“How many athletes on your team suffered an ACL injury this past year?”

Ask this of any high school- or college-aged soccer player that you know.

“3”

“4”

“5”

This number is STAGGERING.

JAW-DROPPING.

How is this acceptable?

With your standard ACL injury, a player will likely:

• require major surgery (let’s not talk about the young athlete I worked with who got an infection from her first surgery then required 4 additional surgeries (and almost lost her leg))

• be out of commission for 9-12 months or more

• require physical therapy 2-3 times per week for 9-12 months (let’s think of the time and financial costs here)

And…

• Only about 65% of athletes return to their prior level of performance

• Athletes who do return to high risk sports have a 20-40% risk of suffering another ACL tear on the same or opposite side

• Folks who tear their ACLs have increased likelihood of early onset knee arthritis in the next 10 years

• This isn’t even mentioning the mental/emotional struggles that come from being injured, out of the game, or having your identity as a high-level athlete challenged

You would think that players, parents, and soccer coaches would be JUMPING at opportunities to decrease players’ risks of these injuries….

Especially when research has clearly demonstrated that exercise-based knee injury prevention programs WORK.

(The 11+ program by FIFA, for example, is just one of the exercise-based knee injury prevention programs out there that requires 30 minutes twice per week and has been shown to decrease these injury rates by 40-60%)

But no.

Offers to come out to coachs’ practices to teach their players the 11+ program (for free!) fall on deaf ears.

College players come back to our facility and talk about how poor their strength training programs are (if their teams even have them).

It’s only after an athlete sustains this life-changing injury the first (or second) time that they actually become invested. It’s only then that they and their parents start to take the strength training and preventative measures seriously.

And we still haven’t even begun to talk about the pervasive issues with “typical” rehab after ACL-reconstruction but that will have to be a topic for another blog post.

For now, please know that what makes EAPT unique is that our ACL rehab process is very intentional, comprehensive, customized to each individual athlete, and ever-evolving to keep up with the latest practices best supported by research. When our athletes return to sports at least 9 months after reconstruction (because this is what is currently supported by research), we aim for them to be in peak shape and amply prepared for the demands of their sport.

I digress.

If you want to stay ahead of the game and be a part of the efforts to reduce the number of ACL tears in sports like soccer, there are a few things you can do.

1. Consider implementing an exercise-based knee injury prevention routine such as 11+, Harmoknee, Prevent Injury and Enhance Performance (PEP), or Sportsmetrics.

2. You can book an Athlete Wellness Audit with me where we can assess your risk factors and I can teach you how to start incorporating this routine into your routine.

3. If you're part of a soccer team, coach, or trainers, connect me with them so I can help them implement an exercise-based knee injury prevention program.