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PrintWarming Up Before Sports
It is a beautiful, crisp fall day in Duluth and Greta’s U12 soccer team is about to begin its first playoff game. Excitement and anticipation mixed with a touch of seriousness are evident on each of their young faces. Greta and her teammates have had a successful season already with each girl significantly improving her skills and understanding of the game. They have learned to play cohesively and even someone unfamiliar with soccer can see, in their play, the beauty of this game. As their coach, it has been fun to watch their progress, made even more enjoyable by the fact that none of the girls has had any serious orthopedic injury this season. That fact may be partially due to luck, but there may be an intentional element as well.
With the season coming to a close, Greta’s team, by now, is quite familiar with its pre- game routine. This year, before every practice and game, the team has done a warm up program consisting of running drills, plyometric and balance exercises designed to strengthen core muscles and improve proprioception, which is the sense of the body’s position in space.
This program, based on the FIFA (Federation of International Football Association) 11 + model was designed to reduce the number of serious knee injuries affecting adolescent soccer players. Each year in the United States alone, tens of thousands of knee injuries, including tears of the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) occur in adolescents, especially girls, playing soccer. The ACL acts as one of the most important primary stabilizing ligaments of the knee and if torn, surgical reconstruction requiring extensive rehabilitation may be necessary.
This injury also places the individual at high risk for the future development of arthritis in that joint. It has been suggested that the speed and directional changes of the game combined with the relative hyper mobility of the adolescent knee joint and its inadequately developed muscular stabilizers put these youngsters at high risk for injury.
Whatever the cause may be, it seems prudent to adopt a preventative strategy that has been shown to lower the risk of injury. Across the country soccer coaches from the recreational level to national teams are putting this program into their training regimens.
As the girls line up across the 18 yard line on our end of the field, each of them pairs up with a partner and completes their warm ups with no direction needed from me. Greta, who once rolled her eyes at the warm up, is all business today. As the game kicks off, I am confident that Greta and her teammates are really prepared for this game and hopefully many more to come. Til next time.
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