ACL Injury Prevention in Young Athletes

Great article, really gives an all round approach to injury prevention for the ACL. TOM

I WILL TRY IT ALL. HOPEFULLY IT WILL WORK FOR ME AS WELL. THX

As a past female college basketball player, I can say this stuff really does work. Our team used to tear ACL left and right, until we got a kick butt trainer who implemented all the above and sure enough the proof was in the pudding....never again (while she was there) did our team tear and ACL and it seemed overall injuries were decreased as well.

Great article Brian. Other food for thought - some research at UWA in Perth Australia on AFL footballers has identified 2 of the big contributers to ACL ruptures are both technique based. Firstly wide foot plant on direction change and also trunk lean away on direction change to trick the tackler. They are doing more and more training now on teaching correct change in direction technique. Another factor is that more ACL's are ruptured with unanticipated movements, such as going to kick the ball, seeing a tackler out of the corner of your eye and having to cut at the last minute, exerting a valgus/internal rotation strain on the knee. To train this, they set up a runway with a light on the right and the left and a random light turns on as you are running and you have to cut towards it. Lastly, an interesting study looked at Strength vs strength/proprio combined vs proprioceptive/balance training only at ACL prevention in AFL footballers. The proprioceptive/balance group was statistically significantly the best. Do we need to do any strength training with athletes, other than specific corrective exercises such as glut med? Should we just be doing technique based training and balance work? regards, Adam Floyd Physiotherapist and Exercise Physiologist