Women, sports, and ACLs

[Neva Cherniavsky]

NY Times magazine article - long, good.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/magazine/11Girls-t.html

Third page in:

But among all the sports injuries that afflict girls and young women,
A.C.L. tears, for understandable reasons, get the most attention. No
other common orthopedic injury is as debilitating and disruptive in
the short term — or as likely to involve serious long-term
consequences. And no other injury strikes women at such markedly
higher rates or terrifies them as much. Rachel Young, a former soccer
player at Virginia Tech who had to stop playing after two A.C.L.
ruptures and substantial cartilage damage in her right knee, told me
that young women she knew feared the injury but rarely talked about
it. “A.C.L. is like a curse word,” she said. “You just cringe when you
hear it.”

[Neva Cherniavsky]

Here's the ACL tear prevention program he writes about:
http://www.aclprevent.com/pepprogram.htm

[Alex Korb]

Good issue to bring up Neva. I think all women's teams should engage
in some form of ACL tear prevention plyos.

Alex Korb
Coach, UCLA BLU

[jnu...@gmail.com]

June Srisethnil and I gave a talk about the PEP program for ACL tear
prevention at the Ultimate Players and Coaches Conference last
January.

A handout detailing the program for Ultimate Players can be found at
http://www.buda.org/ucpc/Archive.html.

You can view a video detailing the program on YouTube with the key
word PEP program. http://youtube.com/watch?v=YjqAs5CipSc

The PEP program just published it's study of over 68,000 female soccer
players showing a 74% reduction in ACL tears. We adopted the program
at UCLA 2 years ago as well as on my club team, Zeitgeist. It's been
a relative success with only 1 ACL tear for 3 seasons with my various
teams (previously 1-2 tears per season).

I am currently involved with getting this program into the UPA
Coaching Manual and furthering outreach to get this program started
for both men's and women's teams. Keep an eye out for more
information in the UPA magazine.

Jamie Nuwer MD
former UCLA BLU/Midas coach
Zeitgeist, San Francisco

[dus...@gmail.com]

On May 8, 3:42 pm, Neva Cherniavsky <ncher...@gmail.com> wrote:
> NY Times magazine article - long, good.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/magazine/11Girls-t.html

Another perspective from Vern Gambetta, noted athletic performance
expert:

http://functionalpathtraining.typepad.com/functional_path_training/2008/05/perpetuating-my.html

He makes some good points as well.