Monday, November 7

Neuromuscular warm-up lowering lower leg injuries

"In girls' high school sports, injury rates per 1,000 athlete exposures are highest in soccer (2.36) and basketball (2.01). Knee injuries are the most common cause of permanent disability in female high school basketball players, accounting for up to 91 percent of season-ending injuries and 94 percent of injuries requiring surgery."

 
 Cynthia R. LaBella, M.D. got together a team and set out to find out that if a neuromuscular warm-up before games and practices would lower the incidence of lower leg injuries in female athletes. 1,492 girls took place in the study. 737 athletes where included in the intervention group in which the warm-up would be instituted, and 755 athletes where in the control group which had no neuromuscular warm-up.
The neuromuscular warm-up included progressive strengthening, balance, plyometric exercises (that included quick jumping exercises) and agility exercises.
According to the article, the results by Cynthia R. LaBella, M.D. and her team where as follows:
  • The control group - 96 leg injuries
  • The intervention group - 50 leg injuries
  • The control group - 13 girls with two leg injuries
  • The intervention group - 2 girls with two leg injuries
  • All the non-contact leg injuries that needed surgical intervention occurred only in the control group
  • There was a slightly (insignificantly) lower rate of acute-onset leg injury in teams that used warm-up more frequently
"Coach-led neuromuscular warm-up reduces noncontact lower extremity injuries in female high school soccer and basketball athletes from a mixed-ethnicity, predominantly low-income, urban population. These findings suggest that neuromuscular training should be routine in girls' high school soccer and basketball."

This just further proves the point of how important pre-competition warm-ups are. Not just jogging, increase your heart-rate, kind of warm ups but functional sports specific warm-ups. Nearly 1,500 athletes is a pretty good sample size so it is safe to say that neuromuscular warm-ups will decrease lower leg injuries. They will not disappear completely because this does not take into account for traumatic acute injuries.
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1 comment:

  1. Jeaninec16November 27, 2011 at 4:30 PM

    This is a very intresting article and I agree with the findings for the study. Athletes should have a dynamic workout dealing with neuromuscular control in an athlete. It is important because athletes need to warm up the muscles that they are going to use in the particular event. If the athletes just take a jog around the field for a soccer game and do not engage the muscles used for pivoting, shooting, and sprinting, then there could be a definate possibility that a knee injury could occur. It is important as athletic trainers that we inform coaches of the increased injury rate without a proper warm-up. This is the kind of information that we can show to the coaches to back up our claims of a dynamic neuromuscular workoout.

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