Mountain Bike Injury Study - What We Can Lean From The Stats
In this podcast I review the findings of a 2017 study on mountain biking injuries and give you my recommendations based on them for avoiding the most common injury patterns. You can stream or download this episode from the link below or you can find it on Itunes, Podbean, Spotify and all other major podcasting platforms. Some people look at injury studies like this with a fatalistic approach of “that’s just how it is and there is nothing we can do to significantly change things”. I look at them and say “if people are getting hurt at a higher than normal rate, is there something we are doing wrong that is leading to it”? Running Shoes is a good example of this - small changes to the status quo vs. a paradigm shift in how we look at running. Is the industry getting it all wrong with the equipment and techniques we promote along with how we promote mountain biking to new riders? Here are my big takeaways from the study linked to below: https://journals.lww.com/acsm-csmr/fulltext/2017/11000/mountain_biking_injuries.10.aspx Big Takeaway #1 - Mountain Biking has a higher than average rate of injuries in general and head/ spine and overuse injuries in particular. With almost a third of injuries occurring during the race, MTB is among the sports leading to high overall injury rates in Olympic sports (20). During the 2012 Summer Olympics, 21% of mountain bikers reported acute or overuse injuries, half of which had led the cyclists to lose at least one training/race day (20). Fifty percent of recreational bikers and 80% of professional mountain bikers have reported at least one major severe injury directly related to the sport (35). Microtraumatization of contact and noncontact areas due to repetitive forces and vibration, in addition to fatigue, renders the rider vulnerable to overuse injuries (13). Such injuries are reported in 45% to 90% of mountain bikers (13). Injury-related cost of care for the cyclists can be a significant financial burden for cyclists and health care in general (46). However, the potential risks of cycling are outweighed by the health-related benefits of riding a bike. The most common mechanism of acute severe injury for competitive mountain bikers has been falling forward (64.9%), and 85.6% of such injuries have occurred while riding DH (14). Falling forward had led to a significantly higher Injury Severity Score (ISS) and emergency department admission rates than falling to the side (14). Head injuries lead to concussions, skull and facial fracture, cerebral contusion, and intracranial hemorrhage. In one study, oromaxillofacial trauma, fractures, soft tissue injuries, and dental trauma accounted for 55%, 23%, and 22% of cases, respectively (24). Dental trauma also has been reported in 25% of the mountain bikers. In 107 cases of acute spine injuries in MTB in a level 1 trauma center, 95% were male (18). Only two were professional cyclists and injured during a race. Mountain biking spinal injuries consisted almost 4% of all spinal injuries (18). Cervical spine injuries were diagnosed in 74% of cases. Eighty-four percent of riders had used helmets and/or body armor. Fifteen percent of patients had documented coexisting brain injury. The ISS did not differ significantly in those with helmet (16.4) versus those without helmet (16.3). Ulnar and median neuropathies are common among cyclists, with ulnar neuropathy (cyclist’s palsy) being present in 19% to 35% of the cyclists (4). Prevalence of knee pain is 20% to 27% among mountain bikers (13). With a prevalence of 16% to 43%, neck pain is a common complaint among mountain bikers (13). While the clipless shoes provide the cyclist with mechanical advantage in energy transfer chain during cycling, they potentially expose the cyclist to some injuries including metatarsalgia (62) and Morton’s neuroma (34). Low back pain (LBP) is a common complaint among mountain bikers with a prevalence of 24% to 41% (13