Injury and its association with training in female youth figure skaters

Abstract

Figure skating is considered to be a physically and psychologically demanding sport. It has been estimated that 50% – 78% of figure skating injuries could be prevented. It is suggested that off-ice training may reduce injury risk. The primary aim of this project was to identify incidence and occurrence of injury in female competitive and recreational solo figure skaters. The secondary aim was to identify the role of off-ice training and its association with injury and level of skating. The third aim was to investigate associations between injury, age and maturity.

Competitive (n=14) and STARSkate (n=17) Saskatchewan female solo figure skaters, age range 10-18 reported their injury and training data in retrospective questionnaires for a period of 9 months. The injury rate per 100 hours of training was 0.26 for competitive figure skaters (CFSs) and 0.44 for StarSkate figure skaters (SSFSs). The injured skaters were significantly older, more mature and heavier than non-injured figure skaters (p0.05) and no significant associations between the number of acute injuries sustained by the CFS and SSFS groups (÷2 = 0.053, p>0.05). There were no significant associations found between the number of injuries sustained by the CFS and SSFS groups that followed or did not follow Skate Canada Long-term Athlete Development Model off-ice training recommendations (15 minutes off-ice training for every on-ice hour) (÷2 = 2.801, p>0.05).

SSFSs sustained more overuse injuries (8) than CFSs (4) and participated in significantly less hours of off-ice training and spent less time stretching. The overuse injury rates for 100 hours of off-ice training were 1.75 for SSFSs and 0.41 for CFSs. These findings suggest that more off-ice training in CFSs could have possibly served as an overuse injury prevention component in the cohort of this study.