The Role of the Asian Journal of Kinesiology and Kinesiologists in Applying and Promoting Functional Injury Prevention

The Asian Journal of Kinesiology (AJK) was created under the name of “Journal of Health and Sports Medicine” when the Korean Association of Certified Exercise Professionals (KACEP) was founded in 1999, providing an academic background for KACEP’s Kinesiologists. The mission of the AJK is to develop and introduce the expertise and skills of kinesiologists and become a forum in academic communication. AJK plays a role in the development of kinesiology by encouraging publication of research papers focusing on “Strength and Conditioning”, “Clinical Exercise Education”, “Athletic Training and Sport Injury Rehabilitation”, and “Policy for Health, P.E., and Sport”. Additionally, it plays a key role in providing the basic data necessary for establishing strategies for expanding employment through expanding the kinesiologist’s scope of work and enhancing their vocational competencies [1]. Among the research fields published in AJK, I would like to introduce the new focus: “Functional Injury Prevention” related to “Exercise Training and Sport Injuries Rehabilitation”. A long time ago, the research paradigm shifted from developing rehabilitation exercise programs for rapid functional recovery from sports injuries to sports injury prevention (SIP) [2] that the kinesiologists are actually applying in the field. Currently, sports rehabilitation for functional recovery has already become a basic and essential subject for kinesiologists to learn. From the late 1990s to the 2000s, the importance of SIP has been on the rise. Recently, “Functional Injury Prevention” (FIP) was introduced in AJK, which combines “Functional Training” with SIP. It is attracting attention as an athletic training program [3]. In addition, FIP-related studies are actively conducted by kinesiologists and some researchers. As a new paradigm, to use and establish the FIP program in the sports scene, scientific evidence and developmental implementation strategies are needed. To this end, a FIP program that reflects specific elements for each exercise event must be established. Importantly, one of the key elements of such a FIP program is to improve neuromuscu-