Thursday, May 8, 2008

Gender differences

Ah, the ACL - what a tenuous hold it maintains on an athlete's career.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Catamount said...

Girls are five times more likely to suffer ACL injuries than boys. There is some debate about why this is so. I use drills and exercises that force athletes to drop their weight, bend their knees to change direction, accelerate, etc. Girls do this exercises upright, while boys gradually learn to drop their weight very low. I remember a picture vividly when I had a high school guys team and a girls team doing the same exercise with a soccer ball. The heads of the guys were lower to the ground and they were bent at the knees, while the girls were upright and bent at the waist. I have not done the research to see if this is anatomical, or the result of training, but it certainly makes ACL injuries more likely.

A.C. said...

Yeah, I was thinking about this while watching the USWNT scrimmage, which is obviously soccer at a high level - Tobin Heath was playing and I was trying to figure out why she stood out so much to me on the field. Then I realized, "She runs like a guy, like a good soccer guy, low to the ground, leaning into the turns, with good core control."