Page 10 - Safe Wrestling

Matej Plevnik and Matej Ipavec

ological approach was selected in order to enable an integrative analysis
of heterogeneous forms of evidence, including epidemiological studies,
intervention research, biomechanical investigations, pedagogical frame-
works, and international consensus statements. Given the multifacto-
rial nature of sports injuries and injury-preventive behaviour, a narra-
tive synthesis was considered the most appropriate methodological ap-
proach for capturing the complex interactions among physical, psycho-
logical, pedagogical, and organisational determinants of injury risk.
The synthesis was guided by established conceptual models of sports
injury prevention, including dynamic models of injury causation and
implementation-oriented frameworks. These models informed both the
analytical structure of the chapter and the interpretation of findings,
thereby enabling empirical evidence to be contextualised within real-
world youth sport environments.

Literature Search Strategy and Data Sources
A systematic and comprehensive literature search was conducted across
multiple international scientific databases to identify relevant peer-re-
viewed publications. The primary databases included PubMed/MED-
LINE, Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, and ScienceDirect, there-
by ensuring broad coverage of biomedical, sport science, educational,
and interdisciplinary research domains. To capture relevant pedagog-
ical and policy-oriented literature, the search additionally incorporated
academic publications referenced in international consensus statements
and professional guidelines.
The search strategy combined controlled vocabulary terms (where
applicable) with free-text keywords related to injury prevention, youth
sport, and combat sports. Boolean operators were used to refine and ex-
pand the search results. Core search strings included combinations of
the following key terms:
1. injury prevention, sports injury, overuse injury, concussion, neuro-
muscular training
2. youth sport, young athletes, adolescents, children
3. wrestling, combat sports, grappling sports, martial arts
4. training load, load management, fatigue
5. coach education, pedagogy, preventive behaviour, sport safety
6. gender differences, female athletes, youth athlete health
Examples of search combinations included:

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