Analysis of sports injuries in training and competition for handball players

The aim of this study is to determine injury types and injured body parts of handball athletes in competition and  training in our country so that we will be able to find tangible data providing facility to prepare protector program for most injured body parts. A total of 705 athletes (male, 492; female, 213), who are the ones at different ages participated in handball tournaments in 2011 in Turkey and young male and female national team players (22 male, 22 female) joined voluntarily to the study. A questionnaire about the subject was asked to athletes. It is determined that the min-max age rage of sporters is 11-31 and the average age of them is 17.04±4.6, 69.08% of sporters who participated in the study are male and 30.2% of them are female.  52.6% of the athletes reported that they got at least one injury in their sports life and 47.4% of them reported that they have had no injury. The injury incidence in relation to exposure in competition and training was 65% and 35%, respectively. The most popular incidence of injury in competition (37.8%) and training (45.8%) was sprain and it is determined that foot and ankle were the most commonly injured body parts. The most injured body parts in handball caused by competition and training are ankle, knee, and calf-thigh.  It is evaluated that exercise programs for these body parts should be developed and added to training programs to lessen incidence of injuries except ones caused by factors being particular to sports.