Striking, Sparring and CTE

Gerry Seymour

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That's by no means limited to MMA. I suspect some folks who went through some of the methods used in the past for teaching falls in Aikido got much the same effect. I know of at least one credible account of someone dying from an untreated head injury because he (a newbie) was left for an entire class practicing falls he wasn't doing well.

The real message is to take care of your head. Make conscious (no pun intended) decisions about how much head trauma - even the small stuff - you're willing to accept.
 

Kababayan

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Study suggests blows to the head that don’t cause concussions can still cause CTE

Watched Rogan’s show with Ben Askren. They discussed how prevalent CTE is becoming within the MMA and NFL.

Think long and hard before training MMA before you can’t think at all.
That's by no means limited to MMA. I suspect some folks who went through some of the methods used in the past for teaching falls in Aikido got much the same effect. I know of at least one credible account of someone dying from an untreated head injury because he (a newbie) was left for an entire class practicing falls he wasn't doing well.

The real message is to take care of your head. Make conscious (no pun intended) decisions about how much head trauma - even the small stuff - you're willing to accept.


That's the main reason that I didn't want to start Judo at age 43. I would love to take Judo and have so much respect for it, but the risk of concussion is very high.
 

MetalBoar

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It's a serious topic and it doesn't seem like we know enough yet to have a clear picture about the volume, frequency or intensity of impact necessary create a significant risk for CTE, nor what all might pre-dispose someone to be at greater risk from impact. Because we know so little, we also seem to be kind of fumbling around in the dark trying to figure out what sort of protocols to implement to minimize the risk of brain trauma, especially from less obvious injuries. It sounds like there's probably evidence that dehydration increases the risks, so extreme cutting to make weight probably isn't a great idea, but what else? And what might be done to reduce the risks?

As gpseymour states it's not just MMA, and it's not even just martial arts. I've read that heading the ball in soccer can lead to problems and I imagine there are other athletic activities that we don't even think about that could lead to trouble. And even in MMA it might not be what we think. When I was looking at doing some MMA classes I asked a friend with a lot of experience with Muay Thai what he thought of the CTE risks. His response surprised me; he felt that in his experience, Muay Thai was probably the safest of the MMA related arts he'd practiced in terms of CTE. He felt that there were a LOT more minor but significant blows to the head in boxing, which makes sense. What surprised me was when he said he'd never had a concussion doing Muay Thai or boxing but that he'd had two significant concussions doing BJJ caused by accident when he took a knee to the head when opponents rapidly changed position.

On the other hand, we KNOW that being too afraid to do anything physical and just sitting around watching TV is going to lead to health problems too. I guess I'll just have to keep doing what interests me, keep up on the research and do my best to protect my brain with the info we've got.
 
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TMA17

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Great points. I just started doing takedowns in BJJ and learning how to fall is important. A few times I landed hard on my shoulder. I also decided to stay away from Judo for this reason.

I would guess that CTE is more prevalent in striking arts overall, especially if sparring a lot.
 

Tony Dismukes

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As MetalBoar points out, there is a lot of science left to be done regarding the exact weighting of risk factors. It does seem that the main factors are probably severity of impact, frequency of impact, and how close together (time-wise) the impacts occur. Taking three hard hits in the same day is almost certainly worse than taking those same hits a year apart, when your brain has a chance to heal.

I've taken some hits over the years. They may have done some damage, but if so the effect is pretty much indistinguishable from the normal cognitive slowing I might expect at my age. One factor in my favor is probably that any time I've taken a really significant head impact I've given myself time to recover before getting back in the ring. The one exception would be the time I got dropped by a hard accidental head butt and then a week later (when I thought I was all better) I took an accidental knee to the same exact spot. That really, really hurt but fortunately doesn't seem to have cost me too many IQ points.
 

Monkey Turned Wolf

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Not reading the article, im betting its whats been known for a while...its not getting a bad concussion or two, its building up over time with repeated minor head trauma that you may not even notice. The issue is, you dont realize it until after you start having symptoms.
 

Gerry Seymour

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That's the main reason that I didn't want to start Judo at age 43. I would love to take Judo and have so much respect for it, but the risk of concussion is very high.
With modern training, the risk of concussion isn't very high, unless you opt for high-level competition (where perhaps it gets elevated a bit). With some of the "old school" methods I've heard of in some Aikido dojos (never heard of them in Judo dojos/clubs, BTW), there can be a very long time spent just doing falls. That's a lot of jangling of the brain if they aren't being done right. I've taken Judo-type falls for more than 30 years (going back to my days in actual Judo), and I've only had anything that might have been a concussion a couple of times from falls.
 

Gerry Seymour

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Not reading the article, im betting its whats been known for a while...its not getting a bad concussion or two, its building up over time with repeated minor head trauma that you may not even notice. The issue is, you dont realize it until after you start having symptoms.
It's that last part that's scary. I do wonder about the repeated minor bumping around of my head.
 

pdg

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That's the main reason that I didn't want to start Judo at age 43. I would love to take Judo and have so much respect for it, but the risk of concussion is very high.

The quoted study (and others somewhat like it) all seem to point to degeneration following trauma which usually takes time to develop.

Things like teenagers having trouble later in life.

So say it takes 20-30 years for these things to usually happen (barring the type of thing @gpseymour referred to, which is not really the same anyway), that means you're actually at much lower risk than if you started as a teen.

I started TKD just before I was 40 - so going off the averages I'll be 60+ before the cumulative effects really take hold.

