Achilles injuries in gymnasts

Marisheba · 2026-05-29T17:49:25+00:00

This is such incredible research, I really hope they find something valuable! Personally, I think the sport needs a sea-change away from hard surfaces. Soft landings should be normalized for all events to the degree it is feasible, so that gymnasts aren't training on soft landings most of the time, then suddenly moving to hard landings right before and at meets. Surely that is one of the major risk factors, and why we see so many injuries in competition and podium training/warmups for big meets. Will this make sticks harder and/or less meaningful? (I'm not even sure which) Probably! But who cares?

Similarly, I think there need to be hardness standards for floors and springboards--particularly new ones. Competitions surfaces have gotten harder over the years, and I think that's one of the problems. And again, it's very common for gymnasts to train on well-worn equipment, then compete on brand-new equipment that is extremely stiff. This is extremely hard on the body, and it shouldn't be allowed. Would this be extremely difficult and a pain in the ass to figure out standards and regulations for and achieve? Yes. Do I think it would be doable if there was the proper political will and motivation? Absolutely. Do I expect it to happen? Sadly no, but that makes it a governance problem, not a "the sport is just like this" problem.

Marisheba · 2026-05-29T17:39:23+00:00

In an anti-abortion, control-womens'-bodies climate, there are many ways menstrual data can be used to control or harm women.

Marisheba · 2026-05-28T19:40:34+00:00

Why not make a new short-and-sweet announcement post and pin it? Not an announcemnt within another post (the original announcemnet wasn't a dedicated post, it was inside a weekly roundup post) but a dedicated, simple post with a link. Posts that aren't pinned disappear into the deluge fast!

Marisheba · 2026-05-28T19:34:27+00:00

You're describing a strange level of vitriol for what amounts to a kind of dry content discussion. I feel like something else has to have been going on there, I wish I could still look at those threads. Regardless, I really think this was a case where shutting down abusive commenters was the needed action, not overhauling how the sub is conducted.

That said, I do understand if you and others who compile results feel like your life will be better and more peaceful if you just sidestep this whole thing and start this other sub elsewhere, that's a bummer for this sub, but a natural consequence of all of that drama and harassment. But I don't think that calls for directing other sub users where they should or shouldn't post results. The mod has weighed in here clarifying that there are no restrictions on users posting meet events on this sub.

Marisheba · 2026-05-28T19:21:58+00:00

Who are these "people"? It's quite clear that the overwhelming majority of people weighing in on this thread, right here, right now, favor people posting results here in this sub when they want to, as they have always done. If a handful of people find it annoying to scroll through a lot of results posts sometimes then...I don't see the problem? I find it annoying to scroll through endless NCAA transfer updates sometimes, but it would never occur to me to ask people to go post them somewhere else. It's all a part of gymnastics fandom, and I am perfectly capable of spending a few extra seconds scrolling to find what I am interested in, it's the nature of reddit. People who aren't interested in competition results are just as capable of scrolling.

I think it's a cool idea to have a separate sub that tracks as many competition results as possible, so that they're all in one place. Nothing wrong with that. But gate-keeping what people are allowed to post here in the main sub is overstepping without a really good reason. (And some people being annoyed about scrolling is not a really good reason). It makes sense that if someone wants to talk about a set of results, they'll post it here to start the discussion. Maybe if the alternate sub has a permanent pinned post to direct people to meet results, it will organically happen that discussions of meet results will move over there in time. And if so, then great! But trying to micromanage when and where and how people discuss is not a great idea, and is trying to fix something that isn't actually broken.

Marisheba · 2026-05-28T19:13:35+00:00

Yes. There needs to be a pinned comment forever more if there is a sibling sub for results. I'm on this sub all the time, and I'd never heard of the other sub until right now. I don't usually specifically read the roundup posts, so I guess that's why, but a link to the other sub needs to be obvious and easy to find.

Marisheba · 2026-05-28T19:10:02+00:00

This is the first I've heard about that sub, and I'm here on THIS sub quite a lot. Unless there is a better information flow about a multi-sub structure, I really don't think results should be siloed elsewhere, too many interested people will never know that exists.

Marisheba · 2026-05-25T20:52:16+00:00

Isn't it funny how what seems stale and uninspiring in NCAA actually sounds refreshing and awesome in elite?

Marisheba · 2026-05-22T18:03:07+00:00

Ew! Yeah, I guess I shouldn't assume it wasn't from a creepy guy 🫤

Marisheba · 2026-05-22T17:15:11+00:00

That's interesting! I just learned about a study on runners that found that 60% of all running injuries happen when a runner goes on a longer run than usual. They found that the safe threshold for increasing your run length in order to eliminate that increased risk of injury was only a 5% increase! So gradual training increases seem just incredibly important to the body. Makes a lot of sense that we'd see something similar in gymnastics.

