About 5% of boys and 15-20% of girls that play into college and beyond. The number might be even higher for girls.
me (4.5 months post surgery) and lots others. If your still playing when your 40, a good portion have had it.
Too many. Read the book Warrior Girls by Michael Sokolove. About 3/4th of the book is about ACL injuries in girls. I have become very interested in this subject as I have 2 daughters 8 years apart in age. Knock on wood we have not had an ACL injury as yet (although I tore mine in my late 30s). To me this is a devastating injury for a young female athlete because of the big chunk of time that is lost as a result. Sokolove refers to ACL injuries as "overexposure" injuries rather than "overuse". He talks about injury reports that provide the frequency of injury calculated by the numbers of occurences per thousand "athletic exposures" (practices and games). I actually think he may be slightly off here and it is per thousand hours of athletic exposures, at least that is how it is reported in other reports I have seen such as the National Institute of Health web site ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez. ) Per the NCAA's Injury Surveillance System, ACL tears for women's soccer is 0.25 per 1000 or 1 in 4000 which the NCAA considers a "rare event". However, Sokolove takes issue with this noting the number of games and practices girls play each year through their club and high school soccer participation, with seasons often overlapping, and multiple multi game tournaments and camps throughout the year. He also makes the point that prior to college the rate is probably much higher then the NCAA report as there is a spike in injuries as girls enter puberty. European studies included on the National Institute of Health web site confirm this. To illustrate his point he uses a hypothetical girls soccer team of 20 players times a conservative 200 exposures a year (which I believe should actually translate to around 400 exposure hours per year) you get the magic number of 4000. So each year the hypothetical team can expect that 1 of those 20 girls will tear her ACL (or if you use my numbers 2 of 20). Anyway, if you don't want to read the book, you can read this New York Times article also by the author: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/magazine/11Girls-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
just happened last weekend to a player i coach. 2nd player i've had in the past 3 years that has blown his acl. both of them were complete freak accidents with no contact involved, the players were just changing directions and crumpled to the ground. stupid field turf.....
Some people are prone to acl injury. There is a test to see if you are prone. When people say it just happened for no reason. Being over tired might be that reason. I have a lot of exceptional stuff on ACL prevention, and a test to see on who is susecptable to having the problem. It is going to be a the long side, but you guys might find it interesting. These are other peoples posts. This first post was made by a pretty famous Belgium national team player. He sent it in the early 1990's. ----------------- Post #1 With regard to hereditary factors, they do seem to exist, even if they might more properly fall into the "physical make-up as a result of heredity" category. The key seems to be the ability to hyper-extend joints. This would also explain why girls are more prone than guys, as they are more often able to hyper-extend joints. The knee test is simple: sit on the floor with your leg straight, and pull up on your foot. If you can lift your foot off the floor WITH the back of your knee still touching the ground, you've reached hyper-extension. This is good if you're a swimmer, but not good if you want to play soccer and avoid knee surgery. People who can hyper-extend their joints (I can get my foot a good three inches offthe floor in this exercise) must pay special attention to quad-hamstring strengthening exercises, as well as abductor-adductor exercises for lateral stability. Get 'em in the weight room, keeping weights low and repetitions high if they're younger need an experienced physical trainer to help with that to get thew right weight and reps depending on the age. Also, don't neglect training like jogging and step-climbing: some research has shown that low-level impact training can strengthen connective tissues like tendons and ligaments. Coaches should also emphasize the importance of trying to maintain a slight bent-knee position through most pivots and twists, as well as duringcontact. It's almost impossible to tear an ACL while your knee is bent, even if it's ever so slightly. A straight leg (or worse, hyper-extended) is the surest way to an ACL tear ------------------------------------------- Post #2 from other poster ACL injury prevention program in cooperation with a local PT here in the Seattle area. The program was developed by the Santa Monica ACL Prevention Project and is called the PEP (Prevent injury, Enhance Performance) Program. The PEP Program is a highly specific 15-minute training session that replaces the traditional warm-up. It was developed by a team of physicians, physical therapists, athletic trainers and coaches, and has funding support from the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles (AAF). The program's main focus is educating players on strategies to avoid injury and includes specific exercises targeting problems as identified in previous research studies. The goals of the program are to: 1) Avoid vulnerable positions 2) Increase flexibility 3) Increase strength 4) Include plyometric exercises into the training program 5) Increase proprioception though agilities The entire program can be found at <http://www.aclprevent.com/aclprevention.htm> and only requires that you document any need injuries that occur on your team. The will send you a video tape which is essential to show the proper way to do the exercises. I would also strongly recommend you contact