Anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, injuries have been in the news recently with Lindsey Von tearing the ACL in her left knee following a crash in a World Cup race on Jan. 30 in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, then breaking her leg after she decided to try to ski in the Olympics with her injury.
But what most people don’t know is that ACL injuries are more frequent in young female athletes.
Young female athletes are three to six times more likely than boys to tear an ACL, and in a recent 15-year period, across a dozen sports in U.S. high schools, the rate of ACL injuries among girls jumped 32 percent, more than double the increase among boys, according to an article in The New York Times.
It doesn’t need to be this way. The article reports that sequence of warm-up exercises was designed in 2000 to protect young athletes’ knees. It’s called FIFA 11+.
Volunteer coaches most likely know little about injury prevention, but most paid, trained leaders remain in the dark, too, according to the article.
If you’re a parent with a girl in sports, you need to check out this health tip. It could save your child a lot of pain and anguish and save you a lot of money.
