Hamstring Injuries in the AFL. Perception becomes Reality
If you check my CV, you can see I was co-ordinating strength and conditioning programs at Essendon from 1994 and Geelong from 1998.
Hamstrings are the biggest cause of injury in the AFL. The game goes for 120 mins and has 4 breaks. They will start warming up at 1.20 for a 2.10 game and then rest before running out. Then 1/4 time/1/2 time and 3/4 time. Game finishes at almost 5pm! They kick on the run and also bend over at speed. Just a recipe for injury. Also they have to carry some bulk for contact needs, but still run and run. Thus more hamstrings than soccer and rugby for instance.
In 1997 a group of Essendon coaches, fitness, medical and management people went to the AIS to examine training methods.
With respect to injury management it was an important trip for me. I changed my training methods a lot then.
Proprioception circuit before weights. Screening of biomechanics of players. Core stability screening. Core stability and core strength circuits. Specific unilateral training for the lower extremity. Specific attention to gluteal and hamstring strength work. Lots of running drills and faster running. More individualized training. Full time massage therapists. Full time physiotherapists, Full time training. Databases of loads and education of coaches to manage training loads and kicking loads inseason a bit better. Pre- training meetings to plan training with medical staff.
What I saw in the 1998 was a big drop in soft tissue injury after those initiatives, especially hamstrings.
I had done comprehensive isokinetic testing a few times in the 90;s but this multifactorial approach seemed to work better.
I went to Geelong in 1998 with a brief to reduce injury. I implemented the same initiatives. I used Mark Sayers the biomechanist to screen every player. Employed more masseurs. They did lots of core stability and core strength work. They trained faster. And so on. It really seemed to work. We had a huge drop in soft tissue and hamstring injury rates. There seemed to be some consistent line to all this.
I remember one year getting to round 18 and not having lost a player to hamstring injury, Then fatigue hit with a player and we lost a few games to hamstrings but not many. So all these initiatives as a whole seemed to work. Which one helped most? Now that is a tough question. Massage or core stability or running faster? Difficult! I always lean to fast running in the preparation block as a key.
I was operating at about half the incidence of games lost for hamstring injury relative to the AFL.
But perceptions can become reality in elite sport.
Unsubstantiated media reports of huge soft tissue injury rates and hamstring injury in particular often abound.
Now every club gets hamstrings. One must look at trends and overall rates over years with the same staff in a club.
One well informed scribe said I had been sacked from Essendon for too many hamstrings! Just weird . I left. Simple. This type of ‘waffle” often becomes the norm in the media. On TV and radio. Raw hard data was never accessed. Then “JO BLOGGS” starts saying the same thing. Oh well!
The crazy part of all this was that a representative from a Monash University Hamstring Injury Research group had spoken to me about how they had noticed I had a consistent low rate in Hamstring Injuries and how interesting that was. Oh well. All history now!
More importantly the take home message is to use a multifactorial approach to hamstring injury prevention and rehabilitation. Make sure you have ticked most boxes. I will soon be putting some information out on a strength and conditioning program for hamstring injury.
SOME THINGS ( JUST A FEW!) THAT NEED TO BE COVERED FOR PREVENTION OF HAMSTRING INJURY.
1. Core Stability. Is the inner core functioning properly?
2. Core Strength: Has the athlete got sufficient strength to cope with the forces required in fast sports.
4. Pelvic Stability: Is the athlete unbalanced or does the athlete have a weakness in gluteus medius for example.
5. Overstriding: Is the athletes running technique a disaster? Combined with lack of pelvic stability do they over-stride and tire the hammies out.
6. Hamstring and Gluteal Strength: Does the athlete lack the abilty to switch the glutes on or have little strength both concentrically or eccentrically or the whole lot?
7. Lower back problems; Do they exist? Gluteal referred problems?
8. Previous history of injury.
9. Has the athlete prepared themselves for fast running and adapted to high eccentric loads in pre-season.
10. Is the athlete fit enough? Can they last?
11. Is the athlete too tired from training?
12. Has the athlete trained hard the day before and is doing fast running today and thus will be more prone to injury?
13. Are you too old?
AND SO ON AND SO ON.
That is why there is no cookbook recipe to preventing hamstrings.
Just need to keep ticking those boxes
Lauren Bertolacci comments on Womens Volleyball in Australia
August 09
Germany
I’ve arrived, I’ve settled in and I’ve trained. And I love it. The environment and atmosphere among the girls is one of hard work and with a central goal in mind. Everyone us positive and pushes each other at training. The group a a general rule is quite young, and big. Our middles are fast, and both us setters play a similar game. I’m really looking forward to this season and I think I will take a lot from it. The level isn’t as big a drop from France Pro A as i expected, and I think a lot of that is due to the attitude of the girls here, its still a very fast, powerful and skilled game.
Just to clear a few things up, I’ve been reading and hearing a lot of negative things about the new Australian womens program, or lack of it. OK, so the program isn’t the AIS, there is no full time training just yet, the group of girls selected is a totally fresh and unexperienced group, and the AVL was on occasions a little bit scrappy. But lets put this into perspective hey. The program broke down at the end of 2005, there was no full time training anymore, and the girls that were there, only three were playing overseas getting that training somewhere else. A camps based program was put together, and a team selected for world champ qualifiers. A massive effort and with a few things against us, we lost to Taipei in a very close match and didn’t progress. 2006, there was no FIVB tournaments, and thus pretty much no program. We are in a phase of rebuilding now, it happens, you can’t be at the top of your game forever, players retired, moved to beach, and it leaves holes in a team. To say that we are not heading in the right direction now is totally wrong and unfair. We are not as strong a the team of 5 years ago, I don’t dispute that. But this group, including the new head coach, is trying to build a new culture in womens volleyball, and you have to start somewhere. That is now, the AVL was a success, especially considering it was in its first year and every team was a new group thrown together who hadn’t played together before, and in my opinion, put on a decent show. We are heading in the only direction we can, and that is forward. Right now this group needs positive people behind it, its young, inexperienced, but has a passion for the game and to build a new and successful program. You can’t ask for anything else at this stage, and we will prove we can do it. The program will build from here, hopefully into a fulltime one, and womens volleyball in Australia will follow and progress into a much bigger force, that younger players will aspire to be involved in, and we will grow from there. I don’t argue that we have gone backwards in previous years, but from here, the only way is up.
loris bertolacci 