# Injury Incidence in Traineras: Analysis of Traditional Rowing by Competitive Level and Gender
## 1 Introduction
For this reason, sports injuries and their prevention have become a crucial subject of study [45]. The early specialization and the high demand to improve athletes' performance have contributed to a significant increase in chronic and overuse injuries suffered by different level athletes [46]. Even though a recent investigation shows that team sports have a higher injury rate in Olympic sports than individual sports [47], for example, Olympic rowing is not considered a very harmful sport since it belongs to the group with the lowest incidence of injuries [48; 49; 50; 51; 52; 53]. Moreover, due to their importance to athletes' performance and health, the epidemiology of injuries in rowing has been widely analyzed [52], and several investigations have described the incidence of injuries in Olympic rowing [49; 54; 55; 56]. These main injuries are shown in an updated systematic review of injury epidemiology in Olympic rowing [57]. Within the scientific literature related to injuries in rowing, many articles have focused on athletes' injuries according to rowers' competitive level or age, with several investigations gathering the main injuries in elite rowing [58; 55; 55; 58; 59; 60; 61] and many others describing the main injuries age-wise [62], junior [63], collegiate rowers [64; 65], or amateur rowers [66]. Likewise, high school rowers [65] and master rowers' injuries [50] also haven been analyzed. Several investigations show female rowers' injuries [57; 67], while some compared these sport injuries between men and women rowers [59; 68], showing a wide map of the main injuries in Olympic rowing. Among the characteristics or types of injuries of Olympic rowers, mainly overuse, acute (traumatic), and chronic (overuse) injuries have been described [50; 51; 56; 57; 62]. Apart from the type, the injury region in the body has also been studied, showing that the highest injury incidence described are low back [56; 68; 69; 70] and rib stress [67; 81; 82]. However, other injuries, such as wrist and forearm, knee, iliotibial band, shoulder, hip,and skin conditions [54; 56; 60] are common in rowing. Among the main injury diagnoses, tenosynovitis, spondylolysis, disk injuries, or stress fractures have been described [49; 56; 60; 62], thus completing the specific injury pattern in this sport. Beyond the characteristics of the cyclic movement in rowing, biomechanics and rowers' injuries have also been associated in different publications, since the biomechanical analysis of the technique of each sport is connected to the aetiology of the injuries and therefore crucial to be able to subsequently prevent or reduce the effects of these injuries [56; 60; 69; 83]. Moreover, due to the importance of not being injured during an athletic season, injury prevention plans have been released for team sports [45] and in rowing [60; 83] to try to reduce the injury rate. Despite the number of studies that analyze the etiology and injury incidence in Olympic rowing, fixed-sit rowing injuries have been scarcely analyzed [84; 85]. A recent investigation in Maltese fixed-sit rowing, compared the musculoskeletal injuries in this rowing modality with a group of Olympic rowers, and results showed that for both, the low back and shoulder were the body regions with the highest injury incidence [84]. In the Spanish context, Mediterranean fixed-sit rowers' incidence of injury was described, and ankle, low back, and shoulder were the main injured body regions, while sprains and tendinitis were the highest described diagnoses, and overuse injuries occurred the most during, especially during the training period [85]. However, there is currently no research that analyzes the injuries in Traineras rowing. Therefore, due to its importance to athletes' performance and health, the main objectives of this research will be to describe the characteristics, body region, and incidence of injuries in traditional rowing, creating thus specific injury incidence patterns in Traineras rowing related to gender and competitive level of rowers.