Why nothing can be done to prevent Non-contact injuries...

[Big Turk]

There is renewed talk about how to prevent so many serious injuries during the preseason. Seems like the same thing happens every year. Big time players go down in the offseason/mini-camps/training camps from simply doing a cut, running a route, etc. Every year there is talk about what can be done to prevent it. In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing that can be done. Its honestly irrelevant.

 

Many of the serious training camp/mini-camp injuries, especially the ACL tears are non-contact injuries. They simply are over-use injuries. These players are constantly stressing the same body part over and over and over again day after day after day. Whether in the weight room, on the practice field, during individual work with trainers, in the offseason practicing running routes with their QB hour after hour, etc...they simply are putting too many miles on the the tires, so to speak. At some point, the tire is gonna blow. You only get so many miles out of them. Same thing with these ACL tears. You only get so many cuts/change of directions, etc before its going to cause excessive stress on it and its going to tear. There is nothing that can be done until they stop practicing and running and cutting so much from the time they are 10 years old. This "specialization" where kids only play one sport to focus on becoming really good at it honestly likely is contributing to these as well...instead of doing a wide variety of different movements in various sports like kids used to do, they are now doing the same movements over and over and over again because they are only playing one sport and focusing all their energy on it.

 

Obviously every player is different and has different stress levels these body parts can take, but let's say for the sake of argument, you get between 350,000 and 500,000 "cuts" in your lifetime before the part needs to be "replaced". These are cumulative effect injuries over many, many years. There is nothing short of mandating the players stop working out altogether, like they did in the 70's and 80's when they had to get jobs in the offseason and use training camp to get back in shape, that is going to prevent them. Every time they get out there in the offseason and practice running routes, cutting, changing direction, etc, they are adding wear and tear to those tendons and ligaments. Obviously the more you practice, the better you become, but these players are practicing themselves into ACL tears after many years of doing it. But what can be done? Nothing---how can a player "take it easy" to help prevent something like this when his counterpart is training his @ss off? They can't...these guys are going to keep training and pushing and working, and this is the end result the NFL is just going to have to live with. This is the new normal.

The more muscle you have and the faster you are moving, the more stress and torque it puts on the ligaments and tendons to hold those muscles in place. The increase in force is much greater than the increase in strength of the tendon from working out. I know, I am a complete gym rat, and I have had my share of tendon/ligament issues over the years. The tendons simply cannot gain enough strength to be able to adequately compensate for the strength and speed of these athletes these days.

Edited August 27, 2015 by matter2003

[Saxum]

There is something the NFL can do but it would be expensive. Whole body MRIs can be extremely detailed and a team could do them on players on a regular basis and then have experts write software to monitor changes comparing changes over time and doing projections. This is an issue which is perfect for a BIG data problem. Now it will not catch all but it would show ligaments weakening with minor damage before they became strains, tears and breaks. Combine this with metrics which teams are already doing and ASSUMING the players would be willing to go along with it (NFLPA would complain about additional testing, privacy, players not getting paid, etc); players do not always want to do what is right. This would be cutting edge research and the NFL and NFLPA would need to fund it although they could get some sponsorships from companies like IBM and Oracle if they used their equipment. Researchers would need to be engaged w/NFL - they could not do what they usually do which is buy off the shelf and control it except for maintenance.

[Big Turk]

There is something the NFL can do but it would be expensive. Whole body MRIs can be extremely detailed and a team could do them on players on a regular basis and then have experts write software to monitor changes comparing changes over time and doing projections. This is an issue which is perfect for a BIG data problem. Now it will not catch all but it would show ligaments weakening with minor damage before they became strains, tears and breaks. Combine this with metrics which teams are already doing and ASSUMING the players would be willing to go along with it (NFLPA would complain about additional testing, privacy, players not getting paid, etc); players do not always want to do what is right. This would be cutting edge research and the NFL and NFLPA would need to fund it although they could get some sponsorships from companies like IBM and Oracle if they used their equipment. Researchers would need to be engaged w/NFL - they could not do what they usually do which is buy off the shelf and control it except for maintenance.

