LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

Injuries in female and male elite taekwondo athletes: a 10-year prospective, epidemiological study of 1466 injuries sustained during 250 000 training hours

Photo from wikipedia

Objectives We aimed to determine the injury patterns associated with training activities in elite South Korean taekwondo athletes training for the Olympic Games. Methods We collected data prospectively from 2007… Click to show full abstract

Objectives We aimed to determine the injury patterns associated with training activities in elite South Korean taekwondo athletes training for the Olympic Games. Methods We collected data prospectively from 2007 to 2016 at the Korea National Training Center in Seoul, South Korea. A sports injury was defined as acute or chronic musculoskeletal signs and symptoms due to taekwondo activities during training sessions. Athletes were assessed by an on-site sports medicine specialist. The elite taekwondo athletes were stratified according to sex, weight class (flyweight, featherweight, welterweight and heavyweight), injury location (body region and site) and injury severity (mild or level I, requiring treatment for 1–3 days; moderate or level II, requiring treatment for 4–7 days; or severe or level III, requiring treatment for ≥8 days). Results Athlete exposure was 56 160 training sessions that took 249 600 hours. 1466 injuries were recorded in 283 athletes, with an average of 4.6 injuries per athlete annually. Of these, more than half (56%) were mild injuries, with most injuries occurring in the lower extremities (65.5%), followed by injuries to the trunk (16%), upper extremities (14%) and head and neck area (4%). Among these athletes, women had higher injury rates in the featherweight and welterweight categories (P≤0.0001), but there were no sex differences in other weight categories. In general, female athletes and male athletes experienced a comparable risk of injury (relative ratio: 1.55; 95% CI 0.89 to 2.68). Conclusion In elite South Korean taekwondo athletes, most injuries occur in the lower extremities and were graded as minor. Injury severity depended on weight class.

Keywords: medicine; taekwondo athletes; elite taekwondo; training; injury

Journal Title: British Journal of Sports Medicine
Year Published: 2017

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.