Page 74 - Safe Wrestling

Marina Dobnik

competitive level (most often elite sport), and within a defined age and
sex group. Consequently, they cannot be directly transferred to other
sports or recreational populations without further adaptation and vali-
dation.

Limitations and Possibilities for Use in Youth Athletes
and Combat Sports
Although mathematical models for injury prediction offer an interesting
tool for individualised risk assessment, they have several important lim-
itations in practical application:
• they require extensive data collection (large numbers of athletes and
precise recording of injuries and exposure);
• they apply mainly to the populations in which they were developed
(e.g., elite football or basketball players);
• their results depend heavily on the quality and reliability of the input
data;
• for many sports, including wrestling and other combat sports, suit-
able validated models have not yet been developed.
In youth and recreational athletes, it is therefore often more appropri-
ate to use simpler screening approaches, such as:
• systematic recording and consideration of previous injuries, as sev-
eral prospective studies and reviews indicate that previous injury is
one of the strongest predictors of subsequent injury in both youth
and adult athletes (Hägglund et al., 2006; Theisen et al., 2014);
• monitoring of training loads (total training volume, changes in load,
and the combination of club and national-team commitments),
since inadequate load management and overload can substantially
increase the risk of injuries and overuse syndromes in young ath-
letes (Drew & Finch, 2016; Gabbett, 2016; Griffin et al., 2020; Michai-
lidis, 2024);
• basic physical fitness testing (strength, flexibility, stability, and bal-
ance), which, through simple field tests, enables the identification
of limitations and asymmetries and is often incorporated into stan-
dard sports assessment procedures for youth athletes (Pfeifer et al.,
2019);
• assessment of other known risk factors, such as insufficient sleep,
chronic fatigue, psychological stress, and overload, which are recog-
nised in guidelines for youth athletes as important contributors to

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