FROM NFL PLAYERS TO YOUR YOUNG ATHLETE, THE LETTERS A-C-L BRING FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN - Blog

[Guest Prosoft Admin]

This past weekend at least two NFL players went down with ACL injuries and are lost for the season. At least 11 look to have occurred in the NFL alone since training camp. That’s just one sport. Some studies suggest in the US alone there are 200,000 new ACL injuries every single year! For many athletes, parents, and coaches they just don’t know much about the feared ACL…what the letters stand for, what it does, how the recovery from surgery goes, or even if it means the end of a sports career. Listen in to our entire segment this week and next for answers to some of those topics and more but here’s a little review of some of that discussion.
 
ACL stands for Anterior Cruciate Ligament. There’s two in the center of the knee…the Anterior and the Posterior Cruciate. They’re both important but the ACL definitely gets hurt much much more often. The “Anterior” part of the name refers to where it inserts onto the tibia or the leg bone, which in this case is the front part of the tibia. The Posterior Cruciate then correspondingly inserts onto the posterior or back of the top surface of the tibia. All ligaments are responsible for a few things, but the thing we think of first is their mechanical restraint role.
 
Physically they control or stop excessive motion from occurring. In this case, the ACL has a number of motions it limits or that it can be hurt by. Classically we think of the ACL as restraining forward movement of the lower leg bone (tibia) on the thigh bone (femur). That’s essentially the same as the thigh bone moving backward over the tibia, as might happen in football from a direct blow to the front of the thigh just above the knee. Another very common injury mechanism is when the knee buckles and turns inward while the foot is fixed on the ground. Oftentimes there’s an associated pop that can be felt or heard, but certainly those sounds do not equate to an ACL injury only. Other injuries can produce that feeling or sound.
 
WATCH THIS SITE = MORE TO COME ON ACL INJURIES!