Een warming-up programma voor jeugd hockey spelers ter voorkoming van blessures

The costs associated with sports injury pose a large burden on public health. Moreover, the negative associations with sports injury in youth can make a child lose enthusiasm for participation in physical activity and sports.
Field hockey is ranked among the most popular sports in the Netherlands, but it is also relatively risky. The Dutch Consumer Safety Institute (VeiligheidNL) calculated that the incidence of hockey injuries is 4.1 per 1000 hours of hockey.
The overall aims of the proposed study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a hockey warming-up program on the incidence and severity of hockey related injury incidence in players aged 10 – 17 years, and investigate the facilitators and barriers for the national implementation of the program in the Netherlands.

The overall aim of the proposed project is to evaluate the effectiveness of a hockey warming-up program. We specifically aim to answer the
following research questions:

1. What is the effectiveness of the hockey warming-up program on hockey related injury incidence in children aged 10 – 17 years?

2. What is the effectiveness of the hockey warming-up program on the severity of hockey related injuries in children aged 10-17 years?

3. What are facilitators and barriers for the national implementation of the program in the Netherlands? (process evaluation)

- Baseline questionaire

- weekly registration of participation in hockey training and matches of all players througout the season

- in case of a hockey related injury in a player, details of the injury will be registered

Goal

The main goal of the intervention is to provide the coach and players with a good and standard warming-up program in order to reduce the
number of hockey related injuries.

Content of the warming-up program

The warming-up program was developed by the KNHB and VeiligheidNL in cooperation with Interpolis (Dutch Insurance company) and child- and sports physiotherapists. The exercises are
available via http://hockey.warmingupapp.nl/oefeningen .
Coaches can also install the exercises on their smartphone.
Motor skills are rapidly changing in a growing child; An eight year old child (E youth) has other needs and skills compared to an adolescent of
16 (A youth). Therefore four categories of exercises were developed. Each warming-up session is designed to follow-up on the previous
warming-up session. A single warming-up session comprises of three phases, with the last phase being a game situation to make sure that
players are well prepared for the coming training or match.