Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

while driving to the training-ground? Does this disruptive experience constitute a
“sports” injury? In an effort to deal with such objections, some sports scientists (e.g.,
Noyes, Lindenfeld and Marshall, 1988) postulated the enforced or unexpected time lost
from participation in sport as a key criterion in defining athletic injuries. But once again,
this definition was criticised on two grounds. First, some athletes try to play their sport
even though they are technically injured (Flint, 1998). One explanation for this
phenomenon is that such performers may have higher pain thresholds than others. The
second problem with the criterion of time loss is that it neglects the fact that injuries have
medical as well as temporal consequences for athletes (Kujala, 2002). Thus it may be
wise to augment time loss with the requirement that to qualify as an “injury” a given
problem should require medical attention. In summary, it is clear that despite several
decades of research in this field, there does not seem to be any universally agreed
definition of sports injury.
Despite some vagueness about the criteria used to define sports injuries, we know that
the tissue damage which characterises them varies considerably in type and severity. For
example, there is a clear distinction between “acute” and “chronic” injuries. The former
category refers mainly to “direct trauma” or injuries stemming from a known cause such
as a sudden impact which may produce a bone fracture, muscle strain or a ligament
sprain. By contrast, “chronic” injuries are relatively diffuse conditions that develop
slowly and which only gradually lead to tissue breakdown. An example of such problems
is tendonitis in the wrist of a regular tennis player—an injury which has no single
identifiable cause. Given the fact that sports injuries vary along temporal dimensions
(acute versus chronic), do they also vary in severity? Although there is no agreed method
of measuring objectively the seriousness of an injury, a variety of possible indices of
severity have been proposed. For example, the seriousness of an athletic injury has been
operationally defined in terms of the amount of time lost from participation in the sport,
the degree of pain experienced by the athlete in the injured limb or area, the range of
motion available for the injured body part, and the estimated time for recovery (Kerr and
Miller, 2001). To illustrate the last of these criteria, Rahnama et al. (2002) distinguished
between minor, moderate and severe types of injury in soccer players on the basis of the
length of time needed for recovery. Nevertheless, no consensus exists about the best way
to measure injury severity in sports. Having sketched the nature of sports injuries, we
should now consider their prevalence.

Prevalence of injuries in sport

In general, the prevalence of injuries across different sports is difficult to assess because
of factors such as variations in the criteria used to define and report physical trauma in
athletes as well as inconsistencies in the use of protective equipment in a given sport
(Junge and Dvorak, 2000; Walter, Sutton, McIntosh and Connolly, 1985). Despite these
methodological problems, some general trends in injury analysis are evident in relation to
two popular sports in Britain: cricket (a non-contact sport) and rugby (a contact sport).
For example, Hopps (2002) reported that between 2000 and 2002, England’s top cricket
players were almost twice as likely as their Australian counterparts to experience back
injuries which had rendered participants unfit to play. This disparity in injury prevalence
between cricketers from different countries is difficult to explain but may reflect the

Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction 246