Just as an example, there were evidently reports during the 2007 Glasgow airport attack that someone attempting to subdue the assailant and assist police kicked said attacker in the testicles… but somehow managed to do so hard enough to injure one of their own foot tendons.
Under normal circumstances; you feel feedback from your actions. Kick something, and you’ll immediately, before you’ve finished applying force, feel pain in your foot. That pain causes you to reduce the amount of force you’re applying, both to end the pain and to prevent damage. This is an automatic subconscious reaction.
Add in a shot of a adrenaline though, and that pain feedback is heavily subdued. Your brain doesn’t register the signal to pullback, so you follow through with more force than you otherwise would be able to before self preservation kicks in.
Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.
It really is. I once broke my foot running up some stairs. It was an emergency and as I was running I caught the edge of one step with just two toes(I did have shoes on) the ball of foot missed the stairs completely. Instead of slowing down or trying again I just pushed hard throwing my weight forward. Find out later that I had a radial fracture of my second metatarsal. The crazy thing is I spent the next few hours walking on a broken foot and didn’t feel it at all.
I did feel it the next day though. Fuck that hurt .
the messed up thing about getting old is that you can start hurting yourself doing things that used to be “easy”. like lifting heavy weight or gripping something tight (like opening a jar). all of a sudden it feels like your muscles are breaking your joints and damaging your tendons/ligaments. its the muscle memory that gets you into trouble. good times, good times.