The force responsible for damage in an acute injury is often obvious; for example someone else’s football boot clattering into the side of the ankle, the knee twisting awkwardly in a rugby tackle or tripping over a curb on an evening run.
In the more chronic types of injury sportsmen and women can often be quite unsettled by the apparent ‘sudden onset’ of symptoms with no obvious reason. In these instances it is often simply the forces present from performing high impact activity that are to blame. These cause micro-damage to the tissues at a level which is undetected. Pain often arises when the repetitive dosage of training/sport exceeds the healing process leading to a failure or breakdown of the tissues involved. This biomechanical overload leads to the classic over-use type injuries often seen in runners.
Research points to the importance of the study of these forces (kinetics), as it is the reduction of them which is required to allow tissue to function pain free and normally again.