Ed Reed Quotes

Professional tennis has become an extremely physical and unbelievably competitive sport. Injuries are the bane of tennis players, and it goes with the territory.

If you look at the top 100 players, you would see that the great majority of them have had at least a couple of surgeries. That tells me that we have to protect the players.

I really do care about the health of the players. That's one of the tough things about the NFL - it's so physically tough on the players.

You're never going to go through a season with no injuries.

Football players have always got a problem, some pain, and in some games, I have had small problems with my knee or some pain, and I played anyway, but people don't know if I have a problem or not. People just know if you score a goal or if you play badly, but they never know if you are well or not.

There's going to be wear and tear on your body; that's just the nature of the sport, no matter if you're a rookie or if you're 10 years deep in the league.

It's impossible for one player to play the whole year. I've learnt that myself, and you're always bound to get injuries.

Growing up wrestling, you get injured, and they expect you back on the mat in a couple weeks unless it's really bad.

Not a lot of teams take you into consideration, like a lot of teams can easily decide to if you're hurt or anything, make you go play.

I mean, every player is hurt every year, so that's not really an excuse for everything.

Our schedule is intense. We do this for five nights a week, so injuries can happen very easily with the demands of the job. It's just the nature of what we do and sports in general.

These NBA seasons are such a grind; it really takes a toll on your body.

We have to look after the health of the players. Quality suffers with too many games.

Ask any athlete: We all hurt at times. I'm asking my body to go through seven different tasks. To ask it not to ache would be too much.

Team doctors' jobs those days were to keep you on the field.

I've had one very bad ankle injury but otherwise I've been incredibly lucky with my fitness. I've worked hard at it and I've always been fit even compared to other players. That sustains you through various parts of your career, but I am 36.

But the equipment to protect the players hasn't developed along with that, so now you have more players out with worse injuries, for longer periods of time.

The N.B.A. is not an easy job. As you get older, you play this game for 82 games a year, and you play 11 or 12 years, your body tends to break down.

It's rare enough as an older generation player that you're 100% fit - there's always something niggling.

You have injuries that bother you when you're not playing. When that horn blows, you don't feel it.

I had a hard time at Chelsea mainly because I was injured much of the time. Every time I recovered from one injury I seemed to get a new one and it set me back again.

Athletes at all ages are bigger and stronger than ever before. And they are being encouraged - sometimes even incentivized, as we recently learned was the case on at least one National Football League team - to play to injure.

Just about every player on tour has a bad back. It's just one of those games that does mess you up a little bit. You've got to keep looking after it.

As a former football player who has carried a football more than 4,000 times, trust me, I did not go into ballroom dancing with my body being 100 percent, with no aches or pains or ailments coming with me. When you're dancing, you're doing stuff that your body's not used to, and so you start to aggravate those old injuries.

I did enjoy football, but the injury factor for me, you know, I had so many issues. I don't know how long my career would've been.