MOVE HEALTHY: Improving health and sustaining participation of youngsters in sports around Europe (EUPOM88)

MOVE HEALTHY aims to contribute to a reduction of sport injuries in youth as they pose an important barrier to a lifelong participation in sport. Sports injuries are a major reason for reduced participation and drop-out from sports and PE. Especially knee and ankle injuries contribute to this issue. MOVE HEALTHY differs from ‘regular’ injury prevention approaches in that the starting point is implementation. Several injury prevention programs that provide ‘exercises’ have shown positive injury preventive effects in a controlled research setting. However, in daily routine at the population level, sustained behavioral change and program maintenance has shown to be (very) poor, thus having limited societal impact. To help overcome this implementation gap, the project aims to develop free-of-charge education material to support sport coaches and physical educators in preventing lower extremity injuries in youth participating in sports and PE. Based on implicit motor learning concepts, MOVE HEALTHY will develop innovative sports injury prevention materials and methods, made available on a web-based platform. In addition, by providing relative autonomy and enhanced expectancies during such routines, optimal motor learning is stimulated by enhancing motivation and thus maintenance of the preventive routines. Important criterion for all the material to be developed is that the material must facilitate optimal implementation. By a process of co-creation with sport coaches, PE teachers and children, functional sports routines will be developed that can be integrated in regular sport training and PE sessions. Those fun, varied and challenging exercises routines will be piloted for football and basketball, and for multi-sports PE classes at primary and secondary school levels. In our holistic approach, attention will not only be paid to the body, but also to the mind and environment of the youth

Keywords:sports

Disciplines:Sports sciences