Smart Coach and Injuries Prevention in Young Athletes

Dear Colleagues,

Recently, injury prevention has received a lot of attention from coach training, sports medicine, sports-governing bodies, and international sport federations.

Sports—especially youth sports—are struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic, as we are in the middle of a world health problem, and this situation has stopped youth sports around the world, promoted sedentary behaviors and will probably have consequences in young athletes’ return to practice and competitions in the future. This concerns all youth coaches and their purposes, which is athlete development. To attack these new challenges, knowledge is needed.

Successful athletes start young and, with a holist development, their pedagogical orientation has to be supported by all sciences that inform children and youth in sport. Good didactic work is demanded of coaches that are capable of promoting the correct development of sport knowledge at an intensity and volume that can provide an evolution at each age stage. Coach didactic work is developed at a relative high intensity and volume, where limits can be breached and sometimes injuries happens, for many reasons, such as technical, physical, physiological, psychological, and social.

Being healthy throughout an athlete’s carrier is fundamental for success—in this sense, FIFA has developed and evaluated injury prevention programmes for youth “FIFA 11+”, where several scientific studies about the effects of this exercise program resulted in a decrease in incidence of injuries.

 Evidence has shown that exercise programs, coaching practices and planification prevent injuries—coach and athlete assessments and good practices registration are needed. Finally, injuries can increase in youth, due to sporting demands and the world health problem of COVID-19, a new evidence is needed to design appropriate didactic solutions.

Dr. Joao Rocha
Guest Editor

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