Chronic injury
Injury Prevention: Elbow (Kozin et al, 2022)
Key Take Aways
✅ Results showed that there was a significant elbow injury reduction in moderate and severe injury in those that underwent the exercise regimen compared to those that did not, even thru 1 year follow up
Population
18 male amateur climbers (18-19 years old)
Summary
Many clinicians claim that specific exercises or warm ups prevent injuries or reduce injury risk but how evidence based are these claims?
A study done by Kozin et al in 2022 looked at preventing injuries in the elbow’s of climbers using specific exercise
➡️ Statistically…
Moderate injury: control group individuals were 5.6x more likely to sustain an injury vs the intervention group
Severe injury: there were no severe injuries sustained in the intervention group (7 severe injuries in the control group), so relative risk was not able to be calculated
Rationale for specific exercises used:
➡️ Eccentric: developing tension as the muscle lengthens requires more neuromuscular regulation (motor control)
➡️ PNF: allows restoration of connections between the CNS and muscles using specific manually directed diagonal movements
➡️ Closed Chained: has been shown to improve muscle mass more effectively when compared to open chained exercise
✅ Strength of Evidence:
PEDro scale: 5/10 (fair)
Not all evidence is created equal. This scale is used to how well the study was conducted. A good score is 6-8, an excellent score is 9-10
This only the 2nd injury prevention study specific to climbing, both written by the same group of authors
CItation
Kozin S, Kozina Z, Cretu M, et al. Use of closed chain exercises, eccentric exercises, and proprioceptive muscle facilitation to prevent elbow injuries in climbers: a randomized control trial. Physiotherapy Quarterly. 2022;30(2):90-99
Link