“Recreational athletes often do not adhere to the principle of gradualism and are really gung ho about training. To prevent injuries in athletes, one should follow all the steps, from the timely start of the preparations and massages to resting and training,” said Zulle. Šabović added that, as a nation, we were not active enough. In fact, only 4-5 percent of Croatians are involved in some kind of a sporting activity, which is why, nowadays, we are among the top five most overweight nations in the EU. The complete opposite to all of this is Umag, the 2018 European City of Sport, a praiseworthy title awarded to the city due to its investments in promoting sports in the local community. Umag’s ATP tournament is an integral part of that success; even though it is primarily a tennis event, it also promotes many other sports. This year, the tournament’s visitors tried their hand at beach tennis, tennis on water, street tennis, running, zumba, golf, water polo, yoga, exercising in an outdoor gym, football and street workout, among other things. Several thousand people of all ages, particularly young people, participated in the many sports activities, while these Talking about Sports events featured over 25 speakers, mostly experts and athletes who educated their audiences on injury prevention, proper nutrition and mental fitness.
At this year’s final Talking about Sports event, the speakers, including Ivan Didović and Kristijan Zulle, holders of the master's degree in physiotherapy, Mišo Šabović, specialist in cardiology, cardiovascular diseases and internal medicine, and Rino Podreka, strength and conditioning coach, discussed injuries in both professional and recreational sports. They all agreed that it was necessary to work on preventing injuries, an issue that plagued recreational athletes the most.