But, I'll probably be slowing down before that anyway, which may or may not affect the progression of the problem.

Chances are, it'll be one thing on the list of stuff making me mental by that point, rather than the only thing...
 

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At the end of the day there's always going to be risks...hell there's risk of heading a football causing brain damage. But at the end of the day what's the point in worrying. It might happen it might not. There are people who smoke for 50 years and have no complications. You could get hit in the head a million times and be fine or you could get hit in the head 50 times and get it. That's life. Life isn't fair, life doesn't make sense why worry about it? I've taken a lot of punches over the years I feel fine my memories good enough I talk fine, I spell fine. Worrying isn't going to change what happens to my brain now. All worrying will do is stress me and that can make your head worse.
 

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Great points. I just started doing takedowns in BJJ and learning how to fall is important. A few times I landed hard on my shoulder. I also decided to stay away from Judo for this reason.

I would guess that CTE is more prevalent in striking arts overall, especially if sparring a lot.
Not necessarily...in Bjj I've taken numerous accidental knees to the head, elbows to the head, kicks to the head from guys rolling next to me. Nothing majorly hard but still you get them
 

Monkey Turned Wolf

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It's that last part that's scary. I do wonder about the repeated minor bumping around of my head.
I believe ive mentioned it before, but its why i stopped striking arts. People pointed out i was having some memory issues, i also started noticing some issues with word recall that i didnt have, and that at 22 (when i started noticing) i should not be experiencing. I have no idea whether its the beginning of CTE or not, but no more striking arts for me. Now just grappling and weapons. Especially since ive had somewhere between 10-20 head injuries that most people would classify as concussions(not all ma related)...
 

pdg

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A friend of mine had (and still has) just about all of the symptoms listed.

He went to bed one night, next thing he remembers is waking up in hospital 3 days later being told he'd had a stroke. According to his wife he was fully conscious and doing things, just doing them wrong... All that got wiped.

Whether it was related to a pretty serious motorbike accident he had a few months previous nobody can tell.

The brain is a very strange place.
 

JowGaWolf

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That's the main reason that I didn't want to start Judo at age 43. I would love to take Judo and have so much respect for it, but the risk of concussion is very high.
Practice within your own limits and move at your own pace.
 

Gerry Seymour

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The quoted study (and others somewhat like it) all seem to point to degeneration following trauma which usually takes time to develop.

Things like teenagers having trouble later in life.

So say it takes 20-30 years for these things to usually happen (barring the type of thing @gpseymour referred to, which is not really the same anyway), that means you're actually at much lower risk than if you started as a teen.

I started TKD just before I was 40 - so going off the averages I'll be 60+ before the cumulative effects really take hold.

But, I'll probably be slowing down before that anyway, which may or may not affect the progression of the problem.

Chances are, it'll be one thing on the list of stuff making me mental by that point, rather than the only thing...
And add the question of whether the early trauma is actually worse - does it affect future brain development? There's so much we don't know, but it does seem clear that early trauma somehow adds up to a worse problem, either because of magnified effect or longer exposure time to create more trauma, or both.
 

JowGaWolf

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It's that last part that's scary. I do wonder about the repeated minor bumping around of my head.
Not sure why you are worried. Our body's aren't as delicate as we sometime think it is.

Basing on how our body functions on everything else, it seems that key is not the injury to the head that is the real danger but the time we have for healing between injuries. For example, how long do football players get for healing head trauma in between games? Is it enough time to actually heal? Think of MMA fighters. How long do they have between head injuries to heal.

I'm no scientist but this is true with everything else about our body. It's the time in between injuries that plays an important role in proper healing and recovery. Healing time often determines how well the recovery will be.
 

Gerry Seymour

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Not sure why you are worried. Our body's aren't as delicate as we sometime think it is.

Basing on how our body functions on everything else, it seems that key is not the injury to the head that is the real danger but the time we have for healing between injuries. For example, how long do football players get for healing head trauma in between games? Is it enough time to actually heal? Think of MMA fighters. How long do they have between head injuries to heal.

I'm no scientist but this is true with everything else about our body. It's the time in between injuries that plays an important role in proper healing and recovery. Healing time often determines how well the recovery will be.
The issue is that the medical community doesn't yet actually understand the full process of these injuries. There's no definitive information on healing time - especially in respect to many small bumps. Nor in respect to the difference in injury and healing between juvenile and adult brains. I've taken a lot of minor bumps over the years, without knowing the what I know now. No telling, really, whether that has any long-term effect
 

JowGaWolf

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The issue is that the medical community doesn't yet actually understand the full process of these injuries. There's no definitive information on healing time - especially in respect to many small bumps. Nor in respect to the difference in injury and healing between juvenile and adult brains. I've taken a lot of minor bumps over the years, without knowing the what I know now. No telling, really, whether that has any long-term effect
while that may be true. My guess a minor bump this week, a minor bump next week, another minor bump 2 weeks later wouldn't qualify as "enough healing time." If we hit a bruise with the same frequency, it wouldn't heal properly either. The bigger the bruise the more damaging the repeated impacts would be. For soft tissue like the brain I would think this would be even more so. From what they do understand about CTE, it's the repetitiveness that causes the damage.

People who have head injuries from accidents don't display similar CTE damage as those who have had repetitive impacts.

This is the healing time for traumatic brain injuries
"The person continues to improve between six months and two years after injury, but this varies for different people and may not happen as fast as the first six months. Improvements slow down substantially after two years but may still occur many years after injury."

Not sure if there is a study for minor bumps.
 

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