The roles of experience, participation rates and judgment in the injury rates of weekend warriors
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* Jon Heshka
* Jeff Jackson

We challenge the conclusion in the article, “The ‘weekend warrior’: Fact or fiction for major trauma?” that adventure sport recreationists are at a higher risk of injury on weekends due to the compression of exercise, its resultant fatigue, and a lack of experience. It is submitted that the causes for the discrepancy in injury rates between weekdays and weekends can be attributed to increased participation rates on weekends and that incidents occur for a myriad of reasons, including risks inherent to the activities and errors in judgment, irrespective of experience level.

We welcomed the article for its interesting insight into the number of recreationists injured in various adventure sport activities on weekdays compared with weekends, but we were troubled by its neglect to account for errors in judgment and the role of participation rates in these skewed injury rates.

Notwithstanding its usage in the medical literature,1 the term “weekend warrior” is pejorative and is generally not complementary to those who are on its receiving end. It implies amateurishness, irresponsibility and recklessness, traits not necessarily associated with those who recreate on weekends. These stereotypes are unfortunately perpetuated by the speculation that weekend warriors’ higher rates of severe injury is caused by prolonged exercise beyond one’s inherent exercise tolerance or a lack of experience.2

It is accepted that injury rates are affected by participant skill level, but it is not as simple as saying greater experience leads to fewer injuries. In its position statement on skiing and snowboarding injury prevention, the Canadian Pediatric Society properly noted that, “while injury rates have been shown to be lower for expert skiers and snowboarders compared with beginners, experts may be at risk for more severe injuries.”3 The American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine has similarly noted that beginner skiers have 3 times the injury rate of experts, but that their injuries are less severe than those of expert skiers, who sustain less frequent but more severe injuries.4 While the above figures relate to skiing and snowboarding, which were excluded in the study, in light of the median injury severity score being 17 on weekdays and 19 on weekends, it ought to have been the other way around due to the weekend warriors’ apparent lack of experience.

Many of the activities cited involve significant environmental hazards. Within the data presented, many of the injuries could be the result of the inherent risks of the activity. An annual summary of data regarding accidents in North American mountaineering, rock climbing, and mountain hiking found the immediate causes of the compiled accidents to be (in order) falls/slips, falling objects (i.e., rock), exceeding abilities, illness, being stranded, avalanche and anchor failure.5 Several of these causes (i.e., falling objects, avalanche) are inherent risks of mountain travel and are unrelated to physical fitness. The remaining causes align with related work on human error in high risk sport, which finds behavioural factors, such as errors in judgment, excessive speed and lack of preparation, contribute to accidents.6 Work on human factors identifies the complex social environment where one works or plays, with peer pressure, social proof and social identification all clouding one’s judgment of one’s ability.7 The human error field has long recognized that there are many contributing factors to any single event.8 Roberts and colleagues’ conclusion regarding physical fitness is overly simplistic. We are also concerned that the conclusion that weekend warriors may be at an increased risk of injury due to the compression of weekly exercise volume into a weekend is not supported by the evidence.

The weekend warrior study did not take into account the differences in activity usage on weekdays versus weekends. While it showed that 54.8% of injuries were sustained on the weekend, it is problematic to frame the extent to which this figure is actually significant. For example, in Canada’s climbing mecca of Squamish, BC, there are 53% more climbers on each day of the weekend than on any given weekday.9 It may simply be that the reason there are more weekend warriors injured on weekends is that there are more weekend warriors recreating on weekends.

While we agree with the conclusion that weekend warriors should be aware of the risk of severe injury associated with intense and sustained weekend recreation, we believe that the reason for the increased incidence of injuries on weekends has less to do with the compression of exercise and more to do with there being more recreationists on the weekends. There should be more research into the root causes, including skill level, decision-making in uncertainty and the proper accounting of participation rates on different days of the week, before conclusions are made about weekend warriors being at a higher risk of injury.

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8.  Reason J.Understanding adverse events: human factors.Qual Health Care 1995;4:80–9.
    
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9.  Morris RP (2007) The contribution of outdoor-based recreation opportunities to local economies: the economic impacts of rock climbing to the squamish region [thesis] (Simon Fraser University).