muscle

On a play-action pass, Chargers running back Najee Harris crumpled to the turf before the fake handoff could fully develop, immediately grabbing his left ankle and tossing aside his helmet in pain.

Needing assistance, trainers helped Harris to the sideline, as he was unable to put any weight on his leg, before he was carted to the locker room in the second quarter of a 23-20 win over the Denver Broncos at SoFi Stadium on Sunday.

Harris, who spent the lead-up to his first season in L.A. recovering from an offseason eye injury in a fireworks accident, was expected to be a key piece of a one-two punch with rookie Omarion Hampton.

Now, he appears to be sidelined for the season with an Achilles injury, according to head coach Jim Harbaugh, who called the diagnosis “preliminary” as Harris underwent postgame imaging.

“Not good,” Harbaugh said of his emotions as the play unfolded. “[I was] just hoping for the best — maybe a high ankle, something else that wouldn’t be long-term.”

Speaking at the podium with a somber tone, Harbaugh said he met with Harris at halftime and described the running back’s demeanor as “cold-blooded,” adding that he told him: “You’ll be back, kid.”

The injury appeared clear on film, according to Dr. Dan Ginader, physical therapist and author of “The Pain-Free Body,” who reviewed video of the play.

“When looking at the calf of the back plant leg, you can see the muscle sort of ‘jump’ which is indicative of a complete tear of the Achilles,” Ginader said. “Players who have suffered this injury often describe it as being hit in the heel with a shovel. … When you see the muscle jump and see the player crumble to the floor, you can be pretty sure it’s a complete tear.”

Before going down, Harris had been featured early Sunday, carrying six times for 28 yards. Durable throughout his career, he had appeared in all 71 games across five NFL seasons before the injury.

If it’s a complete tear, the earliest Harris could return is about eight months, Ginader said, though most players don’t feel fully themselves “until at least 12 months” post-surgery. For a skill player, he added, “it takes longer to be able to come back at full force.”

With Harris out, Hampton is expected to shoulder a bigger role moving forward. Hampton, who calls Harris a mentor, admitted the loss stings.

“It definitely hurts,” Hampton said.

Al-Mawasi, Gaza Strip – Sweat streams down Tareq Abu Youssef’s face as he struggles through his gym workout on makeshift bodybuilding equipment, each movement more laboured than it should be.

The 23-year-old Palestinian deliberately keeps his training sessions minimal, a painful reduction from the intensive routines he once loved – but in a territory where nearly everyone is starving, maintaining muscle mass has become an act of survival and resistance.

“I have dropped 14 kilograms, from 72kg to 58kg (159lb to 128lb), since March,” Abu Youssef said, referring to when Israel tightened its siege by closing border crossings and severely restricting food deliveries. “But if eating has become an abnormality in Gaza, working out for bodybuilders like us is one rare way to maintain normalcy,” he tells Al Jazeera.

His story reflects a broader humanitarian catastrophe: Across Gaza’s 365 square kilometres, 2.1 million Palestinians face what aid agencies describe as deliberate, weaponised hunger.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that virtually the entire population faces “catastrophic” levels of food insecurity, with northern Gaza experiencing famine conditions. Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, has documented severe acute malnutrition cases throughout the Strip, describing the crisis as “man-made” and deliberately imposed. The World Food Programme warns that without immediate intervention, famine will spread across all of Gaza, while millions of tonnes of aid are parked at Israel-locked border crossings.

Even when aid trucks manage to enter through Israel’s heavily restricted crossings, distribution of food and other essential items remains nearly impossible due to ongoing military operations and widespread destruction of infrastructure.

During Abu Youssef’s extended rest breaks in between machines – now five times longer than before Gaza’s famine began – he runs his hands over his chest, arms, and shoulders, feeling the devastating muscle loss that mirrors the physical deterioration of an entire population.

“Starvation has completely affected my ability to practice my favourite sport of bodybuilding,” Abu Youssef says in a tent gym in al-Mawasi, located in Gaza’s overcrowded southern “safe zone”. “I now come to train one day, sometimes two days, a week. Before the war, it was five to six days. I’ve also reduced my training time to less than half an hour, which is less than half the required time.”

Where he once bench-pressed 90-100kg (200-220lb), Abu Youssef now barely manages 40kg (90lb) – a decline that would be concerning for any athlete but devastating in a context where such physical deterioration is becoming the norm across an entire society.

A gym among the refugees

The makeshift facility where Abu Youssef trains exists inside a tent in al-Mawasi, now home to roughly one million displaced Palestinians living in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. Here, amid sprawling refugee camps, coach Adly al-Assar has created an unlikely sanctuary, using equipment salvaged from his destroyed gym in Khan Younis.

