Fourteenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

The prevalence of lower backache is high among various sports athletes, especially equestrians. Backache decreases performance and negatively affects horses. However, in recent years, there have been no studies examining the relationship between equestrianism and backache in Japanese people. The aim was to investigate the causes of backache in Japanese equestrians. We believe that this study will lead to further research on the prevention of backache. The equestrian group consisted of those who practiced equestrian more than 4 times a month. The control group consisted of non-equestrians. Exclusion criteria were those under the age of 18 and those practicing para-equestrian. The items to be measured were the presence or absence of backache, information on equestrian practice, and the work status of horse management. In the analysis, we first created a cross-tabulation table. Fisher’s exact and Cocharan-Armitage trend tests was used as statistical analysis. There were 103 valid responses (equestrian group: n=62, control group: n=41). The equestrian group had significantly more backache than non-equestrians (p=.019). In the equestrian group, backache was more pronounced in those who sometimes carried heavy objects such as horse feed than those who did not (p=.031). Furthermore, there was a correlation between the number of practices per month and the presence or absence of backache, and there was a tendency to have backache as the number of practices increased (p=.0051). The study found a significantly higher prevalence of backache in equestrians. It was suggested that this was more related to horse-related work than practice.