5 Most Common Skateboarding Injuries

What are the most common skateboarding injuries?

1. Broken Wrist
2. Ankle Injuries
3. Face Injuries
4. Long Bone Fractures
5. Head Injuries

Skateboarding can be an extremely dangerous sport, especially for beginners, so people should take the proper safety precautions, such as wearing a helmet and other pads, to protect themselves from severe injuries while taking a hard slam. Also, skateboarding to your own ability, and not trying to impress others, also can prevent these injuries.

The most common form of injuries are sprains, fractures, bruises, and abrasions, but different parts of the body get injured more than others. Here is a list of the most common skateboarding injuries.

1. Broken Wrist

By far, the most common injury in skateboarding is a broken wrist. When people start to skateboard, it is common to not have your balance while riding your board. This balance, and confidence to ride your board, is built over time, so it is inevitable for someone to fall until they build a strong foundation. Even then, professional skateboarders still fall.

As a result of people losing their balance, their first instinct is to stick their arms out to break their fall. This is what leads to broken wrists and other wrist injuries.

Injuries to the extremities, which includes broken wrists, makes up 74% of all skateboarding injuries. Within this category, broken wrists make up 19%.

2. Ankle Injuries

Ankle injuries are also extremely common. These injuries can range from ankle sprains and even broken ankles. They make up 11% of skateboarding injuries.

You can injure your ankle in multiple ways. A common way is when your foot slips off your board after trying a trick, and a lot of pressure goes into the outside of your foot, causing it to roll in an awkward way.

Another common way of injuring your ankle is off of impact. Some skateboarders like to jump down stairs or elevated areas. This can take a toll on their ankles, and lead to injuries such as sprains or fractures.

3. Face Injuries

Face injuries are third on our list. Common injuries to the face include broken noses and jaws, cuts and scrapes.,

Unfortunately, accidents like these do occur. When you take a hard slam, sometimes the force that sends you to the ground is so hard and unexpected that you injure your face.

Another common way to injure your face is with your own board. Sometimes when you are trying to land tricks, the board flies up and can hit you in the face. To prevent this, try not to stomp hard on your board.

4. Long Bone Fractures

Long bone fractures can be rare but do pop up from time to time. The body has five sets of long bones: The femur (thigh bone) fibula and tibia (lower leg and shin bones), humerus (upper arm) and the radius and ulna (forearm bones). 

Fracturing these bones happen through high impact trauma, and skateboarding has plenty of that. Jumping down stairs, ledges, rails or other elevated areas can make you land in awkward ways which can injure these bones.

5. Head Injuries

Head injuries, to many peoples’ surprise, is at the bottom of our list. This is because they make up 20% of all skateboarding injuries. A majority of injuries are to the extremities of the body, which make up 74%.

Severe head injuries, such as concussions, blunt trauma, skull fractures, or closed head injuries make up 3.1% of all injuries, and these can be prevented if the proper safety equipment is worn.

You can injure your head by falling hard enough to scrape, cut, or concuss yourself, and if you are not wearing a helmet. Just because it is not common does not mean it cannot happen, so wearing the proper safety equipment can prevent some injuries.