Physical fitness and sports skills in relation to sports injuries. A four-year prospective investigation of sports injuries among physical education students

In order to study the relationship between physical fitness/sport-specific skills and sports injuries 136 physical education students were studied dur ing their 4-years of training in a prospective investigation. physical fitn ess was measured every year using a battery of fitness tests, and the perfo rmance marks of a number of sports scored at the exams of the acedemy were used as parameters for the sport-specific skills. Sports injuries were reco rded every 3 weeks on standard forms. Relative risk ratios were calculated between the tertile groups good, average and poor for all variables of phys ical fitness and sport-specific skills. Injury-proneness was defined for al l and for acute and chronic injuries separately near the median number of i njuries sustained. In only 6 out of 126 computed relative risks was a signi ficant difference found. Discriminant analysis revealed an explanation of 1 6%, 14% and 11% of the variance for respectively ail, acute and chronic inj uries, at which 5 or 6 variables in varying combination were included. From our findings it may be concluded that physical fitness and sport-specific skills have little impact on sports injuries for the following two main rea sons. Firstly, subjects at risk for sports injuries participate per definit ion in sports activities and have consequently developed their fitness and skills compared to the sedentary population. Thus, the range in physical fi tness or sports skills in the population at risk is relatively small (physi cal education students belong to the 7th-10th decile in fitness test scores within a general college student population) and therefore an effect is ha rd to show. Secondly, the total number of sports injuries is very small and moreover, it should be distributed over several categories for analysis. T he favourable advantages of using physical education students to study intr insic risk factors (comparable and varied sports program, excellent complia nce) appeared to be insufficient to compensate for drawbacks of selection.