Prevalence of injuries and associated factors in athletes of the Brazilian rowing team

Abstract

The rowing movement is characterized as a muscular movement coordinated with a repetitive and maximum force application; being a cyclic movement, in which the upper and lower limbs move synchronously. Although not a contact sport, rowers have high rates of injury incidence. Therefore, the objective was to identify the prevalence of injuries and associated factors in rowers of the Brazilian team. Participants were 18 athletes with a mean age of 21.39 ± 5.5 years, who were invited to the Brazilian Rowing Team in 2017, of which 11 were men. To obtain information about the lesions and associated factors an online questionnaire was applied via Google Docs and Fischer's exact descriptive and test was used for possible associations. The study participants were mostly males (n = 11) with 77.8% of the total lesions; being the most severe of the lumbar region (55.5%) and the knee (16.6%). A tendency was observed for rowers to be more susceptible to injuries because there were a lot of intense training during this period, when associated to the number of high intensity workouts per week during the competitive period with the injuries (p = 0.026), in which 92, 9% of those who performed 3 or more intense workouts per week reported more injuries. The results of this study seem to show that there is a tendency for Brazilian rowing athletes to present lesions, predominantly in the lumbar region, followed by the knee; and may be due to a higher frequency of high intensity training during the competitive period.