Are knee injuries unavoidable in Sambo?

[crosstrainedwar]

I have heard that acquiring knee injuries requiring major surgery are unavoidable for a Sambo practitioner, mainly because of its emphasis on leg locks. I have also heard that judo originally had leglocks in it, but they were eventually prohibited in judo due to many judo practitioners acquiring arthritis in their legs later on in life. Is this true? Is there really no way for a Sambo practitioner to avoid having major knee injuries, or at least make such injuries less severe? Thanks in advance.

[MrPoopy]

The only way you could avoid injury is to immediately tap out once a leg lock is secured on you and make sure you aren't training with someone that would intentionally hurt you. Personally I don't care for leg locks. I don't think there that useful in a real fight.
A while back we had a guy in our bjj class that had fought in some kind of small time MMA event and got his teeth kicked in while trying to do a leg lock.

Judo still has leg locks in it. Leg locks just aren't allowed in competition. Or atleast thats how my local judo club is. I think they practice leg locks during the off season (when there aren't so many tournaments). The higher ranking guys told me they would do leg locks while rolling with me if I wanted to do them.

[StraightBlaster]

I have never heard of all sambo guys getting knee problems. Thats pretty silly. If all sambo guys had to have knee surgery, either everyone would stop doing sambo or they would change it. I wouldn't worry about it. All joint locking arts have the same risk involved... unless heel hooks are allowed. Those can be nasty, and notice allot of grappling tournaments don't allow them.

[Mr. Miyagi]

I've been heel-hooked so many times while training, mostly tapped, rarely escaped, but never been hurt or sore from it afterwards. The guys I train with are nice and very good about gradually applying pressure with subs rather than cranking them on hard.
I used to get caught in neck cranks a lot, especially when I was white belt. Sometimes they were not well-applied, so I would be stuck in a situation where I did not feel I needed to tap but my neck was still being cranked moderately. The morning after pain on these was brutal. A poorly applied kimura can also cause morning after pain because it won't be enough pain to tap but it well still place stress on the shoulder.
In fact, I think most injuries and soreness in subs are related to subs that aren't locked in, the person feels they don't need to tap and continues to work against his opponent.