Gymnasts are both lower extremity and upper extremity weight-bearing athletes. Injury incidence is high with 3.6 injuries per gymnasts per year and 2.5-3.3 injuries per 1000 hours of training. There have been some already known risk factors for injuries in gymnastics like larger body size, rapid growth, training more than 15-20 hours per week and life stress. Our aim was to analyze the range of motion (ROM) in shoulder joint and assess its correlation to overall and shoulder injury risk in artistic and rhythmic gymnastics. There were 72 subjects (MAG 20, WAG 24, RG 28) included in the prospective study. The ROM of left and right shoulder joints was measured at the beginning of the study and the incidence of injuries was followed in the next 12 months. Basic statistics parameters were used to describe the ROM values. The differences in ROM between left and right shoulder were analyzed with paired-samples (t-test). With analysis of variance and Tukey`s post - hoc test, we were looking for difference in the extent of mobility between groups. To find the differences in the mobility of shoulder joint between a group that did not suffer injuries and a group that did suffer injuries, we used a t-test. P-values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. RESULTS: In the analysis of all athletes together, we found out, that in the three tasks (internal and external rotation, elevation through anteflexion) a large percent of athletes does not reach normative value, while in retroflexion a large percent of athletes exceeds the normative value. We found out statistically significant differences in the extent of movement in the shoulder joint between groups. From the results we can see that, the resulting differences are not consequence of the specifics of groups (MAG, WAG and RG), but the difference between genders, because the typical difference occurs between the MAG and WAG, and between MAG and RG. Results of our measurements are strongly linked to the mechanisms of injury incidence that are described in literature, therefore we assume, that in Slovenian athletes in MAG, WAG and RG exists an increased risk of described injuries. However, we did not manage to prove the influence of changes in flexibility with the possibility of injury.
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