The ACL injury bug has been taking names around the league. With the NFL already working on ways to improve ways to prevent head trauma, doctors and teams around the league are also scrambling to figure out how to reduce the number of ACL injuries as well. Is there anything that can be done to reduce the number of ACL injuries in football besides simply not playing football?
“They’re extremely fast, extremely powerful, and extremely strong,” Mandelbaum said of the condition NFL players arrive to training camp in a recent report published by the Orange County Register. “But the problem is, the steering isn’t so good. We call that steering neuromuscular control.”
Dr. Mandelbaum has constructed a program aimed at reducing the number of ACL injuries with a series of particular warm-ups and exercises and stretches, and he claims the program has reduced the number of non-contact ACL injuries in high school and college players by as much as 70 percent. So, perhaps there is something the NFL can implement with the help of team doctors and strength and conditioning coaches, after all.
“I never had the interaction with a team that said, ‘OK, come on guys, let’s go do this program,’” Mandelbaum said earlier this month. “That said, I know for a fact that there are a number of teams who have sports medicine programs who are on top of these things and are getting their athletes and their teams to do portions of this program.
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