Last time, we started our discussion talking about anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries and the impact that anterior cruciate ligament reconstructions (ACLR) have on future performance. We ended the discussion asking the questions, what is it that leads to these injuries, how can we assess this as parents and coaches and what can we do about it? First, let's look at what leads to these injuries.
The majority of ACL injuries are non-contact in orientation (Nessler et al Cur Rev Musculo Med 2017) meaning there is no contact with another player or external object. Typically, these occur when an athlete plants their foot and cuts off in another direction. We typically see the knee fall in towards the midline and hear the dreaded “pop”. Sometimes the athlete can keep going and sometimes they fall down immediately with pain. Their knee falling toward midline is called a dynamic valgus position at the knee which has been identified as the main mechanism for injury in professional athletes (Johnston et al Am J Sport Med 2018) as well as recreational and high school athletes (Owusu-Akyaw et al Am J Sport Med 2018, Nessler et al Int J Athl Ther Train 2013). The interesting thing is that you can identify those athletes that this is more likely to occur with. As a basketball or volleyball coach, you see this all the time but may not recognize it for what it is. If you are watching your players shoot or go up to block a shot during practice and as they load to jump up, watch what their knees do. Do they collapse toward midline? What you will see, is that some fall a little and some fall a whole lot. This happens in high school, college, professional and Olympic athletes. Why is that?
There are a lot of factors that can result in this dynamic valgus position. One thing is large growth spurts. For our 12-14-year-old athletes that go through a massive growth spurt, you will typically see this start to develop. With the big change in height often comes a decrease in their sense of body awareness (Nessler et al Curr Rev Musculo Med 2017) which often leads to that awkward movement patterns we see in our younger athletes. If this is never addressed, which is often not, then this remains. In addition, weakness in the quadriceps (Smith et al Am J Sport med 2015, Ho et al J Physio 2015) can lead to an increase in dynamic valgus. Considering this, how can we, as non-clinicians and without high tech equipment analyze this? The easiest way to do this is to have your athlete do 10 single-leg squats. What you want to watch for is:
1. Can they perform the task?
2. Is there symmetry between the right side and left? Do they look the same?
3. Does their knee fall in toward midline (middle)?
4. Do they lose their balance?
