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Introduction: This study aimed to clarify the relationship between psychological factors (goal orientation and desire for approval from others) and the severity of sports injuries experienced by young Japanese athletes. Methods: A total of 560 young Japanese athletes (328 males and 232 females) aged 18–24 years completed an online survey in 2022–2023. A web questionnaire was used to investigate participants’ task and ego orientations, desire for approval from others (e.g., coaches and friends/families), and history of injury. The samples were then split into 3 groups on the basis of the rest duration due to the injury: noninjury group (0 days), mild-to-moderate injury group (1–27 days), and severe injury group (>28 days). Spearman's test examined a correlation between task and ego orientation scores among all samples. The Mann–Whitney U test was used to compare the scores between the severe injury and noninjury groups. Result: A significant positive correlation was found between task and ego orientation scores from all samples (ρ=0.27, p4 weeks to return to sports. The goal orientation profiles should be interpreted with caution. Future research should examine contextual effects such as the perceived motivational climate, in addition to the goal orientation profiles.

This short-term survey examined the effect of body part pain on subjective and objective handball performance in Japanese male national handball athletes. Fourteen athletes participated in this study. Assessments of pain in 10 body parts and subjective performance (concentration and satisfaction with body movement) were performed using a visual analog scale from 0 to 10 over four consecutive training days. Monitoring of heart rate and body acceleration during training was also performed to quantify the objective performance. Path analysis and linear mixed modeling were employed to assess the relationship between body pain scores and subjective/objective handball performance. Over the four days of the study period, the body part in which most athletes reported pain was the dominant shoulder (6 of 14 athletes), followed by the dominant knee, the dominant elbow, the dominant ankle joint, and the non-dominant ankle joint (3 of 14 athletes). The path analysis revealed that pain in the dominant elbow negatively correlated with concentration (standardized path coefficient = −0.644, p = 0.00), which was associated with satisfaction with body movement (standardized path coefficient = 0.704, p = 0.00). No significant effect of body pain on objective performance (heart rate and body acceleration) was found among the athletes in this study. The results suggested that the elite athletes were practicing with pain. Even if pain does not physically affect athletes’ objective performance, pain in the upper extremities, associated with the primary handball movement of throwing, may reduce the quality of practice by lowering athletes’ subjective performance.