Page 39 - Safe Wrestling

3

Injuries in Wrestling: A Review

of Common Injury Types, Risk Factors,
and Prevention Strategies

Matej Ipavec
© 2026 Matej Ipavec
https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-570-2.3

Introduction
Wrestling is widely regarded as one of the oldest organised sports, with
historical depictions dating back to approximately 5000 BCE. Greco-
Roman wrestling was included in the first modern Olympic Games in
Athens in 1896, while freestyle wrestling entered the Olympic programme
at the St. Louis Games in 1904 (Goodman et al., 2018; Marigi et al., 2022).
Since then, wrestling has remained a prominent global sport involving
more than 2.5 million participants across amateur, high school, col-
legiate, Olympic, and professional levels (Halloran, 2008; Marigi et al.,
2022; Otero et al., 2017). As a contact sport characterised by substantial
physical demands, wrestling is associated with an elevated risk of injury,
particularly orthopaedic injuries at higher levels of competition.
Contemporary wrestling is practised globally across multiple rule sys-
tems, including freestyle, Greco-Roman, and scholastic/collegiate vari-
ants. Regardless of style, wrestling matches are characterised by repeat-
ed episodes of high-intensity physical contact, rapid positional transi-
tions, and frequent exposure to torsional and compressive loading. These
sport-specific demands, combined with weight-class competition and
extensive skin-to-skin contact, create a distinctive injury and illness pro-
file that extends beyond acute musculoskeletal trauma to include derma-
tological and broader health-related risks (Marigi et al., 2022).
Interpretation of wrestling injury epidemiology requires careful con-
sideration of substantial methodological heterogeneity within the liter-
ature. Across studies, injury case definitions vary considerably, ranging

Plevnik, M., & Dobnik, M. (2026). Safe wrestling.
University of Primorska Press.