewards to the winners (survivors)

"Allowing" need not meen "encouraging"

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#213
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A helmet can just protect the skull So a helmet doesn't have to be padded or help with g-forces to be a helmet. I think helmets were initially just to prevent skull fracture.

well, yeah when those helmets were worn by knights in the middle ages, but many helmets nowadays have to withstand g-forces to do their job. If English was like Italian there might be a specific word for a non g-force withstanding helmet and otherwise.

Knight's helmets were actually heavily padded, with most knights wearing heavy padded linen garments over their torso, arms, and head. Nicer helmets would have a leather strap system as well. Many helmets appeared to have integral liners, although the linen has rotted away and only left the rivets where they were attached.

With the advent of plate armor, offensive techniques began to focus on concussive force in order to disable combatants, including war hammers and maces. A blow to the head with only a bit of steel between your skull and a mace would be a fatal experience without any padding. Even with padding it was notorious for deafening and disorienting knights, due to noise and (presumably) brain injury.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#214
post #115
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>pointless self-destruction and misery. Maybe its pointless for you, fair enough but it can be meaningfull for other people, i myself think it's interesting.

This argument was had when Jackie Stewart campaigned to make Formula 1 safe. Fortunately he prevailed, but there were plenty of people - even other drivers - arguing that the danger was an intrinsic part of the sport.

Just look how much safer racing has become since it's inception. And also at the same time, the sport has become magnitudes faster. There's no reason we can't have faster, more exciting, and safer all at the same time. It's just another challenge to the sport.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, we should not sympathize on behalf of them where they're free to choose to do something else if they wanted. This is a concious choice and it is in the same vein as people would support legalization of recreational drugs - let people make their own decisions. Wanna rock climb and take the risk? We should allow it just like we allow sky diving, climbing the Everest and sailing. This kind of thinking leads to d…

> Wanna rock climb and take the risk? We should allow it That's different from broadcasting a free soloing climbing tournament across the world, and giving rewards to the winners (survivors) "Allowing" need not meen "encouraging"

Fair enough, that's an important distinction and I concede. I think it makes sense to prevent glorifying deadly sports and still allow them to be conducted.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, we should not sympathize on behalf of them where they're free to choose to do something else if they wanted. This is a concious choice and it is in the same vein as people would support legalization of recreational drugs - let people make their own decisions. Wanna rock climb and take the risk? We should allow it just like we allow sky diving, climbing the Everest and sailing. This kind of thinking leads to d…

> Wanna rock climb and take the risk? We should allow it That's different from broadcasting a free soloing climbing tournament across the world, and giving rewards to the winners (survivors) "Allowing" need not meen "encouraging"

So, ban all competitions in general? That sounds like a fantastic idea... gonna solve lots of problems with that one.

Football, both kinds, have lots of permanent injuries throughout the body and brain. If you want to talk about rewarding people for pushing themselves to the extreme, those are far better examples than free soloing.

It's interesting when people are fine with stopping passion sports like climbing, skateboarding and now sledding, but they're too scared to say the same about the 800-pound guerrilla, money making machine sports with a lot more TBIs and deaths. Especially since a lot of people go for football more for the reward than for the actual passion.

Again, it's not like anyone participating in any of these sports are unaware of the risk. An argument might exist for 20-30 years ago. But not today. That takes flat-earther mental gymnastics to think they aren't putting themselves at risk. But at the end, if you're complaining that, "These people push their body's too far", that's not you caring about their well being. That's you seeing your own weakness, laziness and cowardliness to attempt the same feat. These folks are going to push themselves some way, some how, because they want to not die wondering "what if". No one is ever safe from "mental demons" and it's terrible when someone takes their own life, no matter what the category root cause was. But I know very well that choosing to achieve nothing due to fear is a bigger open door for those issues.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#217
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was told that engines were more stable in multiples of 6's from some weird physics going on in the engine. I guess that guy could have been completely full of shit.

Its mostly a trigonometry thing, three sine waves 120 degrees out of phase balance out to constant torque. Also see electrical 3-phase power. Note that internal combustion cylinder pressure is by no means a perfect sine wave LOL but its a close enough approximation to run smoother. Its partially a physics thing, in that ICE are usually 4-cycle so they fire every other rotation so if you want three firing pistons per…

>electrical 3-phase power.

Thank you for that! Interesting read.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#218
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That first link is just a Q/A. There is no study or report linked. Almost all studies use untrained vs trained athletes. They rarely qualified what "trained" means and could be anything from a lifetime athlete to someone who self-reported following a 6 week plan prior to the study and now we consider this person "trained". Most athletic studies are used to compare a sedentary person to someone who workouts casually (…

Yeah, you definitely have to sacrifice parts of your overall health if you want to exercise more than 90 minutes per day. /s Diminishing returns doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice anything (besides some idealized notion of efficiency). The hurt-your-overall-health point is somewhere much closer to Olympic athlete than it is to 10hrs/week. If you just vary the activities a little, you will have no trouble with sp…

Working out (not including warmup/cooldown) for 90 min, 7 days per week is insane and you will be less healthy. No rest day means you'll be over trained in less than two weeks, and your workouts will get worse over time. Not only that you'll probably get injured within a month.

Let's say you create a sane schedule of 3 days on, 1 day off (or similar) and you workout 2 hours per day (20 hours in 2 weeks) and let's assume you're sleeping the necessary 10 hours per day for this training schedule. And we'll make the very generous assumption you manage to not get injured for an extended period of time. You're still at higher risk of infections due to suppressed immune system[1] and also at a certain FFMI, your cardiovascular health actually starts to decrease[2]. Plus the chances that your nutrition, mobility, sleep schedule, and training plan are all good enough to not get you injured or sick during training, are astronomically low.

I only workout 60-75 minutes 5 days/week and I'm already at or above the FFMI level where my heart health is worse than if I just stuck to moderate intensity exercise for less time.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19336500/ [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00256...

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#219
post #82

Those g numbers are insane. I would appreciate an FFT instead of a time-series graph but this is far beyond even a rocket launch.

There is a huge difference between a prolonged G-force (like a rocket launch or a fighter jet turning) and an instant reading (helmet hitting ice). A prolonged G-force in human performance studies in aviation is defined as 1 second or longer. A reading of more than +10g in the Z-axis will black out almost all humans. While instant readings as high as 200g have been measured in a survivable car crash. Falling from 1m…

I mean the gs/Hz spectrum of a rocket launch.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#220
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you definitely have to sacrifice parts of your overall health if you want to exercise more than 90 minutes per day. /s Diminishing returns doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice anything (besides some idealized notion of efficiency). The hurt-your-overall-health point is somewhere much closer to Olympic athlete than it is to 10hrs/week. If you just vary the activities a little, you will have no trouble with sp…

Working out (not including warmup/cooldown) for 90 min, 7 days per week is insane and you will be less healthy. No rest day means you'll be over trained in less than two weeks, and your workouts will get worse over time. Not only that you'll probably get injured within a month. Let's say you create a sane schedule of 3 days on, 1 day off (or similar) and you workout 2 hours per day (20 hours in 2 weeks) and let's ass…

Huh, seems I read "workout" as "generic exercise" in your previous post, but I guess you meant high intensity stuff exclusively. I'm pretty sure most athletes have stuff to do that doesn't really have this sort of limit -- like cardio or technical work.
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