Compliance with a comprehensive warm-up programme to prevent injuries in youth football.
BACKGROUND
Participants' compliance, attitudes and beliefs have the potential to influence the efficacy of an intervention greatly.


OBJECTIVE
To characterise team and player compliance with a comprehensive injury prevention warm-up programme for football (The 11+), and to assess attitudes towards injury prevention among coaches and their association with compliance and injury risk.


METHODS
A prospective cohort study and retrospective survey based on a cluster-randomised controlled trial with teams as the unit of randomisation.


METHODS
Compliance, exposure and injuries were registered prospectively in 65 of 125 football teams (1055 of 1892 female Norwegian players aged 13-17 years and 65 of 125 coaches) throughout one football season (March-October 2007). Standardised telephone interviews were conducted to assess coaches' attitudes towards injury prevention.


RESULTS
Teams completed the injury prevention programme in 77% (mean 1.3 sessions per week) of all training and match sessions, and players in 79% (mean 0.8 sessions per week) of the sessions they attended. Compared with players with intermediate compliance, players with high compliance with the programme had a 35% lower risk of all injuries (RR 0.65, 95% CI 0.46 to 0.91, p=0.011). Coaches who had previously utilised injury prevention training coached teams with a 46% lower risk of injury (OR 0.54, 95% CI 0.33 to 0.87, p=0.011).


CONCLUSIONS
Compliance with the injury prevention programme was high, and players with high compliance had significantly lower injury risk than players with intermediate compliance. Positive attitudes towards injury prevention correlated with high compliance and lower injury risk.
Soligard
Torbjørn
T
Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center, PO Box 4014, Ullevaal Stadion, 0806 Oslo, Norway. torbjorn.soligard@nih.no
Nilstad
Agnethe
A
Steffen
Kathrin
K
Myklebust
Grethe
G
Holme
Ingar
I
Dvorak
Jiri
J
Bahr
Roald
R
Andersen
Thor Einar
TE
D000293:Adolescent; D001265:Athletic Injuries / Q000517:prevention & control; D001294:Attitude to Health; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D052580:Muscle Stretching Exercises; D009664:Norway; D012916:Soccer / Q000293:injuries*