“Is it fun and does it enhance my performance?” – Key implementation considerations for injury prevention programs in youth handball

“Yeah, I Mean, You’re Going to Handball, so You Want to Use Balls as Much as Possible at Training”: End-Users’ Perspectives of Injury Prevention Training for Youth Handball Players

“…This step will hopefully further increase variation and, importantly, provide the opportunity for self-determined choices. Understanding the injury prevention and/or performance enhancement purpose of each exercise emerged as another facilitating factor from our study and is in line with earlier research [12,20,36]. Lastly, in line with previous research [12,19], our results confirm that it is motivating for participants to see other handball players and coaches who perform or advocate the program.…”

“…Understanding the injury prevention and/or performance enhancement purpose of each exercise emerged as another facilitating factor from our study and is in line with earlier research [12,20,36]. Lastly, in line with previous research [12,19], our results confirm that it is motivating for participants to see other handball players and coaches who perform or advocate the program. The importance of role models in injury prevention training has been raised elsewhere [37].…”

“…DiStefano et al [ 11 ] identified a gap between short-term improvements (mainly occurring in controlled environments, i.e., during a study) and long-term implementation strategies (mainly occurring in uncontrolled environments). Studies confirmed that, in uncontrolled environments within youth team sport athletes, complete injury prevention programs are rarely used, and single injury prevention exercises are only used to a moderate extent [ 12 , 13 ]. Even in a controlled environment, low utilization rates of injury prevention exercises in youth floorball players were reported [ 14 ].…”

“…Several barriers have been identified that may help increase our understanding of the lack of use of injury prevention training. Players, coaches, and/or physical and medical staff can find the injury prevention exercises boring and/or monotonous [ 12 , 13 , 15 , 16 , 17 ], too time consuming [ 12 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ], and/or lacking sport- and age-specificity [ 12 , 15 , 19 ]. The lack of player motivation to perform injury prevention training is also a major barrier for sustained implementation [ 13 , 16 , 17 , 18 ].…”

“…Conversely, exercises that are fun, game-like, sport-specific, challenging, and that include progression and variation have emerged as facilitators for sustained implementation of injury prevention training [ 12 , 13 , 16 , 17 , 20 ]. This may be because exercises with these characteristics are more likely to generate positive consequences for the end-user (e.g., by inducing positive emotions), which is considered a powerful tool to maintain or increase the frequency of a behaviour over time, through a process known as reinforcement [ 21 ].…”