Reducing your Chance of ACL Injury
“I tore my ACL.”
Hearing those words almost hurts the ears as bad as nails on a chalkboard. It hurts worse if it has happened to you or an athlete of yours, because you know the exact pain that it entails.
If you haven’t seen the episode of Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel on Overuse Injuries in Youth Sports on HBO, I highly recommend you go and watch it if you are a parent or coach. My eyes were opened to the epidemic occurring right before us; one that is not talked about enough.
A study from the episode shows the number of ACL reconstruction on children and adolescents has spiked 5 times from 2004–2014. This dramatic increase has been linked to the professionalization of youth sports. According to the study Incidence and Trends of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction in the United States, “the number of procedures being performed among patients under the age of 20 years, and among female athletes, is also INCREASING.”
So you tell me: Are kids ready for up to 2 hours of practice a day plus games on the weekend all year long? Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem crazy to some people. Adolescent ACL surgeries, once an uncommon thing, have become very common in our society today. Something needs to change.
As strength coaches, we get to be on the preventative side of things. Our work involves recognizing how injuries can happen and working to prevent them at all costs.
Very seldom do we get asked the question, “How do you prevent injuries from happening?”
Why?
Because no one seems to care until the injury is present.
Every time we work with athletes our #1 goal is to have zero injuries. We are there for injury prevention and to build resilience for the demand of a sport. We have other goals for our athletes as well such as gains in speed, power, strength, agility, endurance, body composition, character, nutrition knowledge, mental preparation, (to name a few), but it all starts at their ability to play their sport. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “The best athlete is an available athlete.”
THE MAIN ISSUE
The main culprits of ACL tears are athletes overplaying their sport ALONG with not having a proper injury prevention program in place. ACL injuries have not decreased despite the substantial evidence documenting the truth and benefit of prevention programs. This is because athletes/parents of athletes are choosing not to engage in the effort of prevention.
Now stay with me here.
Many parents, and even sometimes coaches, see “injury prevention program” and think “that’s just rehab. I want my kids getting pushed and trained to be an athlete.” But here is what they aren’t realizing, you CAN do both at the same time. Performance Course specializes in doing just that. Below you will read in detail exactly how we do that by focusing on landing, lower body strength, and change of direction movements along with deceleration.
LANDING
Knowing how to land properly is beneficial in every sport because it significantly reduces the likelihood of a major injury. ACL tears typically occur when there is a sudden change in direction, or a pivot against a locked knee. Before we have our athletes jump or land, we show them how to get into Universal Athletic Position (UAP). In this position, the knees are soft but there is strong tracking over the toes, hips are pulled back, and the back is flat. UAP is the position all of our athletes react and land in.
When we teach any kind of jump, we stress how important it is to land correctly in UAP. An athlete’s ability to land properly is crucial to reducing injuries of any kind, especially ACL. We teach our athletes to land with soft but strong knees tracking over the toes. This helps them avoid any knee valgus or landing with locked knees, and promotes knee control.
According to the study Evidence-Based Best-Practice Guidelines for Preventing Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries in Young Female Athletes “landing stabilization exercises directly focus on optimizing muscle activation to ensure proper technique and alignment (landing softly and knee-over-toe positioning).” We teach our athletes how to safely jump and land out of a variety of different positions they may encounter in their sports. Below are a few examples.
We start at the most basic positions and slowly progress the athlete to ensure maximum benefit.
LOWER BODY STRENGTH
In the weight room, we incorporate a variety of lower body lifts that enable an athlete to develop lower body strength. There are a lot of definitions for the word strength, but when it comes to describing athletic development, my favorite is, “The capacity of an object or substance to withstand great force or pressure.”
These constant forces and pressures acting on an athlete during their sport can potentially put them out of position, causing injury. Correct technique in the weight room can prevent this. Properly performed exercises that engage hip and knee muscles, (such as glute-ham raises, deadlifts, squats, and lunges), protect the ACL by limiting hip internal rotation and adduction motions, both of which contribute to bad knee alignment. Below are just a few of the movements mentioned above that we incorporate during training.
CHANGE OF DIRECTION & DECELERATION
There has always been great emphasis on an athlete’s ability to accelerate, but more often than not, their ability to decelerate is often overlooked. Deceleration, to put it simply, is the ability of an athlete to slow themselves down. We incorporate a variety of change of direction and deceleration movements to teach athletes’ bodies how to move correctly from top speeds to complete stops.
Imagine being in a Ferrari going full speed with no brakes. You might as well get ready to send that car to the shop. It’s the same with your body. Teaching an athlete how to slow down in UAP before they change directions is so important when it comes to protecting their bodies. Here are a few drills we do.
INVEST IN YOURSELF
ACL tears are the most costly injury in landing and cutting sports. 80% of all cases result in surgery and extensive rehabilitation. Rehabilitation averages around nine months, which racks up a bill of roughly $38,000. Even after rehabilitation, you still run the risk of not ever regaining your previous athletic ability or range of motion. It is rare to see athletes return and perform on the same level as they were before they were injured.
Will we ever be able to fully prevent ACL tears? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is no, we can’t. However, we can do many things to reduce the likelihood that it will happen.
All of the techniques, drills and movements mentioned previously are a part of a program that is committed to making the best athletes while reducing the likelihood of injury. Athletes, invest in a program that will keep you in the game.
