All sports carry a certain risk of injury. In our personal experience, we’ve been injured more frequently playing basketball than training martial arts.
There’s a common misconception that people suffer injuries because of submissions. However, if you’re in a good gym environment (like Mat Chess) and have good training partners who care about each other’s progress and well-being, injuries from submissions are highly uncommon.
Injuries happen most commonly from dynamic, explosive and surprising movement. While we do all we can to prevent injury, it’s always a possibility — albeit an unlikely one.