A Survey on Common Injuries in Recreational Badminton Players

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this descriptive study is to determine the incidenceof injuries among recreational badminton players. We evaluated86 recreational badminton players in the city of Malacca; 35were excluded for fitting the exclusion criteria. The averagerecreational badminton player was 36.13 years old and hadbeen playing badminton for the past 17.84 years at a frequencyof 2.11 times per week. 39.21% of the recreational badmintonplayers complained of recent injuries in relation to playingbadminton. Our data showed that the most common injurysustained by recreational badminton players was pain andstiffness at the shoulder joint. None of the injuries sustained bythe players in our data were serious enough to warrant any formof surgical intervention. We conclude that badminton is a sportof relatively low risk and that the majority of related injurieswere chronic overuse injuries. Key Words: Recreational Badminton Players, Injuries INTRODUCTION Badminton, an individual, non-contact sport which requires acombination of jumps, lunges, quick changes in direction andrapid arm movements, is a popular racquet game in Malaysia.During such movements, the body may be exposed to variousforms of injuries. Hence, it is not uncommon for badmintonplayers to sustain various injuries during the game. Aretrospective study carried out in Hong Kong on elitebadminton players showed that sprains were the most commontype of injuries, and that the back, shoulder, thigh and kneewere the most common areas involved