FEMALE ATHLETES AND THE ACL - Blog

[Guest Prosoft Admin]

Greg asked about the hot topic of ACL injuries in female athletics. The literature is pretty clear that females tend to injure their ACL 5-7 X more than males do. This research comes primarily from looking at young athletes in high school or college sports. It’s been studied for at least two decades as to why this seems to be the case. There’s no clear consensus but many factors have been identified. Is there one or two main factors that are always at play and responsible? It doesn’t appear so. The whole topic of scrutinizing how well studies looked at a given topic and whether the conclusions reported in a summary can be accepted at face value or need to be prefaced with some careful considerations is a deep Pandora’s box of a topic.
 

But let it suffice that even all of us “in the know” need to be very careful when reading journal articles about how we perceive the research findings and how we believe that information has added to the body of evidence and therefore impacted how we practice…so I’d encourage readers and listeners who are interested in young athletes and the injuries the sustain to be very cautious about reading professional journals or summaries of these online and feeling certain about the newest “facts”…analyzing research is a complicated process.
 
Back to females ACL risks…
 
Studies have looked at lots of potential factors. Hormonal changes during the menstrual cycle. Anatomy of the pelvis and resulting alignment of the knees and hips and feet. Overprontation (inward collapse of the foot/arch). Strength. Power. Deceleration ability. Neuromuscular or reactive control ability. Imbalances or proportional considerations in strength between certain muscle groups. Biomechanical differences in landing mechanics.