Skadefri club events in Norway - experiences, challenges and opportunities: A cross-sectional study

Purpose: To present experiences from completed Skadefri club events in sports clubs in Norway. We wanted to map participants´ knowledge of injury prevention training and Skadefri’s app and website before and right after a club event, as well as to increase the understanding of factors that are important for participants' use of, or barriers to, preventive training. Design, material, and method: Cross-sectional study. At the end of the club event, the participants in the period 2020-2021 answered a questionnaire giving information of their knowledge of and use of injury prevention training, the Skadefri’s website and application. Including questions regarding challenges / barriers to injury prevention and their overall assessment of the club event. The participants were athletes, coaches and parents from different sports in Norway. Results: A total of 1825 respondents, not all respondents answered all the questions in the questionnaire. It was 58% (n = 656) who knew Skadefri and among those 45% (n = 293) used the website and / or the application in their everyday training before participating at the club event. In total, 63% (n = 978) regularly carried out injury prevention training before the club event, while almost everyone (98%, (n = 1518)) wanted to use the knowledge about injury prevention training at a larger extent, in their own training routine, after the club event. The main barriers to implementation were lack of knowledge and not being confident concerning how to implement injury prevention training in practice. Conclusion: Skadefri club events seems to be an appropriate and in-demand low-threshold measure that stimulates more knowledge about and use of injury-prevention training and Skadefris resources among the participants.