How (not) to interpret a non-causal association in sports injury science

Non-causal associations can help to identify sub-groups of athletes at an increased or decreased risk of sports injury. Based on the current results, those with a small or large navicular drop sustain fewer injuries than those with a reference drop. Importantly, navicular drop does not cause RRIs, but influences the relationship between training load and RRI. This illustrates that non-causal associations are unsuitable to respond to the question: Why do sports injury develop?