Physical therapy recommendations for injury prevention in alpine skiing

Abstract

Introduction: Alpine skiers face high speeds, significant forces, natural and unnatural obstacles, and various environmental conditions on the slopes. Thus, they are highly exposed to certain injuries, amongst which the most common are those to the knee followed by injuries to the spine, shins, head, as well as arm and thumb injuries. Purpose: The purpose was to systematically review the scientific literature on injuries, risk factors, and prevention in competitive alpine skiing and to provide recommendations for injury prevention in the field of physical preparation, kinesiotherapy, and/or specific exercises, and to determine which exercise program would be most appropriate for an alpine ski racer. Methods: PubMed, Web of Science, and COBISS databases were used with PRISMA method to review the physical therapy recommendations for injury prevention in alpine skiing. Results: 10 studies were included in the final systematic review. We have not found any evidence-based prevention programs that are not older than 10 years on the topic of physical preparation for alpine ski racers. We found that most often, the literature describes prevention in terms of equipment, course preparation, course safety awareness, and the experience of the skier. Conclusions: The recommendation for the most efficient prevention according to the current literature is to follow the above preventive measures in combination with appropriate physical preparation, where we recommend relying on research evidence in other (non-contact) sports that have similar injury mechanisms as alpine ski racing.