While watching my grandson during a hot afternoon workout yesterday there was one point during a set of 100 yard sprints where he had trouble getting up from all fours. They were doing progressions with pushups in between sprints. They were doing ten sprints with ten push ups in between. Leading up to daily doubles, he had attended workouts at a local gym for a few months and two weeks leading up to daily doubles had participated in morning weight lifting/cardio and evening camps. He didn’t have a helmet on until yesterday and prior to yesterday seemed to thrive in all the workouts.
It seemed to me he was nearing heat exhaustion during the latter part of the 100 yard sprints and his competitiveness drove him to continue. The last few sprints, he stood up by stomping his foot in the ground as to say, “I’m not going to give up!”
Most football coaches would look at that and say, “What a great competitor!!”. As a grandfather, my heart was on the field with him but afterward I wondered about the impact high temperatures inside football helmets, and ultimately full uniformed players with helmets on, could be having on brain health when players continuously push through the messages the brain is signaling. This constant competitive overdrive and exposure to high temperatures is a concern. I found this study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2838463/
Any doctors on the board, please feel free to chime in. I’m going to tell my grandson to take his helmet off when he rotates out of drills and is standing around. Also going to tell him to take the helmet off and take full water breaks when given the opportunity by coaches.
Given that most are under-hydrated, I wonder what impact the combination of high heat and under-hydration has on a player brain health.
