Movement Competency as a Key Link to Injury-Prevention Behavior and Mental Toughness in Semarang's High School Martial Arts Athletes

Movement competency supports efficient performance and safer sport participation by enabling controlled, symmetrical, and well-coordinated movement. Although the Movement Competency Screen (MCS) is widely used to evaluate fundamental movement patterns, evidence linking movement quality with psychological capacities such as mental toughness remains limited among adolescent martial arts athletes. This study examined the associations among movement competency, injury-prevention behavior, and mental toughness in 100 male high school Pencak Silat athletes in Semarang, Indonesia. Athletes completed the MCS, the Injury Prevention Scale (IPS), and the Sports Mental Toughness Questionnaire (SMTQ). The IPS demonstrated strong content validity (Aiken's V = 0.90) and good internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.88). Two trained raters scored the MCS following calibration training, showing excellent inter-rater agreement (ICC = 0.92). Normality assumptions were supported (Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Shapiro–Wilk, p > 0.05); therefore, Pearson's product–moment correlations were applied. Movement competency was positively associated with injury-prevention behavior (r = 0.705, p < 0.001) and mental toughness (r = 0.690, p < 0.001), and injury-prevention behavior was strongly associated with mental toughness (r = 0.830, p < 0.001). Subscale analyses showed that movement competency correlated with IPS domains (warm-up: r = 0.41; protective equipment: r = 0.29; recovery: r = 0.38) and SMTQ domains (confidence: r = 0.47; constancy: r = 0.35; control: r = 0.33), while the strongest subscale association occurred between warm-up consistency and constancy (r = 0.48, p < 0.001). These findings indicate that higher movement competency tends to co-occur with stronger preventive routines and greater mental toughness in school-based Pencak Silat programs. Given the cross-sectional correlational design, the results should be interpreted as associational rather than causal.