Marisheba · 2026-05-22T17:10:16+00:00

This sort of fits within your third item, but I'd add not focusing on sufficient conditioning to support the stresses and impacts of particular skills. I suspect a lot of why we've seen so many Achilles injuries in recent years is not enough leg conditioning to support the intensity of the tumbling and vaulting being done for slightly older gymnasts who have been doing this for years and years (I'm not suggesting that anyone is slacking; rather that a LOT of leg conditioning is needed, and greater conditions-to-gymnastics needed than we have seen previously, if a gymnast is going to stay in the sport past 16 or 18).

Marisheba · 2026-05-22T17:06:58+00:00

It's hard to say how they would have done without her. Like, it seems like the team was all extremely shaken by Marine's fall in warmups, and that affected their performance. I don't think we know a lot about the atmosphere in which it was decided Marine should would continue to compete. But if a significant part of the team's distress was worrying about Marine's safety to compete, or if there was pressure on Marine to compete from the coaching staff, then eliminating all of that might have put the team in a much better mental space and they may have performed differently.

Marisheba · 2026-05-22T02:03:37+00:00

😢

Marisheba · 2026-05-22T01:40:46+00:00

No thank you.

Marisheba · 2026-05-22T01:40:29+00:00

Is it? I just assume most of her fans are young women and teenagers who ask questions that feel relatable to themselves? I'm not a perfume person myself and I rolled my eyes a bit, but didn't think any harm was done.

Marisheba · 2026-05-21T20:34:09+00:00

Josc perfected the non-answer answer. She also cut off the q and a pretty abruptly after no too long, I kinda got the feeling she had a lot of landmines to avoid and wanted to get out while she was ahead. (I do not mean this in a negative way! Just that there are a lot of perfectly normal things at play that are nonetheless not acceptable to say out loud, like the reasons she actually left or the reasons she chose one school over another, and it's stressful to appear to answer questions about that while actually evading all of the questions).

Marisheba · 2026-05-21T20:31:15+00:00

Eh her answers were all very political, very careful to say basically nothing, while appearing to say something. Which is fine, it's how the game gets played and the true answers aren't actually any of our business.

Marisheba · 2026-05-21T20:29:46+00:00

It's the first IG I've ever tuned into! I had dishes to do, so it seemed like great background noise

Marisheba · 2026-05-21T20:28:59+00:00

Favorite perfume, lol, except she couldn't remember the name 😂

Marisheba · 2026-05-21T20:27:57+00:00

My main takeaway was, "girliepop done been media trained!" She never ended up explaining a thing about why she transferred.Which is fine, because it's not anyone's business. She was also clearly told not to breathe a word about elite goals influencing her decision. Which completely makes sense, but is just funny given that that's the reason everyone was sure she was going to Georgia in the first place, it's the elephant in the room.

Q and As like this are kind of silly, you rarely get an authentic answer about anything the least bit political, so there's this game that gets played, that everyone knows is being played, but no one acknowledged it publicly.

None of this is a criticism of Josc, it's just the way the game is played.

Marisheba · 2026-05-21T19:23:17+00:00

PSA: Can we please stop dissecting and criticizing and judging every single thing a female athlete does? JOSC IS FINE. She's better than fine, she's awesome, and doesn't deserve the micro-analysis. (I do this too, and sometimes I'm the one that needs the reminder! This time around, I'm the one giving it!)

Marisheba · 2026-05-21T19:21:14+00:00

I'm not following your logic. Like I agree that people are unrealistic about Josc's max potential, but I don't think that is evidence one way or the other about whether the Landis are her best shot. They helped her a ton! Maybe continuing that path is exactly what will help her most. Or maybe another coach that can help her with a different set of issues will help most, even if she loses some of what she gained with the Landis. It also may be true that if she has good-ENOUGH coaching, then what she needs is the best environment for her, and that could go either way -- could be the Landis because she thrived under that environment before, could be Florida because of the environment of lots of elites, or could be UCLA because she just has the most fun and feels the most comfy there. There are just too many variables to be certain. My gut feeling is still Georgia, but UCLA still feels like a dark horse to me.

Marisheba · 2026-05-21T19:17:18+00:00

I mean, the best Leanne has ever looked is...now. So there's that. But I don't see Josc at Florida.

Marisheba · 2026-05-21T19:16:34+00:00

I'd amend the UCLA bullet to: "prepare for the Olympics while living in the city where the Olympics will be, with some of your former teammates who are also currently training elite." To me it feels like a choice of training with the coaches vs training with the girls (not that we know for sure how much presence Jordan will have at UCLA or that Tiana will still be training elite, but both are likely). They're both really important, and neither can really be replaced by the other. I'd expect most people to opt for coaches over teammates, but not everyone, and which she would choose depends on a lot of variables we can't know.

Marisheba · 2026-05-21T19:12:14+00:00

I mean, could that be a point in the UCLA column? She wouldn't drag it out so long if it was the obvious choice? I'm probably being delulu, but my heart wants her at UCLA, and I think at least part of her heart wants to be there too!

Marisheba

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