What is SWABA? Strong Women are Better Athletes, or SWABA for short, is a blog-site created to bring young female athletes and their families the news and research they need to stay healthy and be competitive in their sport. Focused on ACL injury etiology and prevention, SWABA hopes to bring ACL injury awareness to a nation-wide level to help train better athletes and keep them healthy.
Contact Questions? Comments?
kaleenee [at] gmail dot com
Site Button Want to link to SWABA on your blog or website? Grab this!
|
I just read this from a blog I found in Google news search:
Since an ACL tear is often caused by a twisting of the knee, it would be a good idea to wear some sort of compression sleeve on your knee to reduce strain. This is especially true if you’re starting to notice a little bit of pain in your knee even if you haven’t been injured. Any pain is a sign of weakness that needs to be supported so no further damage is done.
WHAT??!?! NO! If you have been given advice like this, please, please, please, be careful. Knee braces of any kind have not been shown to prevent an ACL injury, and even if they did, wearing a knee brace to compensate for proper athletic conditioning is just plain lazy, not to mention, dangerous.
Knee braces are often prescribed after ACL reconstruction. They do a great job of controlling the range of motion (ROM) of the knee before the knee is healed. Others can help prevent the tibia from sliding forward, putting strain on the ACL. But they are rarely prescribed as a prevention method, only a TREATMENT method. Think about it: If knee braces could prevent ACL injuries, which cost tens of thousands of dollars and put an athlete on the sideline for a year, wouldn’t everyone wear one? Wouldn’t all doctors and trainers recommend them?
Compression knee braces have been shown to help with proprioception (up to 25%), which is the sense of where your body parts are positioned relative to other body parts. It has also been shown that athletes with ACL damage often have less or delayed sense of position in their knee joint, and wearing a compression sleeve helps improve this deficiency for the first two-months after surgery. However, there have been no studies that correlate knee braces to decreased incidence of ACL injury, and most scientists recommend using sport-specific training to strengthen the knee rather than rely on a brace as a ‘crutch.’
…who want to relate to something they know, here’s a site that talks about ACL injuries in football. Most of them are contact (versus non-contact in young female athletes), but it is a good primer for those looking to understand their daughters/players a little better through a sport that they watch consistently.
Keep in mind, professional athletes recover so quickly AND so well because they have trainers on hand 24/7. Young athletes rarely do so well because physical therapy is so infrequent and training is not always appropriate for rehabilitating an ACL injury.
Athlete suffers ACL injury
Check out this video of a young basketball player tearing her ACL during a game.
Click here to check out the Sportsmetrics program YouTube page. Their awesome media includes a great introduction video to the Sportsmetrics program, testimonials from patients, coaches, and athletes, and also some sweet news clippings and injury information.
Check out their feature on Fox 19, a local Cincinnati channel. It is another great introduction to ACL injury prevention, however it doesn’t mention the other benefit to this program– significant athletic performance enhancement! It is important to remember that these programs aren’t just to prevent injuries like an ACL tear, but they also help girls learn to move more efficiently and strengthen muscles that help them become more agile, faster, and stronger.
Sportsmetrics has just released a simpler, quicker, FREE ACL injury prevention AND performance enhancing warm-up. Download the PDF file, here. This program, called the Warm-up for Injury Prevention and Performance, or WIPP for short, incorporates the four components of the original Sportsmetrics program into a 20-minute “nonstop muscle and joint preparation, plyometrics, strength and flexibility.” Awesome!
I’ve found the Sportsmetrics website to be full of great resources. In fact, it’s a little overwhelming seeing all the options and information they have. But rest assured, I’ll write more about that, later!
Calling all soccer lovers! Check out this awesome blog called The Science of Soccer Online. Talk about awesome! I’d like to think that they are great inspiration for Strong Women are Better Athletes in the sense that they bring their subject-related research to the masses. I don’t know about you, but research papers are mostly really tedious and boring. So, I want to try to do the work for you!
Anyway, I’d like to call attention to one of their posts relating to ACL injuries: Cutting-Edge Research: ACL Injury Prevention – Neuromuscular Training. This post focuses first covers the disparity of ACL injury occurrences in males vs. females, and then discusses how neuromuscular training can help. I highly recommend it as a great introduction for any coach looking to get a basic understanding of what ACL injuries are, why they occur, and how they can be prevented.
And, you will be happy to note, the PEP program that they talk about “can be easily incorporated as part of regular training and does not require the use of special equipment.” The results of this study showed a 70% decrease in ACL injury occurrence! 70%! That’s awesome! Not to mention the agility and strength improvements, too.
ClubGas: ACL Injury
“Today on ClubhouseGas, another reason girls have to be tougher than boys.”
In this video, ClubHouseGas interviews Dr. David Marshall, an orthopedic surgeon, regarding ACL injuries in girls vs. boys.
I’d like to highlight one very important thing: Dr. Marshall points out that the quadriceps are ‘mirror muscles,’ meaning when you work your quads you can see their definition in the mirror. This causes athletes to focus more on those muscles they (and others) can see, rather than focusing on strengthening their entire lower body so it can work properly together. This may be one of the reasons that hamstrings are often left out of the workout regime and are therefore weaker in comparison to the quadriceps- because you can’t see their definition in the mirror as easily.
