Written by It’s no surprise that your leg strength is directly related to the stability of the knee. The problem is finding out what the more important aspects of leg training are in order to help prevent knee injuries in youth or in athletes later in their career.
There are several studies that have looked at the mechanisms of ACL injuries and the common issues that surround those affected by it. Most of the time we’re looking at soccer athletes since it is one of the most commonly played sports in the world. What many of these studies found was that during and after playing a match there is a significant reduction in leg tightness and neuromuscular control especially in the medial hamstrings, which means these muscles not firing appropriately can lead to knee injuries during quick lateral movements. Of course, there are also several factors that are non-modifiable which makes the risk of injury higher, but not impossible to stay injury-free.
If you’re an athlete, starting a training program that pays particular attention to the hamstrings will go a long way to helping reduce the instances of injury as well as improving fatigue resistance and ground reaction force. When making your program or a program for a soccer athlete, try to include movements that:
- Recruit the hamstrings in knee flexion, paying attention to foot position in order to improve medial hamstrings recruitment.
- Recruit the hamstrings in hip extension/flexion, paying attention to improving the time-to-fatigue and building strength in a stretched position.
- Recruit the hamstrings in force absorption and rate-of-force production on impact.
There is also a need for trunk stability and proprioception work as well, so keep that in mind when building programs for injury prevention.
James
References:
Alentorn-Geli, Eduard, et al. “Prevention of non-contact anterior cruciate ligament injuries in soccer players. Part 1: Mechanisms of injury and underlying risk factors.” Knee surgery, sports traumatology, arthroscopy 17.7 (2009): 705-729.
Fearghal P. Behan, Scott Willis, Matt T.G. Pain and Jonathan P. Folland, Effects of football simulated fatigue on neuromuscular function and whole‐body response to disturbances in balance, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, , (2018).
Waldén, Markus, et al. “Prevention of acute knee injuries in adolescent female football players: cluster randomised controlled trial.” Bmj 344 (2012): e3042.
