More than 4 million sports injuries in 2021
It is likely that this has happened to you. You are training towards a goal and then an injury comes your way. From Investigation by NL Security It shows that about 3.5 million athletes suffered at least one injury in 2021. Our country’s biggest sports injury won’t surprise you; This is running. 81% of injured runners were unable to exercise for one or more days in 2021 due to injury. How does that happen? What should we do about that? Should we do more or less exercise?
In total, Dutch athletes have sustained 4.3 million sports injuries. So some athletes were injured several times in the same year. After runners (890,000 injuries), soccer players and fitness enthusiasts are also at risk. Pain in the knees and ankles is one of the most common reasons for sitting on the couch. But if you sustain an injury to your back or leg (excluding ankle/knee), it will take longer to be able to exercise again, according to this study.
injuries and age
It may surprise you, but being young and resilient doesn’t mean you’re less likely to get injured. People over 50 are injured less often than younger athletes. But if they were injured, it would take about a month before they could put their sneakers back on.
What are all these injuries costing us?
Sports may be beneficial to our body in many ways, but all these injuries also involve a lot of medical costs. If an athlete ends up in the emergency room with a serious injury, it will cost us an average of 2,000 euros per injury. In 2021, this totaled €180m. Although, of course, you can wonder how many runners end up in the emergency room with a serious injury.
According to this study, soccer players, cyclists, horseback riders, and skiers are responsible for particularly high medical costs. Some athletes are so seriously injured that they are temporarily unable to work. It cost us a total of 220 million euros in 2021.
How do we get injured?
The biggest reason why injuries happen is that athletes think they can do more than they look like. They overestimate themselves and run the risk of being overloaded. In addition, there are fewer volunteers and therefore less supervision. Therefore it is important to pay more attention to prevention.
And now? Keep moving!
So SafetyNL wants to pay more attention to injury prevention in the coming years. And by referring injured athletes to a form of sport or exercise they can still do, says program director Maurice Lesser of Safety NL. We want people to move. But it’s better to keep moving.” NOS.
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