Gamifying App-Based Low-Intensity Psychological Interventions to Prevent Sports Injuries in Young Athletes: A Review and Some Guidelines

Sports injuries have become a real health concern. Particularly noticeable is the increasing number of severe sports injuries among young people. Sports injury (SI) is a multifactorial event where many internal and external, proximal and remote factors play a role in a recursive way, including physical and psychological variables. Accordingly, many voices expressing the need of tackling that and several prevention programs have arisen. Nevertheless, different barriers and limitations prevent a wide extension of well-controlled programs, closely monitored by highly specialized professionals in ordinary sports grass-root organizations. These have helped flourishing different low intensity (LI)-interventions and e-Health apps focusing on both physical warmup, training and fitness, and mental skills aimed at reducing athlete's vulnerability to SIs. This kind of intervention usually uses self-administered techniques and/or non-specialized staff that can effectively monitoring the program. In fact, LI-interventions have shown to be effective coping with different health and psychological issues. However, these interventions face an important challenge: the lack of engagement people usually show. The current paper proposes how gamification can contribute to the engagement to such interventions. Based on the mechanics-dynamics-aesthetics framework to analyze game design, the paper suggests a set of guidelines app- and web-LI interventions aimed at preventing SIs should include to foster motivation and reduce attrition.