Page 132 - Safe Wrestling

Rok Vatovec, Marina Dobnik, and Matej Plevnik

The authors interpreted these findings as indicating that IPPON is fea-
sible, practical, and well accepted within judo settings, although further
intervention studies with sufficient statistical power are required to es-
tablish a clear protective effect on injury outcomes. Nevertheless, despite
the absence of statistically significant injury reduction, the programme
represents an important step towards the standardisation of preventive
warm-up content in judo through the integration of biomechanical, epi-
demiological, and implementation-oriented principles.

IPW (Injury-Prevention Warm-up): A Warm-Up Protocol
for Grappling Sports
In addition to discipline-specific programmes, broader preventive pro-
tocols intended for application across multiple grappling sports have
emerged in recent years. One such protocol is the Injury-Prevention
Warm-up (IPW) (Bell et al., 2024). IPW represents the first systemati-
cally designed, evidence-based preventive warm-up protocol developed
specifically for a broad range of grappling disciplines, including judo,
freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and sambo,
rather than for a single sport. The programme was developed using the
Team-Sport Injury Prevention (TIP) cycle, within which injury locations,
injury types, injury mechanisms, risk factors, and barriers to implemen-
tation were systematically analysed. Subsequently, a Knowledge Transfer
Group (KTG) was established, consisting of sports medicine physicians,
physiologists, grappling coaches, physiotherapists, and strength and
conditioning specialists. This multidisciplinary group combined avail-
able scientific evidence with applied coaching experience to design the
IPW exercise pool.
The authors report that analyses of existing literature in grappling
sports consistently identify throws and takedowns as the principal mech-
anisms of injury in judo and various styles of wrestling, whereas in Brazil-
ian jiu-jitsu additional mechanisms include arm locks (armbars) and
other upper-limb submission techniques. In judo and wrestling, injuries
involving the head and cervical spine during falls appear particularly
prominent, especially in situations characterised by inadequate falling
technique and delayed activation of the cervical musculature. In Brazil-
ian jiu-jitsu and freestyle wrestling, a substantial proportion of injuries
is associated with leg takedowns that expose the knee joint to character-
istic valgus and rotational loading patterns. Furthermore, among grap-
pling athletes, asymmetries in strength, power, explosiveness, and flex-

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