Preventive Methods for Karate Injuries- A Review

摘要

Sports injury is a major concern for athletes. Karate is a form of martial art that is practiced widely across the world. Injuries areinherent in karate as it is a combative sport. Therefore, there is a need of implementation of preventive strategies which play agreat role in reducing the injuries. This review aimed to identify common injuries and preventive strategies for injury prevention inkarate athletes. An electronic search in Google Scholar, MEDLINE, PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus was conducted by usingfollowing keywords: karate athletes, common injuries, prevention and protective equipment. Studies on injury prevention in karateathletes and studies published in English language were included in this review. Reviews and studies with free access to onlyabstract have been excluded. Protective equipment like mouthguards, groin guards, knuckle protection, gloves and proper paddinghelp in prevention of injury. Strict implementation of rules and specific conditioning programs were found to be effective in injuryprevention and should be encouraged for injury prevention in karate athletes. Athletes, parents and coaches should be educatedregarding evolving injury prevention methods. Also, it was found that there were very few number of RCT evidence regardingpreventive training programs in martial arts and karate.