Could Targeted Exercise Programmes Prevent Lower Limb Injury in Community Australian Football?

Abstract

Overall, the evidence for exercise programmes as an efficacious lower limb injury prevention strategy is predominantly restricted to studies addressing injury aetiology and mechanisms. The findings of this review highlight the need to develop and test interventions in well designed population-based trials with an emphasis on promoting intervention uptake and adherence and, hence, intervention effectiveness. The results of this review can inform the development of the components of a future lower limb injury prevention exercise protocol for community-level Australian football.

Specific exercise effects of preventive neuromuscular training intervention on anterior cruciate ligament injury risk reduction in young females: meta-analysis and subgroup analysis

“…More studies are necessary in order to investigate the effects of specific exercises on ACL reduction in handball, basketball and floorball. Also, recent studies67 68 have reported the effects of adherence on ACL injury reduction, which needs to be investigated in future studies.…”

What do community football players think about different exercise-training programmes? Implications for the delivery of lower limb injury prevention programmes

“…While there is a need for strong evidence to underpin such programmes, the quality of evidence supporting exercise-training programmes for lower limb injury prevention is variable 5 20. Most studies have not provided specific implementation details and this has limited the extent to which similar programmes can confidently be applied in other settings.…”

“…The NMC programme was based on the then available scientific literature directly pertaining to ACL injuries in AF,2 8 9 18 19 but also borrowed from a range of ACL injury studies pertaining to other sporting codes 1 4 7 10 11 14 – 17. This experimental evidence came from a range of different types of investigations5 20 28 that included cadaveric-based research,29 – 32 computational models,33 analyses of videos of in-game ACL injuries,1 – 4 laboratory experiments of the manoeuvres that cause injury,8 9 11–13 15 17 – 19 which were supported by interventions that tested the effect of exercise/neuromuscular training programmes on ACL injury prevention 7 10 14. Specifically, the NMC programme was designed to: fit within the real-world time confines of community-AF training sessions; improve sidestepping and/or single-leg landing technique in order to lower flexion, valgus and internal rotation moments at the knee34; and increase muscular support of the knee.…”

“…Although most evidence is from elite/high-performance athletes or women only, it is likely that it applies equally to other sports participants, where the same mechanisms of injury occur 20. A key limitation of the existing literature, however, is that few papers have published full details of their experimental exercise programmes and it has been difficult for others to replicate findings, or to implement the same programmes, in other settings.…”

Injury reporting via SMS text messaging in community sport

“…However, injury associated with sport has the potential to outweigh the health benefits of participation and the perceived risk of injury could also act as a deterrent to future participants 2 3. Sports injuries are largely preventable,4 5 but the development of relevant and effective preventive strategies for certain populations has been hampered by a lack of available injury data 6…”