The effect of progressive and individualised sport-specific training on the prevalence of injury in football and handball student athletes: a randomised controlled trial
Three pages on PainSci cite Hagum 2023: 1. Progressive Training 2. Guide to Repetitive Strain Injuries 3. Exercise is anti-inflammatory medicine for injuries (Member Post)
PainSci commentary on Hagum 2023: ?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided wherever possible.
Forty-two Norwegian students were divided into two groups before entry into a sports academy. Half didn’t prepare, and the other half did “weekly progressive, individualized sport-specific training programs.” Each student had their own plan for “increasing the training load gradually when the athlete had adapted to a specific training load or stimuli.” Baby steps, tested.
In their first three months of play, the students who prepared suffered far fewer injuries, a rate of just 11% compared to 19% for any injury, and 7% versus 10% for more serious ones. That’s a 1.8× greater risk of injury for the unprepared, which is quite dramatic.
This is a clear and plausible result, but the small sample of convenience reduces its power quite a bit, and they didn't account for previous injuries. The strength of the result could be a fluke.
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effectiveness of communication and coordination combined with designing a progressive and individualised sport-specific training program for reducing injury prevalence in youth female and male football and handball players transitioning to a sports academy high school. An additional aim was to investigate the characteristics of the reported injuries.
METHODS: Forty-two Norwegian athletes were randomised into an intervention or control group. Mean age, height, weight and BMI was 15.5 ± 0.5 years, 178.6 cm ± 6.3 cm, 71.3 ± 9.8 kg, 22.3 ± 2.7 BMI for the intervention group (IG) (n = 23), and 15.4 ± 0.5 years, 175.6 cm ± 6.6 cm, 67.1 ± 9.8 kg, 21.7 ± 2.4 BMI for the control group (CG) (n = 19). During the summer holiday, the intervention group received weekly progressive, individualised sport-specific training programs and weekly follow-up telephone calls from the researchers. All athletes completed a baseline questionnaire and a physical test battery. Training data and injuries were recorded prospectively for 22 weeks using the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center Questionnaire on Health Problems (OSTRC-H2). A two-way chi-square (χ2) test of independence was conducted to examine the relationship between groups and injury.
RESULTS: Average weekly prevalence of all injuries was 11% (95% CI: 8%-14%) in IG and 19% (95% CI: 13%-26%) in CG. Average weekly prevalence of substantial injuries was 7% (95% CI: 3%-10%) in IG and 10% (95% CI: 6%-13%) in CG. The between-group difference in injuries was significant: χ2 (1, N = 375) = 4.865, p = .031, φ = .114, with 1.8 times higher injury risk in CG vs. IG during the first 12 weeks after enrolment.
CONCLUSIONS: For student athletes transitioning to a sports academy high school, progressive individualised, sport-specific training programs reduced the prevalence of all-complaint injuries following enrolment. Clubs and schools should prioritise time and resources to implement similar interventions in periods where student athletes have less supervision, such as the summer holidays, to facilitate an optimal transition to a sports academy high school.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
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