How Risky Is Mixed Martial Arts? Injury Rates and Patterns in Competitive Versus Recreational Athletes

The medical question

How often are MMA athletes injured in training and competition, and do recreational athletes differ from those who compete?

The Fight Medicine Research Institute uses this evidence to frame questions about injury in recreational as well as competitive MMA, including injuries in training. The injuries were self-reported from memory by volunteers, which determines which questions it can inform.

Summary

In an online survey, 112 MMA athletes reported 127 injuries over 24 months of training and competition, and the authors report that competitive athletes had more injuries, and more severe ones, than recreational athletes.

What the work reports

• In 2023 the researchers ran an anonymous online questionnaire for adult MMA athletes who had trained at least once a week over the previous 24 months. Athletes reported their hours of training and competition and any injury in that period, with its body site, type, cause, time away from the sport and medical care. An injury was any physical complaint from MMA practice or competition, whether or not it needed medical attention.
• The athletes reported 93,857 hours of MMA and 127 injuries in 75 athletes, or 1.4 injuries per 1,000 hours. 33 of the 127 injuries (26%) restricted MMA for more than four weeks, and 2 (1.6%) were classed as catastrophic, defined as causing permanent disability or death. The head and neck was the region most often affected (about 20% of affected body sites), and joint sprains were the most common injury type (21.2%).
• The authors report that non-competitive athletes had fewer injuries (p = 0.003) and fewer severe injuries (p = 0.042) than competitive athletes. 44.9% of injured athletes sought medical attention, and the median time in hospital and off work was zero days. The authors conclude that competitive athletes appear to be injured more often and more severely than non-competitive athletes.

Limits to keep in mind

• Injuries were self-reported from memory over 24 months. The authors say minor injuries were probably under-reported and severe injuries over-represented.
• 104 of the 112 participants were men, and the authors advise caution in applying the results to women.
• Participants were volunteers recruited through MMA associations, clubs, event organizers and social networks, and 79.5% trained in Austria.
• Only acute injuries were counted. The authors note that chronic and overuse injuries were not covered.

Source issues recorded

• For the difference in injury severity between non-competitive and competitive athletes, the article reports an odds ratio of 0.55 with a 95% confidence interval of 0.21 to 1.43 and p = 0.042. The interval includes 1, and the article does not explain how that fits with the p value. This record reports only that the authors describe the difference as significant.
• The Discussion gives injury rates of 1.03 per 1,000 hours for competitive athletes and 1.56 per 1,000 hours for non-competitive athletes. The abstract, Results and Conclusions say that non-competitive athletes had fewer injuries, and the per-1,000-hour figures in Tables 2 and 3 are higher for competitive athletes in most rows. This record does not use the two group rates.
• The Results text says there were no significant differences between the two groups in injury type or body part affected. Tables 2 and 3 list p values below 0.05 for several rows.

Publication status and notices

Published in Healthcare, a peer-reviewed journal. Original research article in Healthcare.

Form of this work: Version of record. The version of record is the final article as issued by its publisher.

No correction or retraction notice was found in Crossref or Europe PMC when this record was checked.

Fight Medicine Research Institute contribution

Fight Medicine Research Institute selected and catalogued this study, prepared an original research summary, verified its bibliographic details, and maintains the associated citation record.

PDF files

Article details

Relationship

External research catalogued by the Fight Medicine Research Institute. The original authors, journal and DOI are unchanged.

Published online

5 February 2026

Repository date

5 February 2026 (Europe PMC first-publication date)

Date used here

5 February 2026 (Crossref publisher deposit, online publication date)

Rights

CC BY 4.0. Open access under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY 4.0), as recorded by Europe PMC and the licence link in the source record. The summary on this page is Fight Medicine Research Institute’s own wording. No text or figure from the article is reproduced here. Licence terms.

Source check

12 November 2026, against PubMed Central full text, Crossref and Europe PMC. Checked under the direction of Casey C. Sears, Founder. An LLM was utilized as a research tool with direct human oversight.

Appraisal

The check covered bibliographic details, links, licence and notices. It is not a formal critical appraisal of the full paper.

Clinical review

None. This record is a research summary, not clinical education.

Funding and conflicts

The article states that the research received no external funding and that the authors have no conflict of interest.

Catalog

FH-066, added 12 November 2026

Cite the original work

These files cite the work by its own authors, journal and DOI. Fight Medicine Research Institute appears only in a note, as curator of this catalog page.

Lukas Groessing, Vasco Starke, Armin Runer, Friedemann Schneider, Markus Merkl, Wolfgang Zemann, et al.. How Risky Is Mixed Martial Arts? Injury Rates and Patterns in Competitive Versus Recreational Athletes. Healthcare. 2026;14(3):409. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare14030409

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