Although the New England Patriots are doing everything in their power to prove a new study wrong, research shows that teams who have fewer injuries generally win more games than teams who lose more of their players to injury.
At face value, the results may seem like a no-brainer, but the study is actually much more fascinating than meets the eye. For their study, researchers started by identifying why so many young soccer players were suffering ACL tears. A lot of it had to do with more boys and girls playing the sport, but researchers also examined the biomechanical forces at play during an ACL tear. They studied hours of film to uncover how and why these knee injuries were taking place, and they determined that most occurred when the knees were in what’s known as “dynamic valgus alignment.” When this occurs, more force is applied to the joint. They also partially attributed tears to situations where a player’s hamstring is relatively weak compared to their quadriceps.
From their observations, researchers were able to develop a strength training program to improve relevant muscles and teach athletes better movement techniques. After years of testing and refining methods, researchers came up with the FIFA 11+ warm up program.
Injury Prevention Leads To Wins
Researchers pitched their injury prevention warm up system to a bunch of NCAA soccer teams, but only six Division 1 teams said they were open to adopting the methods. Researchers tracked how those six teams did throughout their season compared to other teams. They discovered:
- Teams who used the program had an average of 9.86 wins, 5.71 losses and 2.43 ties.
- Teams who did not use the program had an average of 7.6 wins, 8.48 losses and 2.57 ties.
- A similar pattern was observed in Division 2 teams.
- The FIFA 11+ warm up program successfully reduced knee injuries in boys and girls in teams who adopted the program compared to control groups.
Researchers concluded by saying they hopes their findings lead to more teams and athletic associations adopting the program, and in turn, a reduction in youth ACL injuries.