ACL Injuries

 While you can never completely eliminate an athlete's chances of injury, you can take certain measures to at least make the body more tolerant to the physical stresses competitive soccer places on it. That's why incorporating injury prevention into your soccer fitness program is key.

Split Squats are a great exercise to strengthen your legs. But if you're a soccer player, you will need an additional challenge that protects your knees from injury as well as strengthens your legs. Adding band resistance to your split squats is a great way to to do so.

ACL injuries are more prevalent than ever. The ACL provides rotational stability to the knee and rotational stability exercises are often ignored in both prevention and rehab protocols. The following is an excerpt from the National Athletic Trainers Association's Public Service Announcement.

ACL injuries continue to remain a frustrating concern for young female soccer athletes. Generally speaking, ACL injures are 5 times more likely to occur in women than in men. There are many risk factors involved such as ligament laxity at certain stages of the menstrual cycle, females having wider hips, and other structural differences. You combine these factors with a sport like soccer that is associated with cutting, twisting, and deceleration movements, and you can see why a young female soccer athlete MUST INCLUDE INJURY PREVENTION as part of their training. 

This is a very challenging question. Sometimes you hear about professional athletes that come back from ACL injuries in 4 months. But most of the time, physicians will clear players to return in the 6 to 9 month range.

The squat exercise is one of the most basic exercises that soccer players are familiar with. It can build a tremendous amount of strength and power in the lower body and improve your overall performance on the field. Incoporating a mini band, however, can add a different element to the exercise and help reduce knee injuries.

The use of a mini band can be very effective for soccer players as it can be used to increase hip strength and prevent hip injury.

By modifying the Ickey Shuffle ladder drill, you can improve your knee stability, reducing the chance of injuring your ACL.

With soccer players, knee injuries can often be associated with a lack of strength in your gluteus medius muscle. Weakness in this muscle usually leads to unstable hip rotation, which inadvertantly leads to an unstable knee. This can cause  injury and hinder your performance on the soccer field. Doing the clam exercise can help strengthen the gluteus medius muscle and prevent knee injuries from occurring on the soccer field.