Al-Assar, a 55-year-old international powerlifting champion who won six gold medals at Arab championships in 2020-2021, managed to rescue just 10 pieces of equipment from the more than 30 destroyed when Israeli forces bombed his original facility. The tent gym covers barely 60 square metres (650 sq ft), its plastic sheeting stretched over two uneven levels of ground, surrounded by refugee tents and sparse trees.

“During this imposed famine, everything changed,” al-Assar explains, his own body weight having dropped 11kg from 78kg to 67kg. “Athletes lost 10-15 kilograms and lost their ability to lift weights. My shoulder muscle was 40 centimetres, now it’s less than 35, and all other muscles suffered the same loss.”

Before the current crisis, his gym welcomed over 200 athletes daily across all ages. Now, barely 10 percent can manage to train, and only once or twice weekly.

One of those regular visitors to his makeshift gym is Ali al-Azraq, 20, displaced from central Gaza during the war’s early weeks. His weight plummeted from 79kg to 68kg – almost entirely muscle loss. His bench press capacity dropped from 100kg to just 30kg, back lifts from 150kg to 60kg, and shoulder work from 45kg to barely 15kg.

“The biggest part of the loss happened during the current starvation period, which began months ago and intensified in the last month,” al-Azraq says. “I actually find nothing to eat except rarely a piece of bread, rice, or pasta in tiny quantities that keep me alive. But we completely lack all essential nutrients and important proteins – meat, chicken, healthy oils, eggs, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and others.”

The unemployed young man had hoped to compete in official Palestinian arm-wrestling championships before advancing internationally. Instead, he describes the current starvation as “the harshest thing we’re experiencing as Gazans, but athletes like us are most affected because we need large quantities of specific, not ordinary food”.

Training through trauma

Yet for these athletes, the tent gym represents more than physical training – it’s psychological survival. Khaled Al-Bahabsa, 29, who returned to training two months ago after being injured in Israeli shelling on April 19, still carries shrapnel in his chest and body.

“Sports give life and psychological comfort. We were closer to the dead even though we were alive,” al-Bahabsa says. “But when I returned to practice my [gym] training, I felt closer to the living than the dead, and the nightmares of genocide and hunger retreated a little.”

He was stunned to discover the gym among the tents and trees. “I considered that I got my passion that war conditions forced me to give up. Bodybuilding isn’t just a sport – for me and many of its players, enthusiasts, and lovers – it’s life.”

Twenty-two months of relentless bombardment by the Israeli military has killed more than 62,000 people, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health, demolished expansive parts of the besieged territory, and displaced the sweeping majority of its people. Those alive are trying to survive dire humanitarian conditions in the near-absolute absence of food.

Al-Assar has adapted his training methods for famine conditions, strictly instructing athletes to minimise workouts and avoid overexertion. Rest periods between sets now extend to five minutes instead of the usual 30 seconds to one minute. Training sessions are capped at 30 minutes, and athletes lift no more than half their pre-famine weights.

“The recommendations are strict to shorten training duration and increase rest periods,” al-Assar warns. “We’re living a deadly starvation crisis, and training might stop altogether if circumstances continue this way.”

On a daily basis, athletes experience complications including collapse, fainting, and inability to move, the coach told Al Jazeera. “We’re in real famine with nothing to eat. We get zero nutrition from all essential and beneficial foods – no animal protein, no healthy oils, nothing. We get a tiny amount that wouldn’t satisfy a three-year-old of plant protein from lentils, while other foods are completely absent.”

But the bodybuilders keep working out anyway.

Even when Israeli air attacks landed just metres from the gym, athletes continued showing up. “I’m hungry all the time and calculate my one training day per week – how will I manage my food afterward?” says Abu Youssef, a street vendor who once aspired to compete in a Gaza-wide bodybuilding championship that was scheduled for two weeks after the war began in October 2023.

Youssef, who was excited at the opportunity to compete and was in full training for the championship, had his dream destroyed when the war “turned everything upside down”. Now, the few loaves of bread he manages to buy from his weekly earnings barely fill him up.

“Despite that, I didn’t lose hope and train again to regain my abilities, even if limited and slow, but the famine thwarts all these attempts,” he says.

For al-Bahabsa, displaced from Rafah with his family, simply reaching the training site represents hope for restoring life generally, not just physical fitness.

“We aspire to live like the rest of the world’s peoples. We want only peace and life and hate the war and Israeli occupation that exterminates and starves us. It’s our right to practice sports, participate in international competitions, reach advanced levels, and represent Palestine,” he said.