a local PT to come out and demonstrate the exercises using the proper technique. Optimally the program should be performed at least 2-3 times per week during the season. Some of the exercises and drills we already did in our warmup, but PEP does require we do them in with far better form and attention to detail than we previously did. Whether it will actually work for us is still unknown but it is based on documented studies and at the very least has given our team an appreciation of proper technique and strengthening of the leg muscles. The exercises are on their webpage but here is an example of one that I like. However, this is only one of many exercises out of many, so you need to look at the entire program. Bridging with Hip extension Purpose: Increase hip and trunk strength and improve balance Instruction: Lying on your back with knees bent, place both feet on top of soccer ball. Lift hips off the ground so that your shoulders, hips, and knees are in a straight line. Slowly lift one foot off the ball and straighten the knee without dipping the hip down. Return foot back to the ball and repeat on the opposite leg. Repeat 30 times and rest. B. Ball toss with abdominal toss (buddy) Purpose: Increase abdominal/trunk strength Instruction: Lie on your back with hips and knees bent. Have your partner toss a soccer ball to you. Catch the ball and bring your arms overhead. Now, catapult yourself by bringing arms back toward your center as your perform an abdominal crunch and toss the ball to your partner. Wait for your partner to toss the ball again and repeat exercise 30 times. If for some reason the web link does not work or you just would rather have a fellow coach send you a copy of the program, contact me at <orlay@attbi.com> and I will send it to you. Needless to say, I have no monetary link to this program and I am sure there are other equally good programs out there (maybe better?), but this is the one we are using. ----------------------------------------- Post 3 by the same poster as #2 One other area to look at is endurance conditioning and/or player fatigue. That the girl in question was at the 2nd day of practice (fatigue from the first day?) and no one near her brought my incident to mind. I tore my ACL a few years ago skiing. It was the start of the 4th day of skiing and I was exhausted before I began (and admittedly not warmed up, just the ride up the first lift of the day). An observer might have wondered why I fell on such a gentle slop while skiing slowly at the top of the run. In soccer terms, no one was near me. Exhaustion was the key, I turned at the top of the hill without unweighting my skis my left foot did not turn and the ACL was torn. (52 year-olds should not try to keep up with 17 year-olds). Fatigue will reduce the athletes ability to effectively achieve the programs goals. Item 1 was clearly violated because I was tired. Item 2 was an issue because it was the start of the day. Item 3 fatigue does effectively reduce strength. Item 5 coordination (proprioception) was comprimised by the fatigue. I can clearly remember just before the turn not having the energy to bend my knees to begin the process of unweighting my skis, had I been either fresh or properly warmed-up, i would probably not be making this post. >Coaches, <snip> > > >The goals of the program are to: >1) Avoid vulnerable positions >2) Increase flexibility >3) Increase strength >4) Include plyometric exercises into the training program >5) Increase proprioception though agilities > >The entire program can be found at ><http://www.aclprevent.com/aclprevention.htm> and only requires that you >document any need injuries that occur on your team. http://www.aclprevent.com/aclprevention.htm
I know quite alot of ppl. I interviewed a player who had it and is now going to Villanova check it out boxofmess.com (check it out everyone)
I think it must be higher than 5% of males just because I personally know 6 players (including my son), 3 on his team alone who have suffered an ACL tear. His teammate just tore ACL, MCL, and meniscus ("unhappy triad") just running down the field....no contact, no dip in field (turf surface). It is definitely higher in females. Daughter is a gymnast and I can't tell you how many gymnasts tear their ACL's. One girl I know is on her third tear and subsequent surgery. They all come back, too! My son had a hamstring graft because our ortho felt it was best. I have heard this is not necessarily the best for a female though and the patellar tendon from the knee opposite the injury is the absolute best. Females tend to have weaker hamstrings to begin with, so you don't want to use a hamstring graft and compromise the strenth of the hamstring since it is tendon which is one of the main stabilizers of the knee which protects the ACL in the first place! My son was back to playing/practicing lightly after 4 months, but he really wasn't playing like himself again until two years post-op.
MSNBC has three recent clips on the subject which might be of interest: [ame="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#30216688"]NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams: News and videos from the evening broadcast NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams: News and videos from the evening broadcast- msnbc.com[/ame] [ame="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#30234458"]NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams: News and videos from the evening broadcast NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams: News and videos from the evening broadcast- msnbc.com[/ame] [ame="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#30210734"]NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams: News and videos from the evening broadcast NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams: News and videos from the evening broadcast- msnbc.com[/ame]
The moderators probably going to slap my wrist for embedding them, but I swear I thought I was just listing the links.