A Narrative Review of Overuse Injuries, Risk Factors, and Monitoring Tools in Youth Swimmers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58445/rars.3573Keywords:
youth swimming, overuse injuries, injury surveillance, injury prevention, sports medicineAbstract
Swimming has gained significant popularity in the past decade. As per USA Swimming’s 2024 membership demographics report, 290,239 year-round competitive swimmers are registered. There has been a steady increase in competitive participation in age group and high school swimming. Youth swimmers under 18 years of age make up 97.5% of registered swimmers. As competition has increased, so has the risk of injury in athletes, especially overuse injuries which are most common in swimming. Studies show that more than 50% of competitive swimming injuries are classified as overuse injuries. Youth swimmers are more susceptible to overuse injuries due to their ongoing musculoskeletal development, high training volume, and limited professional monitoring.
Although factors affecting overuse injuries in swimmers are well documented, there are no practical methods developed for early detection and prevention of such injuries in youth swimmers. Existing studies either focus on complex data collection and analysis methods using wearables and machine learning, or require medical oversight to evaluate injury risk. These methods are seldom available to youth swimmers, making this group highly vulnerable. This narrative review explores existing research on self-reported workload, training, and recovery metrics in youth swimmers and how these factors influence overuse injuries in this group. The aim is to find a simple approach that youth swimmers can adopt to track early signs of overuse and take timely action, ultimately reducing injury severity and minimizing time lost from training and competition.
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