31.10.2026 · 5 min read
Artistic swimming combines strength, flexibility, breath-holding, synchronisation and complex acrobatics. Relatively little is known about injuries in this sport: most studies are either retrospective, where athletes recall cases after the fact, or limited to the elite. Prospective data, where injuries are recorded as they occur together with training hours, are more valuable because they allow incidence to be calculated, not merely cases to be listed.
Four clubs were observed in 2023–2025 and two more in 2024–2025. The sample included 390 swimmers (511 athlete-seasons; 121 of them followed in both seasons), divided into four age groups: U12 (215), U16 (102), U19 (33) and Senior/Master (40). In all, 70 injuries were recorded in 65 athletes.
Incidence answers how many new injuries occur per unit of sporting exposure. Burden also takes severity into account through days lost. A rare serious injury can produce a large burden, while many minor ones produce a high incidence with little time lost.
In U12, 0.23 injuries (95% CI 0.15–0.34) and 8.49 days lost per 1,000 hours were recorded. In U16 — 0.42 and 8.00; in U19 — 0.70 and 18.00; in Senior/Master — 1.18 (0.47–2.44) and 29.61. The intervals of the youngest and oldest groups do not overlap, but the older groups are substantially smaller: Senior/Master had only 7 injuries, so the interval is very wide. These values should not be turned into an inevitable age ladder: exposure and level of preparation may have differed.
80% of events had a non-contact mechanism. The lower limbs accounted for 45.7%, and the knee was the most common lower-limb site; its rate rose with age: from 0.04 per 1,000 hours in U12 to 0.34 in Senior/Master. In younger swimmers muscle–tendon injuries were recorded more often (37.5% in U12), in Senior/Master joint and ligament injuries (42.9%). The greatest burden came from knee sprains and fractures of the shoulder region.
The authors draw a cautious conclusion: prevention should be directed at non-contact injuries, sprains and muscle damage. Such data help set monitoring priorities, but do not show which exercise prevents a particular diagnosis.
Both disciplines demand coordination, strength and a large range of motion, but the environment, support, exposure and loading mechanisms differ. Figures from artistic swimming cannot be used as a forecast for pole sport. Only the general methodological lesson transfers: count not just the number of injuries but also their burden, exposure and mechanism. It is useful for coaches and clubs to keep their own records: what happened, how many hours the athlete had trained beforehand, how many days she missed.
Incidence per 1,000 hours is the number of new injuries divided by the total time of training and competition of all athletes, multiplied by 1,000. A figure of 0.23 does not mean that 0.23% of athletes are injured: it exists to compare groups with different loads. The less exposure time and the rarer the events, the wider the confidence interval and the more cautiously the figure should be read: that is why in the Senior/Master group, with only 7 injuries, it is very wide.
It does not explain why incidence rises with age: this may be related to load, accumulated fatigue, the difficulty of elements or the way older groups report injuries. Preventive programmes were not tested, so it is impossible to judge which exercises reduce risk. There are no data on men or on other countries and training systems. The clubs and athletes represent a limited sample, so the figures should not be considered universal for the sport.
A useful practice is to record for each athlete training hours, type of injury, mechanism and number of days missed. After a season this gives not just a list of cases but a picture: where problems arise, how much they cost and which of them can be prevented. This is exactly the picture the authors propose building to set prevention priorities.
Prospective recording is better than retrospective recall. The limitations are only 70 events, small older categories, several clubs and no causal design. Definitions of injury also differ between studies. The version of the article we used was published in early access and may change in the final version.
Finally, remember that only cases that made it into the records were registered: minor complaints that did not cause missed training could remain outside the data, while serious injuries outside training and competition were not part of the exposure. This is a typical limitation of epidemiological work in sport.
The work provides a useful map of injuries in artistic swimmers and shows why days lost matter alongside incidence. It does not prove that age causes injuries and does not test the effectiveness of prevention.
Tags: artistic swimming, injuries, injury burden, epidemiology, prospective study
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