It is every sports person’s worst nightmare. An injury that for has such a diabolical effect on the body and a sporting career.
The ACL, or anterior cruciate ligament. It has taken down some of the world’s best; recovery is brutal, both physically and mentally.
In the past couple of years, it seems the dreaded ACL tear or rupture has claimed more victims than ever; but why now? Are our playing surfaces not up to scratch? Is it pressure that athletes are putting on their body?
While the answer isn’t clear, an ACL injury doesn’t seem to discriminate.
Our athletes in every sport are more elite than ever, they play with more force and intensity. With all sports developing greatly, perhaps the ACL conundrum is that player conditioning has not developed with them.
Player conditioning was questioned in the new women’s AFL competition with the league’s boss suggesting that ACL injuries will reduce with better preparation in conditioning. “It is a concern, but I think the context is the step up and the short period of conditioning to do that,” he said, of the number of ACL injuries suffered in the inaugural season.
The latest ACL injury was to Kim Green from the Suncorp Super Netball team the Giants. She is one of many of our elite netballers that have been taken down with this injury in the past two years.
Shannon Eagland, Tegan Philip, Cody Lange just to name a few. But off the floorboards and onto the grass you have NRL athletes Greg Inglis, Matt Scott, the A-League’s Fernando Brandan, the AFL’s Colin Garland and Kate Shehan and even looking to America the NBA, NFL and NHL are all currently dealing with players suffering with ACL injuries.
While one could argue that netballers and basketballers are more prone to ACL injuries, as well as the proven fact that women are nine times more likely to suffer an ACL injury then men, why hasn’t conditioning improved to combat this?
I’ll admit that you won’t completely eradicate injury from sport. Accidents will always happen, but for an injury that is so serious, with lengthy recovery times and most of the time needs surgical repair. Can more be done?
In researching for this article, it was suggested that the commonality of ACL injuries can be explained back to human evolution. One piece of information suggested that homo sapiens never fully completed our adaptation to bipedalism, meaning our bodies were not evolved to handle the stress that we put on them through sport.
We have no control over changes to human evolution in the past. It’s now up to us to see what we can do in the future to strengthen, condition and prepare our bodies and hopefully prevent injury.
Rellum
Roar Guru
I have had the good old ACL, supposedly I spent a good portion of my life getting around with a torn one without knowing it. I do wonder if we don't spend enough time on stretching and strengthening for more extreme movements. There was a study recently I remember reading suggesting ACL's were becoming more common because as kids 20 somethings and younger spent less time out doors running and climbing on uneven terrain , training there body's to deal with stress from all angles.
jeff dustby
Guest
nice read, its amazing the number of ACL injuries in Netball. i assume its down to the harsh stopping
Ben of Phnom Penh
Roar Guru
Having had the joy of tearing an ACL I can confirm it isn't a lot of fun. The pace of modern sport is resulting in more collisions occurring whilst legs are stretched, limiting the flexibility to absorb a sudden sideways movement such as that resulting from a collision or an immediate, unplanned, change in direction. Conditioning is part of the answer, however some sports need to also look at rule changes that will reduce such injuries, much in the same way rule changes have been made to reduce incidences of head injuries.
Chris
Guest
Good article Heather. I coach representative girls football in Sydney and I've seen way too many ACL injuries. I currently have a goalkeeper doing the rehab after she ruptured the ACL in a game. I always tell the girls to build up their quads as they are not as developed as the men's. The quads provide protection to the ligaments and maybe this is why it's so much more prevalent in womens than in mens.