午夜剧场

In this Olympic and Paralympic year, athletes challenging themselves in the quadrennial festival of sports are training hard every day. Meanwhile, the IOC World Conference on Prevention of Injury & Illness in Sport is held once every three years, and I am a participant. It can be described as a festival of sports medicine and science research where researchers from around the world gather to discuss the latest research findings in order to scientifically support the healthy competitive lives of athletes.

I want to support athletes through research so they can achieve their best performance without suffering from injuries. It was in 2004, the year of the Athens Olympics, that I chose my seminar as an undergraduate with that thought in mind. Since then, my research theme for 20 years has been "prevention of muscle strains."

Among injuries that significantly impact an athlete's performance and career, muscle strains occur with particularly high frequency. Even at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, 59 athletes suffered muscle strains, 24 of whom were forced to withdraw from competition. In addition to the high frequency of occurrence, the high rate of re-injury is another reason why the importance of muscle strain prevention is being emphasized.

The sporting movements that we and athletes perform casually every day are realized by the central nervous system issuing commands and moving the muscles. In the sports field, it is often said that "muscle strains occur when the coordination between the nervous system and the muscles breaks down," but in fact, there is still no scientific evidence to support this. Furthermore, some players complain of "muscle discomfort" during training or matches, and others report a sensation that it is "difficult to apply force" after a muscle strain, but these phenomena have not been proven either, making the judgment of when a player should return to competition an extremely difficult challenge. It is our duty as researchers to provide answers to these questions and challenges that arise in the sports field.

"I want to support athletes who are dedicated to their sport."

This desire remains the driving force behind my research today. Each piece of scientific knowledge we researchers provide is just one piece of a puzzle. Nevertheless, by filling in that one piece, a landscape that was previously invisible may come into view. With such expectations in my heart, I hold onto my puzzle piece and participate in the festival of sports medicine and science research.