Skateboarding Sports Medicine
Mapping the knowledge gap in a new Olympic sport and building a rehabilitation-centered research program spanning injury epidemiology, biomechanics, prevention, and return-to-skate.
Overview
Skateboarding became an official Olympic sport at Tokyo 2020 (Park and Street disciplines), with over 50 million participants worldwide, concentrated in adolescents and young adults. Despite rapid growth ahead of LA 2028, sports-medicine research lags far behind other Olympic sports and is heavily skewed toward injury epidemiology and helmet / head-injury studies. Biomechanics, injury prevention, rehabilitation, and performance science remain largely unexplored.
This program systematically maps that knowledge gap and builds a rehabilitation-medicine-centered research and publication strategy, leveraging the pre-Olympic window and a first-mover position.
Research Objectives
OBJ1 — Systematic knowledge-gap documentation
- Scoping Review: "Injury, Prevention, and Rehabilitation in Skateboarding: A Scoping Review of an Olympic Sport" (JBI + Arksey & O'Malley, PRISMA-ScR), mapping injury epidemiology, prevention, and rehabilitation / return-to-skate using the TRIPP framework.
- Systematic Review & Meta-analysis: injury epidemiology, with pooled prevalence by injury type, age / sex / experience subgroups, and pre / post-Olympic comparison.
OBJ2 — Overuse injury & biomechanical profiling
- Cross-sectional survey of overuse-injury prevalence and training characteristics (OSTRC Overuse Injury Questionnaire) in competitive skateboarders.
- Biomechanical analysis of lower-limb kinematics / kinetics by trick (Ollie, kickflip, 50-50 grind) using IMU / 3D motion capture, analyzed with statistical parametric mapping.
OBJ3 — Prevention & return-to-skate protocols
- SKATE-SAFE injury-prevention program (warm-up, balance training, fall technique, progressive difficulty) via Delphi consensus then pilot cluster RCT.
- Return-to-Skate consensus (modified Delphi) for graded return after concussion, fracture, and ligament injury.
Key Knowledge Gaps
- Trick-specific joint kinematics / kinetics, essentially unstudied
- Sport-specific overuse patterns ("skateboarder's ankle")
- No validated prevention program (no FIFA 11+ equivalent)
- No sport-specific return-to-skate criteria
- Physical-demand profiling (Park vs Street) largely unmeasured
- Female and youth athlete research nearly absent
- Elite athlete fitness and injury profiles
Strategy & Positioning
- Timing: LA 2028 golden window (2025-2027) for high-impact publication
- Rehabilitation-medicine niche: existing literature is ED / trauma-surgery centered; a rehab and return-to-play lens is a distinct position
- Asian data: a first Korean / Asian dataset in a field dominated by North America, Australia, and Europe
- Integrated approach: epidemiology, biomechanics, prevention, and rehabilitation combined
- EMG / NCS expertise: surface-EMG, trick-level muscle-activation analysis as a novel biomechanics angle
- Target journals: BJSM, Sports Medicine, AJSM, Clin J Sport Med, Sports Biomechanics, Scand J Med Sci Sports