Information about a piece of news titled Severe injuries can be halved in football
Severe injuries can be halved in football
Intoduction
This is one of the key messages from the research presented in the PhD dissertation on “Injuries in youth female football – risk factors, prevention and compliance”, which Torbjørn Soligard defended Friday May 13th.
Football is one of the most popular team sports worldwide.
Although the positive health benefits of regular physical activity are well-documented, being active also entails a certain risk of injury.
In football, studies on female players have reported overall injury rates nearly as high as for their male counterparts. However, identification of injury risk factors and mechanisms can help us implement tailored injury prevention measures for both sexes at all age and skill levels.
Does it work?
A comprehensive warm-up program has been designed to prevent the most common injury types in football; injuries to the lower extremities.
“The 11+” is a 20-min program consisting of warm‑up and physical conditioning exercises. It aims to improve strength, awareness and neuromuscular control of static and dynamic movements.
The main aim of this thesis was therefore to examine the effect of the “11+” on injury risk in youth female football.
What to do
Furthermore, an aim was to investigate how teams’ and players’ compliance and injury risk were linked to their coaches’ attitudes towards injury prevention training.
In addition, play on artificial turf and players’ level of skill were examined as potential risk factors for injury in youth football.
To answer these questions, data were collected from two populations comprising 1) 1892 female players aged 13 to 17 years and 2) 7848 Norway Cup-tournament matches played by girls and boys aged 13 to 19 years.
Action works!
The research demonstrated that the injury risk in youth football can be reduced by about one third, and severe injuries by as much as one half by implementing an injury prevention warm-up program.
The study of compliance and attitudes also indicated that in order to prevent injuries, sports injury prevention measures need to be acceptable, adopted and complied with by the athletes and sports bodies they are targeted at.
Skilled players more at risk
Furthermore, while high skill emerged as a significant risk factor for injury in female youth football.
Playing on artificial turf does not appear to be a risk factor for acute injury. However, for specific injury types the playing surface seems to be significant.
Read more about Torbjørns projects here.
Supervisors: Associate Professor Thor Einar Andersen and Professor Roald Bahr.
Program
10.15-11.00: Trial lecture, "Eccentric strength training as treatment and prevention in tendinopathy", (Auditorium A, Norwegian School of Sports Sciences).
13.00-16.00: PhD presentation and defense (same venue).