This is one of the key messages from the research presented in the PhD dissertation on “Injuries in youth female football - risk factors, prevention and compliance”, which Torbjørn Soligard will defend Friday May 13 at the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center, Norwegian School of Sport Sciences.
Football is one of the most popular team sports worldwide. Although the positive health benefits of regular physical activity are well-documented, being active also entails a certain risk of injury.
In football, studies on female players have reported overall injury rates nearly as high as for their male counterparts. However, identification of injury risk factors and mechanisms can help us implement tailored injury prevention measures for both sexes at all age and skill levels. A comprehensive warm-up program has been designed to prevent the most common injury types in football; injuries to the lower extremities. “The 11+” is a 20-min program consisting of warm up and physical conditioning exercises aiming to improve strength, awareness and neuromuscular control of static and dynamic movements.
The main aim of this thesis was therefore to examine the effect of the “11+” injury prevention program on injury risk in youth female football. Furthermore, an aim was to investigate how teams’ and players’ compliance and injury risk were linked to their coaches’ attitudes towards injury prevention training. In addition, play on artificial turf and players’ level of skill were examined as potential risk factors for injury in youth football.
To answer these questions, data were collected from two populations comprising 1) 1892 female players aged 13 to 17 years and 2) 7848 Norway Cup-tournament matches played by girls and boys aged 13 to 19 years.
The research demonstrated that the injury risk in youth football can be reduced by about one third and severe injuries by as much as one half by implementing an injury prevention warm-up program.
The study of compliance and attitudes also indicated that in order to prevent injuries, sports injury prevention measures need to be acceptable, adopted and complied with by the athletes and sports bodies they are targeted at. Furthermore, while high skill emerged as a significant risk factor for injury in female youth football, playing on artificial turf does not appear to be a risk factor for acute injury in youth football. However, for specific injury types the playing surface seems to be significant.
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Torbjørn Soligard is born in Voss in Hordaland. He started his Ph.D. project at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in 2007. Supervisors: Associate Professor Thor Einar Andersen and Professor Roald Bahr
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