SQUASH: A NARRATIVE REVIEW AND THE PROPOSAL FOR A PREVENTIVE PHYSIOTHERAPY PROTOCOL

Abstract

ASquash is a sport practiced intensively around the world, and due to the growth of its practice the sport participated in the preselection for the inclusion of the 2020 Olympic games. This sport requires several physical skills and like any other sport, it exposes its practitioners at risk of injury, which reinforces the need to understand the sporting gestures, the physical demands that the modality imposes, and the most frequent injuries in these athletes, so that it is possible to implement protocols that reduce the risk of injuries. Thus, the aim of this study was to expose the history, rules, sports gestures, and the most prevalent injuries in Squash practitioners, and to propose a preventive physiotherapeutic protocol to reduce injuries and improve performance in these athletes. The search was carried out in the PubMed, SciELO and Scholar Google databases including articles referring to Squash, in the English and Portuguese language from the years 2003 to 2020, and on the website of the Brazilian Squash Confederation. The articles explored three major items referring to Squash: 1) Squash as a sport; 2) incidence of injuries; and 3) sensorimotor training, in which they explored items such as history, rules, sporting gestures specific to the
modality, more frequent injuries, and finally, the benefits of preventive treatment for these athletes. Thus, it was possible to further clarify the
Squash modality, in addition to identifying the most frequent injuries in this modality, such as rotator cuff tendinopathy and lateral
epicondylitis, and finally, a preventive physiotherapeutic protocol using training was proposed to Squash practitioners sensorimotor.