Prevention of ACL Injuries

It is very difficult to prevent ACL injuries on their own, it is better to look at the whole knee and concentrate on strengthening the surrounding muscles.

It starts off with footwear. There do seem to be more ACL injuries now than there were 10-20 years ago. There are many possible reasons for this, from more coverage in the media, to better diagnosis, to footwear. Neal believes that there is a link between footwear and ACL ruptures. Make sure that the studs are in tightly and are good quality, make sure the boots are also good quality ones.

In terms of the knee iteself, loads of balance work, or proprioception, will improve the sensory feedback at the joint.

The other thing is getting the balance between your quads and hamstring muscles right. It is thought that having very strong quads and not strong hamstrings you are more prone to an ACL injury due to the pulling forward force of the quads. So try to get an equal balance in strength and reaction times between the two.

Doing functional exercises like single leg squats as well, really helps with this kind of injury as it is a great proprioceptive exercise and it also starts to get the knee and body into the right alignment and works on getting the quads and hamstrings as efficient as possible.