Abstract
Objective: To test the efficacy of the Athletics Injury Prevention Programme (AIPP) to reduce the percentage of athletes presenting at least one injury complaint leading to participation restriction (ICPR) over an athletics season. Methods: During the 2017–2018 athletics season, we included in this cluster randomised controlled trial (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03307434) 840 athletes randomly assigned (randomisation unit: athletic clubs) to a control group (regular training) or to an intervention group (regular training plus the AIPP 2/week). Using a weekly online questionnaire, athletes reported the ICPR, training and competition exposures, and, for the intervention group, the compliance with the AIPP. The primary outcome was the percentage of athletes presenting at least one ICPR over the study follow-up. Results: A total of 449 and 391 athletes were included in the intervention and control groups, respectively. From them, 68 (15.1%) and 100 (25.6%) athletes, respectively, provided 100% of the requested information during the follow-up (39 weeks). A total of 6 (8.8%) performed the AIPP 2/week or more. The proportion of athletes who had at least one ICPR over the follow-up period was similar in the intervention (64.7%) and control groups (65.0%), with adjusted odds ratios: 0.81 (95% CI 0.36 to 1.85). There were no between-group differences when comparing separately the subgroups corresponding with the different compliance levels. Conclusion: This cluster randomised controlled trial reported no efficacy of the AIPP. However, the overall response proportion and the compliance with the AIPP in the intervention group were low. In individual sports especially, efforts should be first made to improve the implementation and adoption of interventions.
Highlights
Athletics is an Olympic sport practiced worldwide
ICPR: injury complaint leading to participation restriction. * Note that baseline information is missing for some variables: For the total of included athletes, information was missing for height and body mass (178 athletes in the intervention and 127 in the control groups), for disciplines (5 intervention and 2 control), for weekly athletics training practice and sport practice except athletics and history of injury complaints during the preceding season (180 intervention and 130 control)
ICPR: injury complaint leading to participation restriction; SD: standard deviation; CI: confidence interval
Summary
Athletics (track and field) is an Olympic sport practiced worldwide. Athletics includes several disciplines: sprints, hurdles, jumps, throws, combined events, middle- and longdistance track running, road running (including among others 5 km, 10 km and marathon), Int. (ICPR)) in the short (12 weeks), but not in the long (40 weeks) terms [10] This was the first prospective cohort study (level of evidence 2) on injury risk reduction programme designed for athletics, the study included a small sample size (62 athletes) and needed to be replicated through a randomised controlled design (RCT). In this context, the primary aim of this cluster RCT was to test the efficacy of the Athletics Injury Prevention Programme (AIPP) to reduce the percentage of athletes presenting at least one ICPR over an athletics season. The secondary aims of the study were to test the efficacy of the AIPP to reduce ICPR burden (i.e., number of days lost per 1000 h of exposure [11]) and whether the AIPP increased time (weeks) before athletes become injured for the first time during an athletics season
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