This week’s tip is for those parents of female high school athletes. Did you know that, as girls have begun playing VERY competitive sports in high school and college, over the last 15-20 years that they are now 5 times more likely to sustain a knee injury than the boys? In some cases, these injuries are to the ACL ligament due to the instability of the knee “buckling inward” and require a surgical procedure to graft an artificial, pig, cadaver or even their own tendons in their knee. This procedure is needed in order to prevent the slack in the knee joint when standing, walking and to allow return to sports.
The reason for this higher incidence of injury is due to the fact that girl’s strength and ability to use the muscles, primarily the hamstrings in the back of the leg, does not increase in proportion to their age. In other words, girl’s ability to stabilize their knee stops progressing after 13 or 14 years old, in spite of the fact that they continue to gain more weight or play at more aggressive levels. This accounts for the occasional professional female athlete blowing their ACL’s on the court or field with nearly no contact or severe mechanism for the injury.
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This instability can be identified and addressed clinically through a series of exercises and activities to get the hamstring muscle to fire more quickly to react when a stress is placed on the knee during sports. If you have a young athlete and you’d like us to provide a free screen for your child give us a call. We’ll take about 15 minutes to do a couple activities to let you know whether your athlete is in the ‘at risk’ category and what to do about it.
This DailyRidge Health Tip is brought to you from Core Rehabilitation. This locally owned and operated sports and physical therapy center has two locations: 61 West Central Avenue, Lake Wales, FL 33853 Phone: 863-678-0705 or 306 S 10th St, Ste 310, Haines City, FL 33844 Phone: 863-421-2000.
More information about this type of injury and others can be found at the womenssportsfoundation.org.