Multiple factors explain injury risk in adolescent elite athletes: Applying a biopsychosocial perspective

Many risk factors for injury are presented in the literature, few of those are however consistent and the majority is associated with adult and not adolescent elite athletes. The aim was to identify risk factors for injury in adolescent elite athletes, by applying a biopsychosocial approach. A total of 496 adolescent elite athletes (age range 15‐19), participating in 16 different sports, were monitored repeatedly over 52 weeks using a valid questionnaire about injuries, training exposure, sleep, stress, nutrition, and competence‐based self‐esteem. Univariate and multiple Cox regression analyses were used to calculate hazard ratios (HR) for risk factors for first reported injury. The main finding was that an increase in training load, training intensity, and at the same time decreasing the sleep volume resulted in a higher risk for injury compared to no change in these variables (HR 2.25, 95% CI, 1.46‐3.45, P