Einleitung

Physical exercise is an essential component of a healthy lifestyle. It has been proved
that lack of physical activity is a risk factor for the development of a number of
chronic illnesses, including cardiovascular diseases which are a main cause of death
in the Western world. Sport helps to strengthen important values such as team spirit and solidarity, and contributes to personal development and fulfillment. Sport has strong social and economic implications, also within a European and even broader global context. Sport contributes to increased solidarity and prosperity in countries and among populations. But certainly sporting also holds a risk of injury due to accidents related to sports or due to overexertion. Although the net health gains from regular physical activity exceed the risk of injury (BMSG, 2000; BASPO, 2001), the burden of injuries related to sports and physical activities is substantial (Engebretsen & Bahr, 2009). About one in five injuries treated at emergency departments in hospitals is related to sporting activities. For the EU-27 region alone, the total number of sports related injuries that need to be treated in hospitals, is estimated at around 5 million cases a year. Team sports are accounting for about 40% of this number of injury cases (EuroSafe/KfV, 2009). Of course, not all injuries are equally severe but a significant proportion of these injuries, for instance concussions and knee injuries, are serious. Serious injuries often result in long-term absence from work and sport and in chronic problems such as an early onset of osteoarthritis (Meeuwisse & Bahr, 2009). Fortunately, there are many possibilities to prevent sports injuries, for instance by making sports infrastructures and equipment safer, prescribing the use of protective equipment such as helmets, adapting rules of the game, and by making injury prevention a core component in training methods and in educating coaches and trainers (Steffen et al, 2010). Thus, injury prevention in sport has great benefits for individuals engaged in sports and physical activities, such as greater health in individuals and enhanced sport performance, and for society at large as it enhances the sustainability of active lifestyles in populations and reduces the costs of the health care system and of employers. However, there seems to be the perception that, if physical activity advocates were to talk about safety issues, people would not become active. In fact, the contrary is true as unsafe activity is one of the major barriers towards ongoing physical activity. Einleitung