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Training exposure, recovery, and injury incidence among course-based and competitive university Wushu Taolu practitioners: a 12-week prospective cohort study

Qi Liu, Jiannan Yang · Frontiers in Public Health · 2026

This 12-week study compared injury rates between competitive university Wushu Taolu athletes and casual course-based practitioners in China, tracking 255 total participants across multiple waves. Competitive athletes had a higher overall injury rate (68.9% vs. 20.0%), but when adjusted for their higher training volume, the injury rate per training hour was similar between groups, and a history of prior injury was a strong predictor of future injury.
Takeaway: Monitor athletes with recent injury history closely, as they face substantially elevated risk of reinjury.
Abstract (source)

Background: Whether the large training-exposure difference between course-based and competitive-team university Wushu Taolu practitioners in China translates into a correspondingly different musculoskeletal health burden has not been well characterized prospectively.

Methods: In this observational, non-randomized cohort study, 255 practitioners (128 course-based, 127 university-team; mean age 20.7 ± 1.5) were followed over four waves (T0-T3) across 12 weeks, with training load, sleep, recovery, health problems, and injury recorded using recall windows matched to each variable's time-scale.

Results: < 0.001), with higher adjusted odds of injury (OR = 6.31, 95% CI 1.49-26.69). However, when injury occurrence was expressed relative to estimated training exposure, the between-group difference was much smaller: 10.56 versus 8.98 positive new-injury person-wave observations per 1,000 estimated training hours, respectively (IRR = 1.18, 95% CI 0.79-1.75). Prior injury within the preceding 12 months was strongly associated with subsequent injury (OR = 4.06, 95% CI 2.03-8.13).

Conclusion: University-team practitioners experienced a substantially greater absolute injury burden than course-based practitioners, whereas the between-group difference was much smaller when injury occurrence was expressed relative to estimated training exposure. Prior injury history was a strong marker of subsequent injury. Because group membership and training exposure were highly correlated and the study was observational, these

Findings: should not be interpreted causally.

Randomized controlled trialOpen accessRecovery & Sleep
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