I Prevent injuries in grassroots and amateur sports by using digital tools

ended

Since injuries are the main problem that soccer players must face during their career, the interest in reducing its incidence has gained great importance in sports sciences. Additionally, when youth footballers are considered, the problem is more serious due to the fact that an injury could negatively impact young athletes in terms of progression and formation. Thus, the aim of this project is to complete a multidimensional investigation of the recovery-stress balance and injury prevention in athletes participating in youth soccer teams, from an allostatic perspective, based on a comprehensive monitoring process of recovery and injury incidence, as well as a consequent intervention and a later conversion of the knowledge, experiences and outcomes into a comprehensive but applicable guideline about the topic. After a literature review, recovery strategies and a specific injury prevention program will be applied with several youth soccer teams (i.e., males and females) after monitoring the training loads, recovery status and injury incidence. For this purpose, a specific app focused on the recovery strategies and the injury prevention program will be performed. With these actions, we hope to obtain better recovery values compared to baseline, as well as a reduction in the injury incidence of youth soccer players. Finally, dissemination actions will be promoted to guarantee the communication of the project’s progress and results and to extrapolate the observed findings to a real practical application that allows improving the performance and quality of life of youth soccer players, such as the development of a handbook of standardized fitness monitoring, to be used by physical education teachers and coaches or guidelines about improving the recovery strategies and reducing the injury.