ACL Injuries Are The Most
Common Serious Injury In Soccer

What Is an ACL Injury? The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is the set of  ligaments that provide for the stability to the knee joint. These ligaments attach bone to bone and help control excessive motion of the knee joint and keeps the lower leg from sliding too far forward.  Of all the ligaments that make up parts of the of the knee joint, a torn ACL is the most common injury.  The majority of ACL repairs that occur each year are done on young athletes (under age 25) and the most common among those are female athletes.

What Causes an ACL Injury?
Sports that involve sudden changes of direction, such as football, and soccer are the sports that have the highest rate of ACL injuries.  Most are non-contact injuries that occur during sudden twisting motion (for example, when the feet are planted one way and the knees are turned another way) or when landing from a jump.  I personally know about the jumping injury.  I tore my ACL when being late for a college date I made a leap off "both" steps of the library portico!  Disaster!  For the date as well...

Are Women At Higher Risk of ACL Injury?
Factors contributing to ACL injuries include ground hardness, grass type and cleat type. But one of the other major findings of a recent study is that women are nearly three times more likely to have ACL injuries than men. And some stats indicate that a female soccer player is eight times more likely to injure her ACL than a male soccer player.  

Findings have shown a difference in muscular control in women when landing jumps. Women appear to have less hip and knee flexion than men which may be the primary reason for this statistic.

How Do I Prevent an ACL Injury?
Athletes can greatly reduce their risk of a debilitating ACL injury by performing training drills that require:

• Balance
• Power
• Agility

Adding exercises such as jumping and balance drills helps improve muscular conditioning and reactions and research shows a significant decrease in the risk of an ACL injury. Many team physicians now routinely recommend an ACL conditioning program, especially for their female players.

The Santa Monica ACL Prevention Project developed an ACL injury prevention program specifically designed for female soccer players. This 15-minute conditioning program incorporates balance, agility and performance drills into the warm up phase of play.

ACL Injury Prevention Program should be performed at least 2-3 times per week during the season and includes: 

1. Warm Up  
2. Stretching
3. Strengthening
4. Plyometrics
5. Agility Drills
6. Cool Down

Follow this link to access the entire ACL injury prevention program as outlined above. It's free and it's great advice.

The Bottom Line for ACL Injury Prevention
For both men and women who participate in start and stop sports, appropriate skills training such as those in the above program, may be the key to staying injury free.

_{Source: Santa Monica Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Research Foundation, ACL Injury Prevention Project.}