role of chronic pain and physical fitness in predicting susceptibility to musculoskeletal injuries in navy personnel

Aims: musculoskeletal injuries (mski) are known as one of the most important leading causes of loss of duty time among military personnel. a practical approach to reducing the risk of mski and related consequences seems beneficial to identify at-risk personnel. therefore, the present study aimed to determine whether chronic pain and physical fitness can predict scores of fms tests in navy personnel.instrument & methods: 125 active-duty navy personnel aged 18-38 participated in this cross‐sectional study at bandar abbas city, iran, in 2021 winter. susceptibility to mski was assessed using functional movement screening, and physical fitness was measured using 60-second push-up and sit-up, deep squat jump, and cooper’s 12-minute run tests. chronic pain intensity was evaluated using the nordic musculoskeletal questionnaire-extended and visual analog scale, respectively. a multiple linear regression model was applied to predict fms scores. findings: the mean age, height, weight, and bmi of the subjects were 28.5±8.5 years, 178.9±10.2cm, 76.2±9.5kg, and 24.7±3.3kg/m2, respectively. the sit-up (p=0.002), cooper’s test distance (p=0.001), and chronic pain index (p=0.04) predicted 83% of the variance of the fms score significantly. conclusion: sit-up number, cooper test score, and chronic pain are the predictors of musculoskeletal injuries of navy active personnel that predicate 83% of the variance of the functional movement screening test.