The athletes lay on a bed in the MR imaging unit in a comfortable and relaxed supine position. MR imaging was performed with a 0.3-T MR using surface coils with the body coil in the supine position (AIRIS II, Hitachi, Tokyo, Japan). T2-weighted fast spin-echo imaging was used to obtain sagittal images of the lumbar spine and intervertebral discs (repetition time, 3000 ms; echo time, 112 ms; matrix, 256 × 265; field of view, 320 mm; slice thickness, 10 mm).