Information about a piece of news titled New studies in female soccer
New studies in female soccer
Intoduction
Two new studies in female soccer report that a warm-up program aimed to prevent injuries did not have the expected effect
The training program "F-MARC 11", that was developed by the international football federation (FIFA) , consist of 10 exercises for core stability, lower extremity strength, balance and agility, with focus on "knee over toe" control. The Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center, with project leader Kathrin Steffen, has conducted two studies to determine if this program could prevent injuries and improve performance.
F-MARC and performance
During the last part of the 2004 season, 34 young female soccer players (16-18 yr) were invited to participate in the project. The players were randomly assigned into a training group (n=18) and a control group (n=16). The training group warmed up using F-MARC 11 three times a week over a 10-week period. The tests included isokinetic and isometric strength protocols for the quadriceps and hamstrings, isometric hip adduction and abduction strength, vertical jump tests, sprint running and soccer skill tests. However, there was no difference between the intervention and control groups in the change in performance from the pre to post-test for any of the tests used.
F-MARC 11 and injury prevention
Parallel with the first study, there was also conducted a large, cluster randomized controlled trial to investigate whether F-MARC 11 could reduce injuries. Teams were randomized to an intervention (n=559 teams, 1091 players) or a control group (n=554 teams, 1001 players). The intervention group used the ‘‘11,’’ as a 15-min warm-up program for football training over an 8-month season. A total of 396 players (20%) sustained 483 injuries. No difference was observed in the overall injury rate between the intervention (3.6 injuries/1000 h, confidence interval (CI) 3.2–4.1) and control group (3.7, CI 3.2–4.1; RR51.0, CI 0.8–1.2; P50.94) nor in the
incidence for any type of injury. However, only 14 out of 58 intervention teams completed more than 20 prevention training sessions, which could be a likely cause for the lacking effect.
Consequences of these studies
Based on the experiences from these studies, we have made changes and developed the F-MARC program. This new program has been tested in the 2007 season in the same population. Preliminary analyses of the injury incidences show promising results. These results will be presented in the Second World Congress on Sports Injury Prevention in Tromsø, June 26-28.