OK, but lets say they did do this. How would they go to the coaches and tell them Sammy Watkins can't play for 3 weeks until his ligament healed? The coaches would laugh them out of the building. They would have to be able to get to the point where they can definitively tell them "if this player does not rest and let this heal there is a 75% chance he will end up tearing his ACL"...not sure if they could even get to that point with any certainty, and you know the players are not going to want to shut it down...they are going to want to play...

[Saxum]

That is not how it works - bodies are machines, just organic ones - and with enough data you could see that a ligament or some other softer part was weakening before it got to point where complete rest was needed. Teams are already doing this with metrics and player 'ow it hurts' but this would provide more data. Perhaps the player would take days off, more therapy, etc. Teams would treat it like every other diagnostic tool - they may choose to have player not play, less reps, maybe not play when game is not in jeopardy, etc. They do this not with veteran rest days and rotations but this would provide more empirical data for their decisions pkus be invaluable for helping players recover from injuries.

[bills_fan_in_raleigh]

Oh yea blast the guys with radiation every week. Maybe focus on better stretching, lifting process and not using performance enhancing drugs allowing body to grow naturally might help reduce these risks.

[ALF]

Very good insight matter 2003 to a serious problem.

 

Would wearing knee braces in practice and non regular season games help ?

 

Seems like more fabric braces are starting to come on the market.

 

A quick look seems MRI is safe

 

Magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, is a way of obtaining very detailed images of organs and tissues throughout the body without the need for x-rays or "ionizing" radiation. Instead, MRI uses a powerful magnetic field, radio waves, rapidly changing magnetic fields, and a computer to create images that show whether or not there is an injury, disease process, or abnormal condition present.

http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?pg=safety-mr

Edited August 27, 2015 by ALF

[peterpan]

Getting rid of the turf fields would help too.

[YoloinOhio]

Good article on this topic here:

 

@MikeTanier: How to reduce NFL ACL tears by 50-70% withOUT cancelling the preseason: http://t.co/z1SoSh1fa8

[Wayne Cubed]

Good article on this topic here:

 

@MikeTanier: How to reduce NFL ACL tears by 50-70% withOUT cancelling the preseason: http://t.co/z1SoSh1fa8

 

Oops started a new thread on it.

[YoloinOhio]

 

Oops started a new thread on it.

cool. I thought it was pretty interesting!

[dpberr]

There is a correlation with the amount of weight - between muscle and gear. The private sector defense contractors spend a lot of resources in engineering gear that reduces the load on a soldier's body, namely the tendons and ligaments. I don't know how much all the NFL gear weighs on game day, but I bet it's substantial from helmet to shoe.

 

No more artificial turf fields. That'd be a good idea.

 

I also don't think the NFL promotes rest as much as they should. Most NFL players train year round and rather intensively - the body can only take so much. I think some of these injuries are due to over-training.

[K D]

i think they need to get rid of scrimmages and practicing with other teams. all that happens is they end up fighting or getting injured. there's already 4 pre-season games. you don't need to add another scrimmage on top of that. absolutely ridiculous and they better not schedule any for next year

[ALF]

"But the rules squeezed out much of the offseason conditioning work. That's a problem, because the exercises and drills that can prevent ACL tears and soft-tissue injuries take additional time and must be reinforced over a series of weeks.

"These guys need to be doing those drills two months before they get on that field," Hewett said."

[Mr. WEO]

Good article on this topic here:

 

@MikeTanier: How to reduce NFL ACL tears by 50-70% withOUT cancelling the preseason: http://t.co/z1SoSh1fa8

 

"And ACL tears do tend to cluster around training camp and the preseason.

"That points to a lack of preparation," Hewett said.

McCoy agrees. "If you talk to any strength coach in the NFL, they'll tell you, 'We don't have the time to get these guys in shape by the time the demands of that first practice session kicks in.'"

