Diurnal variation in physical activity and musculoskeletal injury risk across sex and habitual exercise timing among physically active students

Description

Domaradzki and Koźlenia asked whether the clock time students habitually train at changes their injury risk, surveying 454 recreationally active university students. Their 2026 study classified training into morning, midday-afternoon, and evening-night habits and modeled lower-limb injury counts and occurrence against sex, body composition, load, and experience.

Injury frequency differed significantly across timing groups, with the heaviest burden among evening and night exercisers, at a significance of p 0.004 for the timing contrast. Men were injured more often than women, and higher fat mass index also raised counts, while older age within this young sample protected. The prediction model reached an AUC of 0.74 for injury occurrence. Sex and timing acted independently, with no interaction between them.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13473087