Rebecca Lobo ACL Injury
ACL injuries caught on tape always make me cringe. Not because they look painful, necessarily, but because it makes me remember the pain of my own. Anyway, here’s a video of Rebecca Lobo (formerly of the WNBA’s New York Liberty) in 1999 when she tore her ACL. She was chosen for the All-Star team that season, but because of her injury couldn’t participate. Bummer.
This is one of those instances that shows how the valgus, or knock-kneed landings are so dangerous. It is very important for any coach or parent (or player, for that matter) to practice landing jumps and cutting/turning while avoiding the knock-kneed position. It takes focus and practice, but eventually it becomes habit.
Dr. Jeff Cubos, a Chiropractor and author of the “evidence-informed sports health” blog, does a comprehensive review of the current status of ACL injury research, here. The short post does a great job summarizing the main points in the full-length research article entitled “Non-contact ACL injuries in female athletes: an International Olympic Committee current concepts statement” (published in 2008). The points I’d like to highlight include:
- “As a whole, ACL injuries most commonly result from non-contact mechanisms” - Why do I think this is so important? Because it means that young women who suffer this injury most likely “do it to themselves.” Not consciously or premeditated, just that something about being a woman or the way women train causes this to happen.
- “…younger female athletes are at higher risk (than aged- and sport-matched males)” – This happens to girls as early as pre-teens! And often, to the “strongest” player on the team. Why are young women more likely to suffer it? There are tons of theories, but the important thing to realize is parents and coaches need to step up and take control over their daughter’s health as most girls don’t think it can happen to them. I knew about this injury before it happened to me. But I never thought it was something I needed to worry about!
- The risk factors he mentions are the width of the intercondylar notch (the notch in the femur where the ACL rests), sex-hormones and oral contraceptives, and a higher risk during the pre-ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle. But what about things we can control? No surgeon is going to alter the width of the intercondylar notch before an injury happens. And sex hormones and menstrual cycles are something women can’t necessarily alter. The important thing to remember concerning these risk factors is that
- “Injuries most often occur when landing from a jump, cutting, or deceleration.”
- Women tend to play more upright with a greater knee extension (straighter legs) and higher quadriceps activation. If you compare a girls’ soccer game with a boy’s game, I’m sure you’ll noticed how much lower the boys’ center of gravity is. They cut, turn, and land with knees bent much more than their girl counterparts
And, a few notes on prevention programs. Most…
…Include neuromuscular and proprioception training.
…Require 4-8 weeks to work.
…are generally the most successful with the least amount of equipment.
…need to be implemented as early as possible.
…The drop jump vertical test is a good way to detect at-risk athletes. Check out four videos, here.
Thanks Dr. Cubos for a great summary!
Catfighting gets ugly
This has been all over the Internet recently: during a BYU vs. New Mexico Women’s Mountain West Conference college tournament game one New Mexico player, Elizabeth Lambert (#15), yanks another girl to the ground by her ponytail! And that’s not all, if you watch the whole video, it’s a very… nasty… game for Lambert. Or should I say, for the opposing team members who have to challenge her?
Every team has that one player who is more aggressive, sometimes downright nasty, who always complains to the ref that it wasn’t her fault and who you don’t always enjoy challenging even in practice. I had one or two on my team growing up, and I had one on my college powder-puff team. Most of the time, we just roll our eyes and move on. That’s just how she is and only sometimes can a referee handle it and see it.
But where is the line? When should young girls be spoken to? Disciplined? And by whom? Elbows, tripping, shirt pulling, and other little dirty tricks are all over any sport, just as Julie Foudy acknowledges in her short commentary on this video. Aren’t sports supposed to teach girls to be competitive, self-confident, self-challenging, good sports, teammates, and otherwise upstanding citizens in society? (Not to mention have fun, which was a huge thing for me!) On one Youtube video of the incident, someone commented: “whatever all of you are sayin omg shes crazy pfft not really the girl was retailiating AFTER the other girl had elbowed her dont think she was out of line at all.” Seriously? It’s okay to retaliate? I’m sure there are TONS of opinions on this, but to me, it is absolutely unacceptable. Retaliation should come in the form of not letting the “first move” phase you, or scoring, or taking the ball away. Other comments blame the referees for not noticing or reprimanding her other offenses. So what’s going on, here?
As a result of this attention, Lambert’s coach, suspended her indefinitely, saying “Liz is a quality student-athlete, but in this instance her actions clearly crossed the line of fair play and good sportsmanship.” Duh! But would she still have seen punishment if it hadn’t garnered so much attention in the media? I have heard of many coaches who encourage this kind of play if a player can get away with it. Lambert makes comments like, “My actions were uncalled for,” and, “I let my emotions get the best of me in a heated situation.” But is this even an excuse? Was the whole game a heated situation? When we get frustrated, on or off the field, is it appropriate to take it out on others?
I know men’s sports have dirty plays, crotch shots, and appalling moments, too, and honestly I think the reason this clip has been getting so much attention is because she pulled her down by her ponytail. Something very feminine. How come dirty plays that guys do aren’t as sensationalized as this? Is it because women aren’t supposed to be dirty players?
|
|
The information provided on this site is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be used for medical diagnosis, medical treatment or to replace evaluation by a health practitioner.
|