Adding warm-ups may prevent injuries

CBC reports:

Targeted warm-ups may help reduce the risk of knee injuries in female athletes who play high school soccer and basketball.

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The study in Monday's issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine looked into neuromuscular warm-ups, which start with easy cardiovascular exercises and progress to focusing on muscles and motions used in the sports.

Girls have between a five- and eight-times-higher risk of damage to the anterior cruciate ligament or ACL— which can cause knee injury — than boys, according to the Canadian Physiotherapy Association. Click here to read more.

Women more at risk for ACL injuries

The Courier Post Online reports:

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It’s been more than a year and a half since Brianna Sandone hurt her left knee in a high school softball practice, but she remembers it like it was yesterday.

Then a junior on the softball team at Bishop Eustace Prep, Sandone had just thrown a pitch and was fielding a ball hit back to her. She stepped to her left to retrieve the ball and her knee buckled under her. The diagnosis was a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

Sandone required surgery and endured months of rehabilitation. She returned to play softball as a senior, but chose to play the outfield rather than pitch. She’s fully recovered and playing for Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. Click here to read more.

Chapel Hill working on ACL injury prevention

Chapel Hill News reports:

Kelsey Reeves knew lots of girls soccer players who had torn their anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), but she never thought it would happen to her.

She didn't think she had injured the crucial knee ligament even after she lay on the ground in pain during a Leesville Road High game last spring. There was no contact, just one misstep.

"I had never been injured," she said. "I knew anything could happen, but I never thought something like this would happen to me. Even after I was hurt, I didn't think it could be an ACL." Click here to continue reading.

Can female ACL injuries be prevented?

Penn Live reports:

Anterior Cruciate Ligament knee injuries occur four-to-six times more frequently in female athletes than in male athletes playing the same sports.

It is believed that the difference in neuromuscular control, or the way our muscles contract and react, is one of four primary factors contributing to why women are more susceptible to knee injuries than men. Other discrepancies are anatomical (men and women are structurally different), hormonal (women's hormonal makeup affects the integrity of the ligament, making it more lax), and bio-mechanical (the positions our knees get in during athletic activities).

Seventy percent of all ACL injuries occur without contact. Most ACL injuries occur at foot strike with the knee close to full extension during quick deceleration or landing maneuvers. To read more about ACL injury prevention in female athletes, click here.

New research on ACL injury prevention

The News Observer reports:

Kelsey Reeves knew lots of girls soccer players who had torn their anterior cruciate ligament. But she didn't think she had injured her own ACL as she lay on the ground in pain during a Leesville Road High game last spring. There was no contact, just one misstep.

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"I had never been injured," she said. "Even after I was hurt, I didn't think it could be an ACL."

But Reeves' injury was typical of most ACL injuries. About 70 to 80 percent of ACL injuries come without any contact to the knee and females are much more likely to injure their ACL than males, according to Darin Padua, an associate professor and director of the Sports Medicine Research Laboratory at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. To read more, click here.

Purdue expecting fewer injuries through better sports conditioning

jconline reports:

What happened to high-profile athletes during an 11-month span in 2010 remains one of those hard-to-believe periods in Purdue University athletic history.

Each of the school's marquee sports teams -- football, men's and women's basketball, and volleyball -- were affected by torn anterior cruciate ligament tears, or ACLs.

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The football team was hit the hardest, not just by ACL tears, but by a rash of other injuries. And this past week, another football player was added to the list. Click to continue.

Exciting news for ACL injury prevention

The Orlando Sentinel reports:
Because of the way they're built, girls are up to eight times more likely than boys to suffer an ACL injury to the knee. The SportsMetrics program at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children is working to lower those odds, and recently got some funding to do so.

This week Kohl's department stores donated $313,000 to Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children's Pediatric Sports Medicine Center. Some of that will go toward preventing anterior cruciate ligament injuries.

As girls hit puberty, their hips widen. The new, angled relationship of hip to knee can make the knee joint less stable. Female hormones also cause ligaments to loosen, making girls more prone to ligament tears, said Dr. Jay Albright, director of pediatric sports medicine at the hospital. Click to continue.

The six-week SportsMetrics training teaches girls jumping strategies that could help them jump higher, land more safely, achieve more balance during play and protect their ACLs. In other sports centers that have used the program, the rate of female ACL injuries drops to just twice as often as boys'. Boys benefit from the training, too, said Albright.

5 ways to prevent sports injuries

Your sports require you to have strength and skill to excel in the game. Not only do you need to hone your technique, but you also need to be proactive about injury prevention to guarantee you’ll have the opportunity to compete.  Below we’ve listed five great ways athletes can prevent sports related injuries. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it’s a great place to start.

1.      Condition – To stack the odds in your favor, it’s important to stay in shape year round. If your body is constantly in top form, you’re muscles are more likely to react in sync and your body move properly.  Your sport requires your muscles to be able to pivot and move at a moment’s notice. Conditioning prepares your body. (Source http://www.stopsportsinjuries.org/sports-injury-prevention.aspx)

2.      Hydrate – If your body does not take in the proper amount of water in relationship to your exertion, you run the risk of dehydration. Not to mention, drinking more water can actually improve your performance as well as prevent injury. Renee Melton, MS, RD, LD, director of nutrition for Sensei, a developer of online and mobile weight loss and nutrition programs states, “If you start out dehydrated, you won’t get a good workout. You’ll get dizzy, lethargic, your muscles won’t work as well, you won’t feel as sharp mentally, and you’ll get cramps sooner.” (source: http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/water-for-exercise-fitness?page=2)

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3.      Ice – Proper recovery after exercise is just as important to injury prevention as what you do before exercise. Icing sore or heavily worked muscles will help speed recovery and reduce inflammations so you can get back out there and play the game. (source: http://sweatscience.com/ice-baths-for-recovery-15-minutes-at-10-c/)

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4.      Don’t ignore pain – If your muscles and joints are sore, that’s one thing, but if you are in real pain, don’t play through. Pain is your body telling you that something is wrong. A twinged muscle can heal in a couple of days, but ignoring that twinged muscle could lead to a pull or a tear and derail a season.

5.      Wear technical compression gear – Aspaeris designed their shorts specifically to help the female athlete prevent ACL injuries and tears by guiding the wearing into proper posture. It is also a compression short that will help your muscle recovery post exercise.  (source: aspaerispivotshorts.com)

Stay in the game.

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Injuring your ACL stinks, but you’re in good company. Everyday another 548 people suffer too. Are you injured? Have you been injured? I’d love to hear your story. Email me at Aspaeris@gmail.com and we’ll feature you on our blog!