[AlexAG (OP)]

Unlike other combat sports, MMA involves a variety of striking and grappling techniques focused in almost every part of the opponent's body, therefore the physical damage dealt and taken by these athletes comes in a wide range of qualities and intensities. High profile MMA fighters develop an outstanding physical pain tolerance and pain coping strategies which gradually modify their attitudes towards physical pain, making them less likely to catastrophize or mishandle pain experiences. Given this context, having a deeper knowledge on fighters attitudes towards physical pain may be useful in developing more effective non-pharmacological pain management interventions. Currently I'm working on my master’s degree thesis proyect which involves MMA fighter's implicit (non-conscious) attitudes toward pain-related concepts which will be examined by using the Implicit Association Test (IAT).

I'd appreciate your comments and suggestions.

Alex

[evan_au]

I'd appreciate your comments and suggestions.

When you interview them, don't make them angry...

[RD]

Some fighters do covertly use "pharmacological pain management interventions",
e.g. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/boxing/10444998/Mike-Tyson-admits-to-being-high-on-drugs-during-major-fights-and-using-a-fake-penis-to-avoid-detection.html

Some fighters may be masochistic-types who get an endogenous-opioid-high from getting a beating.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection_bias

[AlexAG (OP)]

Some fighters do covertly use "pharmacological pain management interventions",
e.g.

Some fighters may be masochistic-types who get an endogenous-opioid-high from getting a beating.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection_bias

I'm agree, but despite of these pharmacological and self selection biases,  contact sports athletes do develop a higher pain tolerance and effective pain coping strategies under a sportive context. Developing these traits, at least physiologically, may influence cognition in some way according to a 5E enactive pain approach, which points out that  "brain activity influences, … but is in turn influenced by, physical activity taking place in other parts ofthe organism (such as the endocrine and immune systems) ... This includes the way the body is felt, visualized, and positioned."


Colombetti, G. (2017). The embodied and situated nature ofmoods. Philosophia., 45, 1437–1451.

Stilwell, P., & Harman, K. (2019). An enactive approach to pain: beyond the biopsychosocial model. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 18(4), 637-665.

Thornton, C., Sheffield, D., & Baird, A. (2017). A longitudinal exploration of pain tolerance and participation in contact sports. Scandinavian journal of pain, 16(1), 36-44.

[Bored chemist]

Has anyone done the comparable research in "little old ladies with arthritis"?

[alancalverd]

In the mists of sporting history, when England was actually good at stuff, David Frost asked Bobby Charlton "what makes an intelligent man run about in the rain getting injured?" To which Charlton replied "a hundred quid a week".

Adrian Street was faced with the choice of following his father into the coal mines or doing something else with his inherited musculature. He had a successful career as a TV villain wrestler and has published autobiographical books with telling titles: My Pink Gas Mask;  I Only Laugh When It Hurts; So Many Ways To Hurt You; Sadist in Sequins; Imagine What I Could Do To You; Violence is Golden; Merchant of Menace.

Fact is that any professional athlete will tell you it hurts*, but pain = gain, and the next fight purse is bigger.

There is a positive spinoff. I've worked with a couple of chiropractors who studied martial arts pain relief pressure points, principally for palliating acute sports injuries but also for the benefit of BC's arthritic grannies.

*Soccer: 90 minutes of pretending you're injured. Rugby: 80 minutes of pretending you're not.