Abstract
Background and Study Aim: Restricted and very demanding training, rapid weight reduction, and excessive exercise exposes wrestler's body on the increase of risk of injuries and sport related trauma. Understanding the types, frequency, and main causes of injuries and their relation to sport specification can be beneficial in injury prevention and programming the training.
Therefore, the aim of this study was to knowledge about the nature and frequency of injuries at a professional level of the freestyle wrestling. Material and Methods: Forty-three wrestlers (men) with the 14.7 years' (6 to 22) experience in sport competition retrospectively evaluated wrestling injury history and clinical and demographic data based on completed a structured questionnaire.
Wrestlers represented: master class 15 (35%), 1st sports class 23 (53%) and 2nd sports class 5 (12%). Obtained results have been enriched by the information acquired from the analysis of the available medical records submitted by the respondents.
The diagnostics was mainly based on the X-ray (58.13%) or ultrasound (55.81%) diagnostic methods. Results: The most common injuries of the lower limbs concerned the knee joint (58.13%), the area of the upper limbs - hands (62.79%), and wrist (39.53%), the area of the trunk, the cervical (79.06%) and lumbar spine (48.83%).
The nature of the injury most often concerned contusions (each of the wrestlers suffered this type of injury), damage to tendons (55.81%) and damage of articular structures. Unfortunately, 30.2% of the injuries required surgical treatment.
Conclusions: Injuries of the spine and knee joints mostly are the result (probably) of inappropriate training methods, in- adequacy of training to the fitness level of the athlete. It may lead to congestion and temporary disturbances in the normal functioning of the human body, resulting in injuries.
Presented results indicate that there is a need to take action - injury prevention methods at the seniors' level to prevent musculoskeletal injuries in freestyle wrestling. On the other hand, presented results shown that there is a need of proper education of trainers responsible for organizing the training sessions.