Thinking of starting a new sport?
...A risk matrix is helpful...
It is a first principle of this Substack meeting place that older adults can – and perhaps should – experiment with playing any sport that tickles their fancies.
“It’s just coffee” is the tenet behind this. As noted in The Elixir of Sport, Age-defying Athletes can try a new game without having to go steady with it (does anyone still do that?), much less marry it.
“It’s just coffee” is the great get-out-of-jail-free card because it implies that if a sport is not satisfying, it can be abandoned there and then. In other words, One and Done unless One and Fun.
There certainly are hundreds, if not thousands, of different types of games with which to experiment. If trial runs were too lengthy, millions of men and women over age 50 could not sally forth every day to play tennis, golf, pickleball, squash, ping-pong, and to swim, run, bike, row, and more.
But since they find much satisfaction in these endeavors, as the Age-defying Athletes Project (ADAP) has reported for almost a year at this online meeting point, ADAPers are likely to remain monogamous to their games (to annoyingly continue the nuptial theme), unlikely to stray to alluring newcomers.
However, however, however…
Yes, indeed, however. Sometimes, Age-defying Athletes may hanker after a novel game.
The question then becomes: How to select a new sport? Selection criteria could include fitness level, game difficulty, interest, social network, cost, available time, infrastructure, and more.
Relevant factors, all, but there is one more selection aspect particularly meaningful to readers of this Substack.
And that aspect has to do with the operant word of our community—which is “age”. Like it or not, with age comes injury. Sprains, strains, tears, fractures, breaks, concussions, dislocations are facts of life more relevant to a 70-year-old than to someone who has reached only half those years.
So, any new sport for Age-defying Athletes also should be viewed through the lens of injury. Specifically, a weighing of both the chance and severity of injury should be in the mix of sport-picking criteria.
Risk matrix
A risk matrix is a handy tool for analyzing risk in order to make an informed go/no go decision about an action. Reportedly first developed in the 1970s by the military, its use has been widespread through business and science ever since.
Surprisingly simple (hence, its appearance here!) and deceptively strategic - but not foolproof. Risk matrices are useful ways to crystallize thinking about things that could go wrong, based on the frequency and severity of the “wrong” things.
The proposed matrix below aligns the probability (frequency) of injury in the vertical column on the left with the severity of injury row. Based on risk, sports in the array trend from the lower left to the upper right, with those in the lower left the ones that are not particularly worrisome, and those in the top right-hand box the most harmful.
For example, walking, in the lower left hand “green zone’, is not particularly worrisome In other words, walking injury is somewhat improbable, and even if it happened, the injury would be negligible. (Of course, some people have suffered serious dislocations from falls due to tangled dog leashes.)
Extreme airborne sports carry a high probability of injury, and their injuries tend to be severe. Thus, they are assigned to the upper right “red zone”.
Other games fall between these two poles.
This risk matrix is a qualitative, directional example. As such, it serves the purposes of this discussion.
(More quantitative, definitive ones could be developed; however, the cost of those more than outweighs the benefits for the purpose of contemplating a new game. If Readers disagree, please comment!)
Further, given the numerous sports available for consumption, this matrix only contains a few examples to demonstrate its intent. Any proposed new game could be analyzed by thinking of how its injury frequency and severity compares with what the Age-defying Athlete currently plays.
To be clear: this discussion is about sports that ADAPers may be tempted to try. If someone has engaged in a “red zone” sport for years (with, hopefully, few ill effects), these comments are inapplicable.
Here’s the proposed matrix; following it, some reasons for sport placement.
Red zone
Extreme airborne sports include those such as paragliding/parasailing, hang gliding, and parachuting/sky diving.
· Fatality rates
o Skydiving has a fatality rate of one per 400,000 jumps
o Paragliding, in which the athlete runs downhill or even hops off a cliff to catch the wind, has an even higher fatality rate – nine per 100,000
o For hang gliders, the fatality rate is one death per 1000 gliders per year
o Parasailing, in which the parasailor is towed behind a boat or land-driven vehicle, reports only 79 fatalities resulting from 141 million parasailing rides; most fatalities result from emergency water landings in which the p’sailor is trapped in the harness and drowns.
o (For older men and women, any mention of “fatality rates” should be a tip-off!)
In addition to these risks, two more points about these extreme sports:
· Cost – a paraglider runs $4000-5000. For parachuting, the harness and two ‘chutes can put the jumper back at least $6000 (and that doesn’t include flying time fees).
· Equipment failures – about one of every 750 times a main parachute is deployed, it doesn’t.
Big wave surfing
· Risk of injury or death from a wipe-out is considerable. Surfers tackle waves at least 20 feet high on heavy, unwieldy 12 foot boards.
· As Wikipedia notes: “In a big wave wipeout, a breaking wave can push surfers down 20 to 50 feet … below the surface. Once they stop spinning around, they have to quickly regain their equilibrium and figure out which way is up. Surfers may have less than 20 seconds to get to the surface before the next wave hits them. Additionally, the water pressure at a depth of 20 to 50 feet can be strong enough to rupture one's eardrums. Strong currents and water action at those depths can also slam a surfer into a reef or the ocean floor, which can result in severe injuries or even death.