The tent gym, despite its limitations, serves as what al-Assar calls a challenge to “the reality of genocide, destruction, and displacement”.

As he puts it: “The idea here is deeper than just training. We’re searching for the life we want to live with safety and tranquility. Gaza and its people will continue their lives no matter the genocide against them. Sports is one aspect of this life.”

This piece was published in collaboration with Egab.

SACRAMENTO — After a long string of losses in California, the tobacco industry is on the verge of some rare victories as industry allies in the Legislature prepare to block new restrictions on smoking and perhaps even succeed in easing current laws.

Aiding the industry are Republican allies who control the Assembly and oppose new limits on tobacco. At the same time, the industry has shifted its political strategy, and it now doles out far more campaign money to Republican legislators than Democrats, especially in the Assembly.

Consider, for example, the Republican chairman of the Assembly Health Committee, Brett Granlund. A first-term lawmaker from Yucaipa, Granlund accepted a $20,000 check last month from Philip Morris Inc., the world’s largest cigarette maker. During his short tenure in Sacramento, Granlund has received at least $44,500 in campaign contributions from the tobacco industry.

In February, Granlund introduced a bill to make cigarette vending machines more accessible. The bill would weaken a new state law that bans cigarette vending machines anywhere other than in an estimated 5,000 bars in the state.

“I’ll take free enterprise over political correctness any time,” Granlund said in an interview.

Granlund’s bill, which faces its first committee vote today, would allow vending machines in up to 30,000 restaurants around the state and in factories. Supermarkets also could have vending machines, so long as the machines are equipped with locking devices, to guard against minors buying cigarettes.

“I am a free-enterprise, no-tax, smoker,” Granlund added. “It doesn’t matter if I’m chairing the Health Committee. Those [anti-smoking] people don’t have a right to tell everybody else how to live.”

While Granlund’s bill is not assured of passage, it represents a significant change from the days when Democrats controlled the Assembly. Democratic Health Committee chairmen made a practice of refusing tobacco industry campaign money, routinely voting against industry-backed bills, and carrying legislation aimed at restricting cigarette makers.

Under Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle, who selects committee members, every GOP health committee member accepts tobacco money, as do most Democratic members.

“Some of the legislative changes [to limit tobacco] swung the pendulum too far in one direction,” Pringle said, adding that he has “no hesitation” in taking tobacco money. He intends to oppose new anti-tobacco bills and support rollbacks of some restrictions. “That’s what our battle has been on a variety of business bills.”

Tobacco industry spokesmen and their lobbyists in Sacramento do not discuss strategy in any detail, but companies defend their political contributions. They say the money is not intended to buy influence, but rather to support lawmakers who side with them. Even though the tobacco industry has spent millions over the past decade on lobbying and campaigns in California, this state has led the nation in anti-tobacco efforts.

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It started in 1988 when voters approved Proposition 99, which added a 25-cent per pack tax on cigarettes. In 1994, Gov. Pete Wilson signed legislation making California the first state to ban smoking in restaurants and most other indoor workplaces. That same year, voters overwhelmingly rejected a 1994 tobacco industry-backed initiative to roll back the restrictions. Now, however, there are indications that California no longer is at the fore of the anti-tobacco fight:

* Seven states have sued the tobacco industry to recoup state money spent on smoking-related illnesses. California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren has balked at bringing a similar suit, though he is “monitoring” the litigation in other states, a spokesman for the Republican attorney general said.

Assemblyman John Burton (D-San Francisco) is pushing a resolution urging Lungren to sue the tobacco industry. But Pringle opposes such litigation, suggesting that Burton’s resolution may fail when it comes up for a vote.

“Isn’t this opening the door to [the state suing over] swimming pools, or automobiles, or second-story balconies, or child cribs?” Pringle asked.

* For three years running, Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature have tried to use a portion of the money raised by the 25-cent per pack cigarette tax for health programs not specifically related to tobacco. Anti-smoking activists have sued, and trial courts have ruled in their favor, saying that the money must be spent on anti-tobacco advertising, education and research.

Wilson has appealed those decisions, and he has no plans to spend $100 million of the disputed money until the cases are resolved. In his new budget, the governor has yet to allocate an additional $81 million in cigarette tax money. He intends to “look for the wisest investment of taxpayer dollars” before spending it, a Wilson spokesman said.

In past years, Democratic legislators agreed with Wilson on diverting the tobacco tax money to other health programs. But this year, Assembly Democratic Leader Richard Katz of Sylmar and state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) are carrying legislation to fully fund the anti-tobacco research and education programs.

