Study: Snowboarders without lessons more apt to get hurt
By Reuters
Lock your feet onto a snowboard, and you can expect to fall. But whether or not a fall results in a broken wrist or separated shoulder depends on a lot of factors — including just how you go down.
Based on information from nearly 2,000 upper extremity fractures and dislocations, researchers in Japan found that snowboarders lacking licensed instruction accounted for 9 out of every 10 injuries — the largest portion of which were to the wrist from a backward fall.
“Many snowboarders think that because the surface is made of snow, it will always be soft,” Gregg Davis, a snowboarding instructor at Breckenridge Ski and Ride School in Colorado, noted in an email to Reuters Health. “Most of the time the surface is quite hard and can lead to a strong impact on the extremities,” added Davis, who was not involved in the study.