Exercise-Based Injury Prevention in High-Level and Professional Athletes: Narrative Review and Proposed Standard Operating Procedure for Future Lockdown-Like Contexts After COVID-19
05/01/2022
Martens G, Delvaux F, Forthomme B, Kaux J-F, Urhausen A, Bieuzen F, Leclerc S, Winkler L, Brocherie F, Nedelec M, Morales-Artacho AJ, Ruffault A, Macquet A-C, Guilhem G, Hannouche D, Tscholl PM, Seil R, Edouard P and Croisier J-L (2021) Exercise-Based Injury Prevention in High-Level and Professional Athletes: Narrative Review and Proposed Standard Operating Procedure for Future Lockdown-Like Contexts After COVID-19. Front. Sports Act. Living 3:745765. doi: 10.3389/fspor.2021.745765
Sports injury prevention has become an essential field of sports medicine and science. It aims at reducing the impact of injuries on sports participation and improving long-term health (Engebretsen and Bahr, 2005). Implementing exercise- based prevention programs has been shown to be efficient in reducing the occurrence of injuries (Lauersen et al., 2014) but is still poorly applied on the field (Bahr et al., 2015). The major COVID-19 pandemic might have further compromised this implementation by drastically restricting daily life and physical activities. As most communities are preparing to live with the SARS-CoV-2 virus for a long haul, and since successive lockdown-like situations are likely to happen in the future either from this virus, other pandemics or other similar contexts, there is a need to anticipate and establish future recommendations to help exercise-based prevention program implementation in field contexts. The aim of this work was therefore two-fold: (1) to review the current literature on the impact of COVID-19 on sports participation and identify potential gaps in terms of injury prevention and (2) to provide Standard Operating Procedure to promote and conduct exercise-based injury prevention in high-level or professional athletes under lockdown-like contexts, based on both the available literature and the international sports medicine and science experiences.