Page 51 - Safe Wrestling

Injuries in Wrestling

male wrestlers followed across two competitive seasons, a Landing Error
Scoring System (LESS) cut-off score of 5.5 demonstrated modest predic-
tive discrimination for subsequent lower-extremity injury (AUC = 0.683;
p = 0.025). Athletes with LESS scores greater than 5 exhibited significant-
ly higher injury incidence (p = 0.012), and 15 of 21 athletes above the
threshold sustained a lower-extremity injury (Saç & Sa˘gıro˘glu, 2025).
Injuries to the Spine and Neck
Spinal and neck injuries in wrestling illustrate a clinically important para-
dox: although many reported cases are non-catastrophic and compati-
ble with rapid return to sport, the same anatomical region is also asso-
ciated with rare but potentially devastating neurological outcomes. In
men’s National Collegiate Athletic Association wrestling, spinal injuries
occurred at an overall rate of 0.71 per 1,000 athlete-exposures between
the 2009–2010 and 2013–2014 seasons and were more common during
competition than practice, with higher incidence observed during pre-
season and postseason periods.
Although most athletes returned to participation within days, recur-
rence rates (13%) and the presence of nontrivial time-loss cases under-
score that apparently ‘minor’ spinal injuries may still carry meaningful
consequences for athletic performance and long-term health. Impor-
tantly, surveillance-defined spinal injuries encompass a heterogeneous
spectrum of clinical entities, including cervical disc injuries, paralum-
bar muscle strains, sacroiliac dysfunction, and brachial plexus ‘stingers.’
These diagnoses likely reflect distinct biomechanical mechanisms and
prevention targets and therefore should not be interpreted as a sin-
gle uniform diagnostic category (Bailes et al., 2007; Boden et al., 2002;
Brinkman et al., 2021).
Injury Prevention
Given the distribution of injury mechanisms described above, preven-
tion strategies in wrestling should be closely aligned with the contexts in
which injuries most frequently occur. Across both non-catastrophic and
catastrophic injury reports, the takedown phase consistently emerges as
the principal risk window. Prospective injury-profiling work cited with-
in catastrophic injury surveillance literature indicates that the takedown
position accounted for 68% of injuries in a prospective high-school co-
hort (149 of 219 injuries) (Boden et al., 2002).
For catastrophic outcomes specifically, standing/takedown positions
accounted for 74% of injury occurrences, with mechanisms frequently

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