What They Did:
Researchers went back and did a large review of the injury rates for knee injuries in high school athletes. They broke down the injury rates, injury rates per exposure and what were the most prevalent sports for these injuries to occur.
What They Found:
Researchers found overall that males suffer more knee injuries and these occur in the high risk sports of soccer, football, basketball, lacrosse, etc. They also found that girls have a much higher injury rate per exposure (overall less injury but they occur more frequently). These injuries were highest in soccer, basketball and lacrosse.
What It All Means:
This isn't ground breaking news to anyone in the sports medicine world or anyone that follows some of the sports medicine news in general but we thought it was important to share a couple important points. While not all of these ACL injuries would be preventable (hard to stop someone pushing you or falling into your leg) but a majority of them might be.
"If its not pathologic or traumatic, it's preventable."- Kelly Starrett
We believe in this quote and think posture/position are the key to helping prevent your body from suffering this injury. Training these positions and how to react in them is a huge key to prevent not only significant knee injury but also from the general aches and pains. There are plenty of programs out there that you could spend significant money on to do ACL prevention. We believe that good training and working on squat techniques, landing mechanics and training to keep your hips strong in external rotation is all the ACL prevention needed.
We also wanted to do into a little bit how keeping your hips strong in external rotation can help prevent your ACL from tearing.
The picture to the left shows the ACL/PCL bundle (on the right leg). In order to illustrate how this bundle works do the following: To mimic this cross your middle finger over your index finger. If you were to internally rotate your arm (i.e. leg) but turning your hands in your fingers come apart. This is what happens when you land in valgus/adduction. Now, reset and externally rotate by rotating your hand outwards and your fingers lock down tighter. This is what our goal is when you squat, jump, land and everything else athletic. It's that simple yet that important.
Source: Sport-Specific Yearly Risk and Incidence of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Tears in High School Athletes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
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