Injury Prediction in Team’s Sports

Injury Prediction in Team’s Sports

Injury in sports is a devastating experience in the lives of athletes as well as their respective teams. It is imperative, therefore to put extra effort in injuries prevention in high performance sport teams, for the benefit of both players as well as their teams. It is the wish of every coach to field every player, especially those of high caliber, in every training and game sessions.

The significance of injuries in sport, attaches critical importance to the urgent need of injury prediction tools and appropriate measures to counter the risk of injury in sport. However, the application of such tools has often been looked down by team managers, who would rather invest in technologies costing millions of dollars instead of injury prevention measures. This work presents a thought-provoking content on injury prevention in sports and the contribution of such measures on individual players and sport teams (Samuel et al., 2015).

Several theoretical models have been developed in sports injury prevention and prediction research. One of the most prominent model is the stress and athletic injury that seeks to associate the magnitude of an athlete injury to the stress level (Williams and Andersen, 1998). Injury level is thus associated with the intensity of the training and competition, two of the stressful situations for an athlete.

In sports development, there has been continued efforts by professionals to collect important data which could be used to ascertain specific injury probability for a given player. This data can optimize training plans for maximum positive outcomes. Technology has been a crucial part in sports, a good example being the use of GPS devices by players while training and in some instances in matches under the permission from sport governing body in respective leagues and tournaments during matches as well. GPS is believed to provide valuable information about a player. Data collected can be used by the Sports Science team to evaluate various scenarios for instance the risks of the occurrence of a non-contact injury for a particular athlete.

GPS devices are only one of the many technologies available that could be applied in the prevention injuries.  Tracking systems also provide and exciting technologies as learned from my encounter with real Madrid football team Doctor. In Cologne, Germany there are developments of high-tech tools for analyzing movement flaws of an athlete, while identifying imbalances that can lead to injury. This devices when implemented in an injury prevention programme would aid in the prevention of injuries that put the athlete and the team in awkward position in terms of its fitness and competitiveness. Nowadays players and the team have to bear with unimaginable loss in player’s time and the opportunity for sports an achievement due preventable injuries.

However, although there are a range of technologies that promises to revolutionize the sport industry especially in injury mitigation, many of the stakeholders, including managers and players and the team have not endorsed such measures. The Accumulated Chronic workload Ratio seems to me a very simple yet robust tool, which attempts to address this issue of injury prevention. It is alluded that most injuries are as a result of high load that some athletes need to sustain throughout their seasons (Ivarsson et al., 2016).

Regardless the level of the clubs, sports scientists are at the top of their game when it comes to the development of the technologies related to injury prevention. The adoption and practical implementation in the teams remains the thorny issue.

However, as the rate of injuries continue to surge and the economic loss continue to increase  managers, players and other technologies will realize the potential  benefits of sports injury prevention technologies and the need to adopt  and implement them. It is clear that research in this area has outpaced the adoption of these technologies, the adoption and implementation will depend on the stakeholders’ understandings of the fundamental tenets of sport-related injury prevention technologies. Awareness of such programmes should be extended to important stakeholders in sports such as athletes, who will often find such tools as important assets in their career (Urban and Andreas, 2010).

Convergence innovation which is utilizing data and informational technology is taking over in different sectors, the sport sector is not an exception. The remaining step is to create awareness of such programmes to the important stakeholders in order to witness their eventual adoption. As competition becomes intense in the sport industry, athletes continue being pushed beyond their human capacity, resulting in preventable injuries. This calls for the adoption of the proposed technologies to acts as important assets for athletes’ adaptability in a highly competitive sport environment.

For instance, the number of matches a single player has to play in top leagues in England are incredibly high, increasing the chances of preventable injuries. Matching this with the adoption of technologies for preventing injuries will immensely alter the way athletes are perceived in their career. It will also remove much of the pressure from the athlete so that they can focus on trainings that will ensure they physically fit to meet the challenges in the field without facing uncertainties due to the high risks in injuries. For managers, match planning will be eased since planning will be effective, without the uncertainties brought about by injuries, some of which are acquired in training.

Awareness will seek to model athletes and other stakeholders on the need of adopting new innovative technologies in their careers. This can be achieved through the adoption of a strong communication between the stakeholders and athletes in in order to facilitate a win-win situation.

Recent developments in sports, to some extent have all faced a lag phase in their adoption, such the goal line technologies. There are prevailing discourses on the use of technologies in sports, opponents argue that technologies are removing the human factor in sports, making the sport less entertaining and robotic.

This argument can be countered by the need of perceiving sports as career that need adequate tools to address its pitfalls such as the persistent preventable injuries that stall athletes careers. Investing in technologies and movement of the stakeholders in sports technologies development at the initial stage, may be an alternative in reducing the lag phase for adopting technologies such as sports injury prevention tools.

The underlying concept of sport injuries prevention lies in the technology and equipment dyad as explained in McIntosh (2014). Research in sport injury prevention is centered on the two, where knowledge is applied in research to improve standard, design and products acceptable by the various stakeholders. There is a high turnover of sports equipment and technology, however, the uptake of such technologies faces regulations hurdles and suspicion on creating sporting advantage or disadvantage, leading to significantly slow rate of adoption.

Lack of leadership and consensus on the technologies that constitute abetting assistance in sporting activities as opposed to facilitation is also a persistent problem in technology adoption. Rules and policies in sport are archaic and may not represent the current innovative scenario of modern times. The approval mechanism has also takes significant amount of time, reducing the pace of innovation in sport.

References

Ivarsson, A., Johnson, U., and Andersen M.B., (2016). Psychosocial factors and sport injuries:  Meta-analyses for prediction and prevention. Sports Med.

McIntosh, A. (2014). Technology and equipment in sports injury prevention – The performance challenge. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 18S (2014) e108–e135.

Samuel R.D., Tenenbaum, G. and Mangel, E. (2015). Athletes’ experiences of severe injuries as a career change event. J Sport Psychol Action, 6:99-120.

Urban, J. and Andreas, I. (2010). Psychosocial Factors and Sport Injuries: Prediction, Prevention and Future Research Directions, Current Opinion in Psychology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.04.023

Williams, J.M. and Andersen, M.B. (1998). Psychosocial antecedents of sport injury: review and critique of the stress and injury model. J Appl Sport Psychol, 10(1):5–25.