· “One of the greatest dangers is the risk of being held underwater by two or more consecutive waves. Surviving a triple hold-down is extremely difficult, and surfers must be prepared to cope with these situations.”
· (Definitely not anecdotal-age friendly…)
Orange zone
Sports here are high impact contact sports including wrestling, American football, boxing, and hockey. (It could be argued that these also belong in the red zone.)
Wrestling
Most countries have their own form of wrestling. For example, since the fourteen century, Icelanders have practiced a form of wrestling known as glima. Korean wrestling, Ssireum, is another ancient activity, and the country’s national sport. Here in the USA, professional wrestling is a very popular spectator sport for men and women of all ages.
· Injury rates – Rates for adult wrestlers are difficult to locate, but for boys age 12-17, the rate is 30 per 1000 wrestlers.
o Keep in mind that wrestling’s objective is for one competitor to knock down the other wrestler. Landing on one’s back or side or front is not elder-friendly – not to mention the challenge of getting back up. Rinse and repeat…
o Injuries include those to the knee (meniscus and medial collateral ligament or MCL tears), shoulder and elbow sprains, head injuries (concussions, anyone?) and skin infections (most commonly folliculitis from skin against skin and skin against mat, irritated by perspiration). Bloody injuries do not appear to be uncommon.
Also keep in mind, regarding wrestling:
· Logistics – adult wrestling clubs do exist, but it seems that one needs a USA Wrestling membership to join
American football is a contact sport in which players frequently run into each other. Injuries are numerous and often serious. All body parts are at risk.
· Injury rates –
o Football players over age 65 (whoever they may be?) are 20% likely to sustain a cardiac incident during play.
o They are also the age group most likely to suffer face/head, groin, and neck/back injuries.
· In the NFL 2023 season, 219 concussions occurred.
· (Flag football maybe?)
Boxing
· Injury rates -
o For pathology categorization, the pooled frequencies were 12.3% for concussion,
o 21.4% for skin laceration
o 30.2% for soft tissue contusion
o 15.3% for sprain and muscle/ligament injury
o 11.4% for fracture
Hockey
· Injury rates –
o From a 2005 study of recreational ice hockey in upstate New York, the injury incidence rate was found to be 12.2/1000 player-exposures.
o 35% of injuries were to the head/neck/face
o Collisions were most often reported (44%) as the mechanism of injury
o Fracture was the most common diagnosis
o The concussion rate was 1.1/1000 player-exposures
Purple Zone
Skating
Skating, ice and roller. There may be lots of Reader push-back on this one.
But the reason to avoid starting a skating career:
Falls, plain and simple. Whether on ice cold ice, a roller rink surface, or on the street/sidewalk, a fall can break and/or fracture bones, cause concussions, and promote bruising and scrapes.
· Injury rates - One ice skating study of 84 individuals found that
o These 84 people amassed 85 injuries – in itself amazing to contemplate
o 58% of the injuries were fractures, almost exclusively of the upper limbs
o Seven patients (8% of all injuries) were admitted; there was an average of one orthopedic admission weekly
o The Emergency Department/Fracture Clinic saw an average of two injuries per day
· Another study looked at over 1.6 million skating-related injuries in the US between 2002-2021:
o 24% occurred while ice skating; 24%, while inline skating; and 52%, roller skating
o Injuries occurred predominantly to the head/face/neck for ice skating
o For inline and roller skating, injuries occurred predominantly in the shoulder/arm/elbow/wrist
o Fracture was the most common injury type for all three modes (37.1% of injuries), and the majority of fractures occurred in the upper extremity (shoulder/arm/elbow/wrist) across the skating board.
Blue zone
Water skiing, like some of the airborne extreme sports, involves being towed behind a powerful motor in a fast moving boat.
· Injury rates –
o Injuries run about 1.51 per 100,000 skiing events.
o Men account for over 72% of injuries.
WIIFY?
Perhaps you are a faithful golfer whose head has been turned by the allure of paragliding. Should you “just have coffee”? Or should you turn around, run back to the golf course, and embrace those links as passionately as possible?
To answer that question - as noted in this space before - what’s your objective?
If excitement is your goal, maybe there’s some way you can experience this without experiencing it…Perhaps hang around paragliding events, speak with paragliders, ask yourself if you fit the paraglider profile.
Do you have comrades who share your current ardor about paragliding? If so, make a pact with them to reach some subsidiary goal (e.g., improved upper body strength) before any of you proceeds.
What does your spouse think about this paragliding mission? Can you bring him/her around to your way of thinking, or will this become a semi-permanent wedge in your relationship? And is the cost of that wedge greater or lesser than the cost of missed paraglider excitement?
Is there an AR substitute? Perhaps you can remain in a safe environment while feeling what it’s like to sail through the air in a free-floating, foot-launched aircraft.
Think injury frequency and severity and weigh this against your goal. There will always be tradeoffs.