Christian Watson: Highlighting the Amplification of the NFL's Reactive Strength Problem

The NFL has a reactive strength problem, and it appears this problem is only going to worsen this season.

Christian Watson grabs his hamstring during a December game against the Chiefs. (Dan Powers / USA Today) Source

Same Old, Same Old

The Super Bowl highlighted the NFL's ongoing reactive strength problem when Dre Greenlaw ruptured his Achilles tendon, not while making a football play, but simply running onto the field. Last year, the NFL saw a surge in connective tissue injuries, affecting some of the highest-paid players like Joe Burrow, Aaron Rodgers, Kirk Cousins, and triple-crown winner Cooper Kupp. For the players' sake, hopefully, this trend won't continue, but it seems likely this year will be more of the same, especially for chronically injured players like Green Bay Packers wide receiver Christian Watson.

Christian Watson

Matt Schneidman, a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Green Bay Packers, summarizes Watson’s brief NFL career thus far this way:

"Through 23 career games since the Packers traded up in the second round for him in 2022, Watson has 69 catches for 1,033 yards and 12 touchdowns with an average of 15 yards per catch. He’s a more complete receiver than just a speedster who can take the top off a defense with go routes, and keeping Watson healthy will be paramount to showcasing his full repertoire and helping the Packers’ young, high-powered offense reach its full potential in the second year with Jordan Love at the helm."¹

Watson Injury History: An Interesting Trend

Watson has faced recurring hamstring strains since entering the NFL. During his rookie season in 2022, Watson missed several games due to hamstring injuries, which continued to limit him into the 2023 season, affecting his participation in preseason activities and early regular-season games. These persistent hamstring problems have understandably raised concerns about his long-term durability and ability to maintain consistent play at the NFL level. In response, he has spent tens of thousands of dollars of his own money seeking solutions outside the team's facility - something we know Rodgers, Cousins, and Kupp have done as well. Notice a trend?

The trend is that the highest-paid athletes are figuring out that the solutions to their reactive strength issues are not in the building. As Louie Simmons would famously say, "Desperate men do desperate things," and these athletes are desperate for a solution to their reactive strength problems. They are paying for their own care and trying to find their own personnel - both of which NFL facilities should be providing and paying for.

Solution: Packers Fire Strength & Conditioning Staff

Not only is Watson spending his own money, but Packers head coach Matt LaFleur also fired the entire strength and conditioning staff and brought in a new team. That will solve the reactive strength problem, right? The scapegoat for the NFL’s complex reactive strength problem is always as simple as blaming only the strength staff. We have many friends who are high-level strength coaches, and it's always their heads on the guillotine. Once these reactive strength injuries accumulate, the guillotine drops on their necks - and sometimes maybe rightfully so. However, if that is the case, the athletic trainers should also be held accountable. Subscribers of Absolute understand that reactive strength has both biological and neurological components. Historically, in these organizations, the responsibility for the biological connective tissue architecture component lies with the athletic trainers, not the strength coaches, giving them half the accountability.

“You are blind to your own blindness.”

At this point, Coach LaFleur is receiving ample feedback that his expertise and competency lie in football, not in Training Science or solving the reactive strength problem - meaning: he has a blind spot and was blind to his own blindness, a fact that Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences, famously stated.² He is not alone, NFL teams, along with the league and individual players, are discovering the hard way that solving the reactive strength issue is far from simple and definitely far from being solved in the NFL.

The "Epidemic of Chest Injuries"

Let’s take a moment to drive our point home and examine how the staff change has impacted the Packers and LaFleur. This offseason alone, there have been three pec tears, all unrelated to football, with LaFleur himself among the casualties and the others being starting right tackle Zach Tom and tight end Tucker Kraft. The new culprit is now the speed-bench press not abnormal connective tissue architecture that cannot optimally transmit force - see how this cycle continues? It’s the speed bench press, not the capacity or lack thereof of the athletes’ tissues! (sarcasm, if any football coaches are reading this)

While we remain optimistic that this is a solvable problem, we must also face reality. We acknowledge the Packers' efforts, recognizing that effecting change in these slow-moving hierarchical organizations demands significant effort. However, their execution has been a total failure, to the extent that local reporting is now labeling it an "Epidemic of Chest Injuries." Will half of the spotlight and accountability finally shift onto the athletic trainers? We have our doubts.

"Watson Found The Answer for Recurring Hamstrings Woes” - We Disagree.

Okay, now that we see what a mess the Packers are, it's evident why both Watson and his teammate Erick Stokes, who is similarly dealing with a hamstring reactive strength problem that severely limited him to the point where he played in only three games the entire 2023 season, sought solutions beyond the facility for their reactive strength issues. While we remain hopeful to be proven wrong, we disagree with the new culprit being identified as: asymmetry.

Here is Watson discussing the asymmetry in force output between his legs and discussing on how he has been attacking the "strength" side of it to make his legs more symmetrical.

Why We Disagree

We believe that Watson’s nervous system's ability to generate force has outpaced his connective tissue's ability to transmit that force during dynamic eccentric to concentric contractions, leading to injuries in his connective tissue architecture. This indicates that Watson’s reactive strength problem is primarily biological and secondarily neurological.

Watson has the top-down neurological (CNS) ability to generate force but lacks the bottom-up biological connective tissue capacity to generate reactive strength.

Furthermore, we know the biological consequence of Watson’s chronic injury history is abnormal connective tissue within his hamstrings. This has been confirmed via MRI by an NFL study conducted by Dr. Heiderscheit at the facility where Watson received this asymmetrical diagnosis.

Given this understanding, and considering Watson’s focus on addressing the "strength" (i.e., neurological) component of reactive strength, we are concerned that he has a high probability of re-injuring his hamstring connective tissue. In short, he is scaling his nervous system back up when he should be focusing on scaling up the connective tissue architecture while concurrently training that tissue to transmit force optimally during dynamic eccentric to concentric contractions.

Neurological Tightness: Another Blindspot?

Just as there are biological consequences to the chronic injuries of the connective tissues in the hamstrings, there are also neurological consequences at the joint level, defined by Functional Range Systems as "neurological tightness." This behavior of the nervous system is often totally overlooked post-injury, but something subscribers of Absolute know is ongoing in this athlete.

How might neurological tightness at the hip and knee contribute to future injuries for Watson? From a tissue perspective, when the nervous system restricts ranges of motion at the joint level, there is less tissue available to transmit force. In force transmission scenarios, such as a wide receiver sprinting at the highest attainable speed and then stopping to change direction - which is what they do when they run a route, access to more tissue is preferable. Limited access to tissue can lead to an overload of force accumulation in specific areas, similar to how traffic jams occur when supporting roads are shut down. Simply put, when there is not enough tissue to transmit the force, that force accumulates and causes the tissue to blow up.

We Want to Know What You Think

We have not addressed all the issues in this specific case, as we would like our subscribers to weigh in as well in the comments section below. We will release a video discussing the neurological tightness issue at the joint level and neurological inhibition at the tissue level. This is a complex paradox that we at Absolute navigate in the clinic with similar scenarios. We look forward to reading your comments!

What’s Next

Additionally, we are working on solving the hamstring reactive strength problem specifically. We have laid some groundwork in the last two Founders Meetings, one on hamstring ecology and the other on our Internal Isometric Loading Continuum. Stay with us as we release our Absolute Conjugate System, scale it into the clinic, and then specifically to the hamstring reactive strength problem. It is our intention that by taking these steps with our subscribers, we will contribute to the solution rather than continue to add to the problem.

1. Matt Schneidman

2. Daniel Kahneman