Ten thousand steps and more. Yet inevitable or almost inevitable, injury is the bane of every athlete and sportsperson, whatever their level, even beginners. It can be devastating: two thirds of athletes (65%) report at least one injury leading to a stoppage of practice during a season, underlines Professor Pascal Edouard, sports physician at the Saint-Etienne University Hospital and researcher at the Interuniversity Laboratory of Biology of Motor Skills (LIBM) at the Jean-Monnet University of Saint-Etienne.
If you are thinking about taking up or getting back into sport, galvanised by the Olympic and Paralympic Games, be careful. “Running injuries are very common, especially among beginner runners”reports the blog of British Journal of Sports MedicineSeptember 2. This article is based on a study published in late June in the same journal, conducted in Finland with researchers from Calgary (Canada) and the Norwegian School of Sport Science.
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The 325 participants (245 women and 80 men), regular runners Healthy children aged 18 to 55 ran twice a week for twenty-four weeks. “The weekly prevalence of overuse injuries was 39% lower in those who performed hip and trunk strengthening and neuromuscular control exercises compared with the control group.”the study says. On the other hand, “No significant differences were observed between the group of novice runners who performed the ankle and foot exercises compared to those who did the classic stretches.”
Each time, the exercises were performed twice a week, for twenty to thirty-five minutes, with seventy-five minutes. Injuries and exposure to running were recorded using weekly questionnaires completed on an app.
Preventive exercises
Concrete prevention programs are available. For example, the Get Set application, smart training, designed by the International Olympic Committee for the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing (China). Football, rugby, athletics, tennis… Each federation also offers different types of exercises, to be done before or after training.
But studies are not always conclusive. For example, a study conducted in 2021 by Pascal Edouard with 840 members of the French Athletics Federation, who were training for competition purposes, did not show any difference in the risk of injury between the group that had to carry out a program with preventive exercises and the group that had to continue their usual training.
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