Brittle Athletes of Today

Is it just my imagination or is today's big-time athlete more prone to injury?  Whether speaking of baseball, football, or basketball, it seems to me that what usually determines a particular team's success or failure for a season is whether they have somehow been able to avoid serious injury...or have succumbed to this ominously increasing trend.  I'm looking at the Los Angeles Lakers, which at the start of last year looked as if it just might coast to the championship with superstars Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, and Dwight Howard. But injuries crippled this team throughout the season and both Nash and Bryant seem to be permanently out of play with a succession of tears, breaks, and nerve damage.  Derek Jeter, Derrick Rose, Michael Vick, Robert Griffin III, Rob Gronkowski, Aaron Rogers...the list goes on and on.  My Florida Gators football team lost most of its starting lineup with injuries, including the quarterback...and then the backup got injured!  Just look at any team and you'll see something where a star on it has been sidelined with injuries.  I know injuries have always played a role in sports, but I wonder if something about the way today's athletes are trained and play contribute to the problem.

It used to be that athletes were gifted with their builds that gave them an advantage in their sports and, sure, the bigger and faster ones tended to be more successful.  But now that the science of athletic performance has advanced as much as it has, athletes now are becoming stronger and faster...and the sports are placing greater and greater strains on their bodies as they try to keep up with each other as a natural part of competition. It seems, though, that with enhanced performance comes a corresponding increased brittleness, a higher susceptibility to injury...