* California’s anti-tobacco advertising program, funded by Proposition 99 money, once was the richest in the nation. The campaign was so aggressive that one tobacco company threatened to sue over a TV commercial, which featured clips of industry executives testifying before Congress that tobacco is not addictive. The ad campaign also has powerful critics in the Capitol.

“Taxpayer dollars should not be used to bash an industry,” Pringle said. “They should be used to provide health information, instead of making it a personal attack on an industry.”

State spending on the high-profile advertising effort has been frozen at $12 million annually for three years, or roughly 40 cents per Californian, down from a peak of $16 million.

Massachusetts now leads the few states that fund anti-tobacco ad campaigns, spending $14 million a year, or $2.33 per resident, according to a study by Connie Pechmann, associate professor of marketing at UC Irvine. Pechmann notes that the tobacco industry spends almost $1 billion a year on promotions and advertising.

* A provision of California’s landmark 1994 workplace smoking ban, which Wilson signed into law, is under attack. That provision required the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration to develop safe standards for secondhand tobacco smoke by 1997, or else the smoking ban would be extended to bars and casinos. However, the agency has concluded that setting a standard would be impossible.

Noting that strong fans and suction would be needed to clear bars and card rooms of smoke, Louis Bonsignore, spokesman for the Department of Industrial Relations, said, “You’d need cards made out of lead to stay on the table.”

Assemblyman Sal Cannella (D-Ceres) is carrying the bill to extend Cal-OSHA’s deadline for setting the standards to the year 2000. The bill appears to have significant support from lawmakers in both parties.

The tobacco industry, long among the largest campaign donors, gave most of its money to Democrats in the 1980s and early 1990s, during Democrat Willie Brown’s tenure as speaker. In his 15 years as speaker, Brown was by far the largest recipient of tobacco money in Sacramento, raising more than $500,000.

But starting in 1994, the flow of money has shifted. On the Sunday before the November 1994 election, Philip Morris gave $125,000 in a single donation to Republican Assembly candidate Steven T. Kuykendall of Rancho Palos Verdes.

Kuykendall used the money to help upset the Democratic incumbent, Betty Karnette, who was an anti-tobacco legislator. With Kuykendall’s victory, Republicans gained a 41-to-39 seat majority in the lower house.

Brown left the Legislature to become San Francisco mayor, and another large Democratic recipient of tobacco money, Assemblyman Curtis Tucker Jr. (D-Inglewood), is leaving this year because of term limits.

Without Brown and Tucker, there will be only a handful of Assembly Democrats who take tobacco money. But as the number of friendly Democrats decreases, tobacco industry money increasingly finds its way to Republicans.

In 1995, Philip Morris gave $148,400 to Republicans who hold state office, compared to $83,000 to Democrats. A closer look shows that the difference is even more drastic. The company gave 37 of 41 Assembly Republicans a total of $85,000. Assembly Democrats got a total of $53,500, $50,000 of which went to Brown and Tucker.

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Although Democrats hold a majority in the state Senate, Philip Morris last year gave more to Senate Republicans–$34,665–versus $29,500 for Democrats. The company in 1995 gave $22,000 to Republicans who hold statewide office, including the attorney general, treasurer, insurance commissioner and secretary of state, but none to Democrats in statewide office, campaign finance reports show.

The same pattern held for R.J. Reynolds, the nation’s second-largest tobacco company. Reynolds gave a combined $8,000 to Tucker and Brown and $6,000 to other Assembly Democrats, versus $52,250 for Assembly Republicans in 1995. Altogether, Reynolds gave almost $80,000 to Republican state officials and $25,000 to Democrats.

Philip Morris would not discuss its political strategy. A spokeswoman for Reynolds said its “position is to support those candidates whose positions are similar to ours. That’s not surprising.”

Whether campaign money translates into legislative gains this year for the industry remains to be seen. At a minimum, though, chances of new anti-tobacco legislation making it out of Sacramento seem slim, especially in the Republican-controlled Assembly. Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles) is pushing a bill to force state pension funds to divest themselves of tobacco stocks, valued at $750 million, but has little hope that it will survive its first committee vote this week.

Two years ago, Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-North Hollywood), a former Health Committee chairwoman, carried a bill signed into law by Wilson adding a two-cent per pack tax on cigarettes to fund breast cancer research. This year, she introduced bills to permit local government to tax cigarettes, and to bar tobacco companies from passing out cigarettes in promotions. But she has no plans to seek votes on the measures.

“I’m not taking up any bills on tobacco. It’s obvious they’re going to be killed,” Friedman said.