Hard Hit, Injury Time: The Dark Side Of Contact Sports

I recently saw a Korean series about the badminton game and it showed the life that surrounds game players, it looked all cool on the outside but it is from one little injury to a big one that could stop one from playing the sport for the rest of their lives.

This sport isn't as risky as boxing, wrestling or those hard games that requires a lot of energy and hits on the participants but it does counts as one of the contact sports that would require good safety protocols to limit the risk and keep those playing safe.

My inexperienced self have only seen the most risky contact sports on TV, live competitions like WWE and in movies. The ones I've seen in real life is football and a few others with no much risk in them but I've seen people get injured playing them.

Some will say "It's all part of the game and the story to winning", many that plays for passion will say, "All those risk are worth it when we win", I don't disagree with them but is it always the case? I've seen a lot of games that many go home injured, no wins.

Boxing, wrestling, MMA, Judo, Karate, kickboxing, Taekwondo and others are more an extreme contact sports. People shouldn't be on these sports for passion only except there is very well thought out and good enough safety protocols in place.

Worse case scenarios have replayed over and over with contact sports and that is, players dying while they play or losing an important part of their body or never be able to play the game they love again, causing depression and eventually deaths.

These happenings should be revisited and these sports be played under better safety protocols. Of course, it's never an option that these sports be stopped because people have them as their passion but it would be great to play with little risk taken.

But then, people actually love these kinds of sports because of the risk, the injuries, the energy and all in it. They feel the satisfaction from getting and giving heavy hit back and front, because of this, not many would agree to high safety moves.

But should injuries and all these bad results keep happening because of them? The answer is NO. I remember well why I didn't participate in sports during my high school days, it was for all these reasons and then the safety precautions was very bad.

But then, there are some safe contact sports and I was opportune to play in one during my service year, volleyball. It wasn't completely safe as there were still times we brush off each other too hard but it wasn't as hard as with boxing and other extremes.

I believe there are ways to minimise the way people get hurt during these sports, it's important that the issue be reviewed and safety protocols do more work to help players do their passion for the fun and money with less or no injuries if possible.