People will be quick to say the leading cause of sports injuries is “poor form.” Some will debate and say no, it’s not form, it’s from playing on turf vs natural grass. We will step into this debate and say it’s neither of those – the leading cause of sports injuries is from difficulty adapting to high psychosocial factors.

🤕Leading Cause Of Sports Injuries

The top 3 reasons sport-related injuries generally occur when:

• There is a significant spike in workload: The movement system or a specific part of the system takes on a stressor that it has not built capacity for. (example – sprinting when you have not sprinted in 15 years.)
• There is a high chronic workload without variability: The injured tissues have taken on too much of the same stressor for too long without a period to rest and adapt (example – maxing out bench pressing 3x per week for 20 years with no variability in load or other movements.)
• The athlete’s internal load is high, meaning they are having trouble adapting to the work they are doing, with the culprit being various psycho-social factors. Examples of psycho-social factors are sleep habits, previous experiences, societal norms, relationships, etc.

But if we HAD to pick the leading cause of sports injuries, the research is clear – psychosocial stressors take the gold. 

😫Psychosocial Stressors and Injury Risk

Research consistently indicates that psychosocial stressors are significant predictors of injury risk among athletes, often surpassing traditional physical factors. A comprehensive meta-analysis encompassing 48 studies revealed that both stress responses and a history of stressors had the strongest associations with injury rates. 

Further studies have identified specific psychosocial stress factors, such as negative life events involving teammates and coaches, as contributing to increased risk of both acute and overuse injuries. 

Additionally, research on elite junior soccer players demonstrated that higher levels of daily hassle and lower levels of daily uplift were significantly associated with injury occurrence.

🦾What about biomechanical factors?

The research in modern years has shifted drastically, showing biomechanics matter for performance but not for injury risk or for the pain response. For example, in the case of “Jumper’s Knee”, imaging data has shown positive adaptation of the patellar tendon, yet the positive structural change is NOT related to the athlete’s discomfort or pain response.

✅How to address psychosocial factors

As complex as psychosocial factors and managing internal load may be, some of the solutions are the simplest. Asking an athlete, truly asking – looking them in the eye, sitting down with them – and saying, “how are you doing?” Goes a long way! It opens up convo, creates trust, and is a great building block for them to feel cared for. 

Through a decade of experience in high-level performance, we have also found the benefits of athletes establishing their:

• Identity: not just as an athlete, but who god created them to be fully.
• Values: pick 3 that are meaningful vs the classic “employee manual” that lists 12. Focus on these 3 and live out these values daily. 
• An action plan to live congruently: if you are living differently than your values, your psychosocial stress will increase, which means injury risk will increase. An action plan keeps you steady on the path.

We have seen firsthand the benefits of putting as much work into addressing psychosocial factors as we do into addressing training in the weight room or on the field.

Interested in addressing those factors in an 8-week progressive manner – check out the program that has helped thousands of elite athletes perform their best as a human and athlete: Reclaimed Athlete.

Author: 

Dr. Dillon Caswell, PT, DPT, SCS

Hope Evangelist | Top-Selling Author & Speaker | Human Performance Expert