TL;DR: A scoping review of 54 studies on youth track and field injuries found wildly inconsistent ways of defining, measuring, and tracking injuries across research, making it nearly impossible to compare findings or build effective prevention strategies .
Musculoskeletal injuries in young track and field athletes are common. The physiological reality is clear: adolescent and young adult bodies are simultaneously growing, maturing, and absorbing increasingly heavy training loads. Yet the research literature studying these injuries is fragmented in ways that undermine prevention efforts.
Researchers from multiple institutions conducted a scoping review, examining 54 studies published up to March 2026 on musculoskeletal injuries in youth track and field athletes (mean age 15-24 years). Their core finding was methodological chaos. Injuries were defined across studies using four completely different approaches: time-loss definitions (athlete unable to compete or train), medical-attention definitions (required healthcare intervention), symptom-based definitions (presence of pain or symptoms), and diagnosis-confirmed definitions (clinical or imaging confirmation). This variation alone makes comparing results across studies nearly impossible. If one study counts only injuries that sideline athletes, and another counts any visit to a sports medicine clinic, the two studies are measuring different phenomena even when they appear to be studying the same sport.
Surveillance methods—the actual systems used to detect and record injuries—were equally inconsistent across 48 of the studies examined. Some relied on athlete self-report, others on medical records, others on weekly check-ins with coaching staff. Exposure metrics (the denominator that lets you calculate injury rates: injuries per 1000 athlete-hours, for example) were inconsistently quantified. Forty-eight studies showed substantial heterogeneity in how they measured exposure, meaning two studies reporting "5 injuries" in "our cohort" might be describing completely different exposure levels.
The review identified risk and protective factors across intrinsic domains (previous injury history, biomechanical factors, strength, bone health status) and extrinsic domains (training load, footwear selection, environmental conditions, surfaces). Across 27 studies reporting factors, measurement techniques varied widely. There was no consistency in how strength was assessed, how training load was quantified, or how previous injuries were documented. The researchers explicitly noted that reporting of consensus-based methodological components varied substantially. Fewer than half of studies adequately reported exposure metrics, prospective monitoring approaches, and whether overuse injuries (versus acute injuries) were included in their case definitions.
If you're a coach, athletic trainer, parent, or young athlete in track and field, this review is primarily a research signal, not a clinical roadmap. The systematic heterogeneity means the literature cannot yet reliably answer "what prevents injuries in youth track athletes?" because the underlying studies aren't measuring the same outcomes the same way.
What you can take from this: the field has identified intrinsic and extrinsic factors worth monitoring. Tracking previous injury history, baseline strength levels, training load progression, and footwear appropriateness are evidence-informed starting points. The review itself does not establish efficacy for any specific intervention. Rather, it identifies that future injury prevention work needs to standardize how injuries are defined and measured before prevention strategies can be properly tested and compared.
The practical implication is that any youth track athlete program working on injury reduction should:
1. Use prospective injury surveillance (tracking injuries as they happen, not retrospectively)
2. Document exposure clearly (hours of training and competition)
3. Define injuries consistently (using either consensus definitions or clearly stating which definition is used)
4. Monitor both acute and overuse injuries separately
These aren't guarantees of injury prevention. They're methodological foundations that would allow different programs' prevention work to be compared and refined.
| Attribute | Details |
|---|---|
| Study Type | Scoping review (systematic mapping of literature) |
| Number of Studies Reviewed | 54 studies on youth track and field athletes |
| Age Range Studied | Mean age 15-24 years |
| Primary Finding | Substantial methodological heterogeneity in injury definition, surveillance, and exposure measurement across studies |
| Key Limitation | Heterogeneity itself prevents meta-analysis or cross-study comparisons |
| Consensus Framework Used | Timpka et al. athletics consensus statement on injury definitions and measurement |
| Journal | BMC Sports Science, Medicine & Rehabilitation |
| Registration | Open Science Framework (DOI) |
Timpka, T., et al. "Consensus statement: Methods for injury surveillance in sport and exercise populations." British Journal of Sports Medicine. PubMed
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