Training Related and Supportive Factors for the Occurrence of Acute Injuries for Junior Athletes at Ethiopian Athletics Training Center

Abstract

The general purpose of the study was to investigate and describe the causes, consequences and potential preventive measures or strategies that are effective enough to reduce acute injuries in coaching practices of the five Ethiopian national athletics training centers (Tirunesh Dibaba ,Maychew, Bekoji, Hagerselam, Debrebirhan andEthiopian  Sport  Academy)  of  running  athletes.  This  twelve-month  retrospective questionnaire study comprised Ethiopian athletics training centers’ running athletes short distance (n=65), middle distance (n=75), and long distance (n=64) aged 16–21. Accordingly different running-loading characteristics, acute injury profiles and differences were investigated in this study. The highest number of kinds of acute injuries sustained by male athletes was ligament rupture and for females it was muscle strain. The ankle     injury caused the most acute injuries in both   males and total athletes. However, female athletes got more acute injuries to the   hamstring. On the other hand, no difference was found between gender in the occurrence and incidence of injury kinds and locations. There was a difference in training- related and supportive factors between acute injured and uninjured athletes (age, training age, BMI, annual training exposure  hours,  weekly  training  hours  and  frequency, annual  mileage,  rest  and recovery days per week and worming up length and frequency). Training age has got a negative- moderate relationship with female and male long distance acute injury rates. Height has a negative moderate relationship with the acute injury rates of female long distance athletes. Worming up length and frequently stretching prevents the occurrence of acute injury, while females have a slightly higher risk of acute injury. Thus, the result of this study indicated that there is a difference in training -related and supportive factors between acutely injured and uninjured athletes. It has also been indicated that appropriate worming up length and stretching can prevent the occurrence of acute

injury.