Background Players´ compliance with injury prevention programs (IPP) can significantly affect the effectiveness of such programs in injury reduction. Objective To evaluate players` compliance with an individualized IPP to compared to the established FIFA 11+ IPP. Design Cross-sectional study Setting Semi-professional football. The data was obtained from a pilot study comparing the effectiveness of individualized vs. generalized (i. e. one-size-fits-all) IPPs. Participants 72 semi-professional soccer players from 4 clubs (age: 22.3±4.7; weight: 75±10 kg; height: 177 ± 9 cm) participated in the study and were divided into two groups of 1) Individualized and 2) FIFA 11+. Interventions The individualized group completed 6 weeks of unsupervised, individualized IPP based on their functional movement screen scores. FIFA 11+ group completed 6 weeks of FIFA 11+. After the 6 weeks (18 sessions), the compliance with programs was assessed using an online questionnaire. Main Outcome Measurements Compliance with the IPP defined as the players` self-assessment of how correctly they followed all instructions during all sessions. Players were classified based on their self-report as fully complied (carried out 16 and more successful sessions), partially complaint (8-15 sessions) and not complaint (less than 8 session). Results A total of 29 (81%) players in the individualized PP group said they had fully complied during the 6 weeks of individualized IPP; 5 (14%) said they had been partially compliant and 2 (5%) classified as not compliant. In FIFA 11+ group 15 (41%) had fully complied; 14 (39%) said they had been partially compliant and 7 (20%) were classified as not compliant. Conclusions The results indicate that an individualized IPP may be superior to 11+ IPP in terms of players` compliance. Further research needs to expand the sample size and to investigate the relationship between compliance and injury reduction effect of individualized IPPs.
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