Review

The number of children and adolescents participating in organised athletic activities worldwide is increas-ing. However, physical fi tness levels among youth are lower today than in previous decades. The combination of increased exposure and decreased preparedness for sports participation has led to an epidemic of both acute and chronic sports-related injuries in this popula-tion. Poor physical fi tness, in addition to having nega-tive health consequences, seems to be a risk factor for sports-related injury. Accurate injury surveillance data are required to better defi ne the magnitude of the problem of injury in youth sports, as well as to identify specifi c risk factors for injury. From these data, targeted intervention strategies incorporating fi tness training may be developed with the goal of preventing sports-related injury. Preliminary experience with several specifi c injury patterns—anterior cruciate ligament injuries and ankle sprains—has demonstrated the effi cacy of such tar-geted prevention strategies