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.
