Competitive alpine skiing is known as a sport with relatively high injury rates. Particularly striking is the high number of injuries occurring in youth skiers. Nonetheless, injury prevention programmes for youth competitive alpine skiers are widely absent. In this collaboration with the Department of Orthopaedics of the Balgrist University Hospital (Switzerland), we evaluated the effectiveness of the ISPAInt (short for “Injury Screening and Prevention—Alpine Skiing”) prevention programme. A novel injury prevention programme tailored to the injury patterns of youth skiers.
Methods
This study was designed as a controlled 12-month experimental study in a real-world training setting of youth competitive alpine skiers. We compared the differences in injury occurrence between an intervention group (IG) additionally performing the ISPAInt programme and an independent, historical control group (CG) following their regular training routines. None of the skiers of the CG were part of the IG and vice versa. The study was directly conducted within the real-world youth development structures of skiers competing at the under 16 years (U16) level in Switzerland.
Seventy-one skiers (aged 14.4 +/- 0.3 years) assigned to the IG were compared to 58 age- and gender-matched controls. The IG was offered the ISPAInt programme with the recommendation to perform it at least once weekly. Skiers' adherence to this recommendation was surveyed but not enforced. Injuries were recorded using the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Centre Questionnaire. Primary outcomes were the absolute injury rates (number of injuries/100 athletes per season) and epidemiological incidence proportion (number of injured athletes/100 athletes per season). The secondary outcome was the average 2-weekly prevalence of traumatic knee, knee overuse, and lower back overuse injuries.
Results
There were lower absolute rates of all traumatic injuries [rate/risk difference, RD: -57.1 (-98.1, -16.0); rate/risk ratio, RR: 0.665 (0.485, 0.884)] and overuse injuries [RD: -35.9 (-71.0, -0.7); RR: 0.699 (0.493, 0.989)] in the IG than in the CG. Likewise, the epidemiological incidence proportion for all overuse injuries was smaller in the IG [RD: -28.4 (-44.8, -12.0); RR: 0.598 (0.435, 0.822)], while the proportion of skiers suffering from traumatic injuries did not significantly differ between the groups. Notably, the IG particularity differed from the CG in the average 2-weekly prevalence of knee trauma, knee overuse, and lower back overuse complaints, three of the major injury-related hot spots in youth skiers.
Conclusions
Based on the promising results of this controlled experimental study, the ISPAInt programme may have great potential to prevent traumatic and overuse injuries in youth competitive alpine skiers. Hence, we concluded that the underlying exercises should be considered fundamental complementary training content at the youth level.
The full article can be found here (open access)
Schoeb T, Fröhlich S, Frey WO, Verhagen E, Farshad M and Spörri J (2022) The ISPAInt Injury Prevention Programme for Youth Competitive Alpine Skiers: A Controlled 12-Month Experimental Study in a Real-World Training Setting. Front. Physiol. 13:826212. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2022.826212