Background: Sports injury is critical for elite athletes, especially those in combat sports, which have high injury risk as the athletes attack their opponents’ bodies to win. The purpose of this study was to examine the injury frequency according to the injured area and injury rate on two occasions (training and competitions) by age and sports in male combat athletes.
Methods: The subjects in this study comprised 1,263 athletes who were registered as athletes in middle school, high school, university, and professional levels in men’s combat sports (boxing, fencing, judo, taekwondo, and wrestling) at the Korean Sports and Olympic Committee. An online-based survey was conducted. We carried out a frequency analysis using the R statistics program, and calculated a 95% confidence interval.
Results: The highest injury experience rates were in boxing (59.3%) and taekwondo (72.7%) for professional level, in judo (60.5%) and wrestling (57.7%) for university level, and in fencing (54.8%) for high school level. The results of the analysis showed that injury occurred least frequently in the following body parts: the head in fencing (19.1%) and judo (18.0%), torso in taekwondo (14.1%) and wrestling (18.1%), and lower extremities in boxing (13.7%). The most frequently injured body parts were the lower extremities in fencing (33.1%) and taekwondo (38.9%), upper extremities in judo (30.5%) and wrestling (31.9%), and head in boxing (37.4%). The injury incidence rates during competitions, by age, were 0.03, 0.11, 0.14, and 0.14 for the middle school, high school, university, and professional levels, respectively. The injury incidence rates during competitions, by sports, were 0.06, 0.07, 0.14, 0.15, and 0.16 in judo, wrestling, taekwondo, boxing, and fencing, respectively. The injury incidence rates during training, by age, were 1.33, 1.46, 1.71, and 1.75 for the middle school, high school, university, and professional levels, respectively. The injury incidence rates during training, by sports, were 1.25, 1.36, 1.57, 1.79, and 1.86 in judo, wrestling, fencing, taekwondo, and boxing, respectively. The overall analysis of injury incidence rate is 0.10 during competitions, and 1.52 during training, irrespective of age and sports type.
Conclusion: The area of injury and proportion vary according to the type of sports. However, in accordance with the definition of time loss, the injury incidence rate during training was tenfold compared to the IR during competitions, and the injury incidence rate in striking sports was higher than in grappling sports during both training and competitions.