Abstract

AMARAL, Luísa; SANTOS, Paulo  and  FERREIRINHA, José. Injury profile characterization in women’s artistic gymnastics: a prospective research in female elite gymnasts throughout a season. Rev. Port. Cien. Desp. [online]. 2009, vol.9, n.1, pp.43-51. ISSN 1645-0523.

The purpose of this study was to analyze and characterize the injuries occurred during the 2006/2007 season in all competitive Portuguese gymnasts. 79 Women's Artistic Gymnastics athletes, aged between 6-18 years and training on average 14.15 h/week, were observed. The injuries were categorized according to its etiology, type, anatomic distribution, severity and apparatus occurrence. As main results we point out: (i) 43% of the gymnasts were injured, with a 2.47 lesion rate in training and 1.95 in competition; (ii) the majority of injuries were traumatic (58.3%); (iii) the most common injury was the sprain (21.3%); (iv) lower limbs were the most affected (53.5%); (v) the beam was the apparatus with the highest lesion incidence (19.7%). We concluded that there is a visible trend in the nature of injuries both in terms of its etiology and anatomical location. The trend is also evident in relation to the influence of Training load (h/week training) in the injuries appearance.

Keywords : women artistic gymnastics; injuries.

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