 

This is the obvious point many are missing. I've said it before--these guys just aren't staying in football shape in the off-season. You can do all the milk crate jumps and "whole body MRIs" (a really bad idea), it won't change the fact that these injuries become far less frequent as the season goes on.

 

The owners should push for a year round conditioning program in the next CBA. It's a huge risk for them to invest in players who are lost for the season in camp.

[GG]

 

The owners should push for a year round conditioning program in the next CBA. It's a huge risk for them to invest in players who are lost for the season in camp.

 

It's a huge loss for the players too. Even though they remain on payroll, guys like Wynn & Powell will miss out on bigger pay days in the future because they won't have the opportunity to prove their ability on the field.

[Mango]

Somebody mentioned weight. It's not just an equipment issue, but it also includes body weight. These guys are getting bigger, faster, and stronger every year.

 

Also strength and explosion, which the NFL is predicated on both. The stronger and more explosive a player is the tighter he is. The faster he gets the tighter he gets. Strong athletes are tight by nature, it's the tightness that creates elasticity, the promotes what they do best. So as athletes get better the more injury prone they will be, if that makes sense. I worked with a pretty good S&C coach with at the Oly training center who used to work with MLB picthers and Jenny Finch in their offseason. He said he'd do very little if any stretching or working on their pitching arm. Had to stay tight to keep up the velocity. All he could do was keep the body in balance, and enough work on the pitching side to prevent injury. Note that this is pretty simplified when it comes to physiology, but the premise is absolutely true.

 

I also think that there is some PED issues here. The body is getting bigger, faster, and stronger at a rate to quick to maintain performance, so it fails. You see it a lot in high end athletes with poor developmental coaching, who then find a coach who knows what they are doing, then they explode. That is in any sport.

 

I have said it a few times, the NFL is NOT hiring the best physiologists. They just aren't. Football is a game of physiological freaks who get by with doing more work not the right work. Watch these guys clean or deadlift sometime. It's pretty terrible. It's accompied by a salaried S&C coach asking for more weight and more reps. Explosiveness is not really trainable. I have a few friends who work for the highest paid international sports in the world. Many of whom have met or worked in the NFL. All claim that most NFL trainers are flat out bad at their jobs and could never ever work for places like the AIS (Australian Institute of Sport) US Ski, or the German Sports University. All of whome are the best in the world at sports physiology, and considered the leaders of the study in the world.

 

(Note: US Ski/Snowboarding is one of the most difficult places to get work in in the USA for sport science. You have to be extremely accredited and one of the best at what you do in the world)

[Malazan]

There's plenty that can be done. You contradict yourself about 3 sentences in...

[Mr. WEO]

 

It's a huge loss for the players too. Even though they remain on payroll, guys like Wynn & Powell will miss out on bigger pay days in the future because they won't have the opportunity to prove their ability on the field.

 

 

The players can easily fix/prevent this problem. The owner can't. And the player still gets paid. A team like the Packers are wiothout one of the best WRs in the league.

 

Wynn and Powell and other marginal guys are not the issue.

[John from Riverside]

It seems to me that our injuries were happening on hot days

 

Its football....you can only do so much but they might want to dial it back on days where it is really hot on the field......not saying dont practice.....but maybe run a few more 3/4 speed stuff

[Greg F]

Good article on this topic here:

 

@MikeTanier: How to reduce NFL ACL tears by 50-70% withOUT cancelling the preseason: http://t.co/z1SoSh1fa8

 

Good article YoloinOhio. The OP's assertion that ACL injuries are "over-use injuries" is inconsistent with the research. For a review of the known risk factors see:

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3435896/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3435909/

 

Another review specific to football and artificial surfaces is here:

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25164575

 

A total of 10 studies with 963 ACL injuries met criteria for inclusion, all of which reported on soccer and football cohorts. Among these, 4 studies (753 ACL injuries) found an increased risk of ACL injury on artificial playing surfaces. All 4 of these articles were conducted using American football cohorts, and they included both earlier-generation surfaces (AstroTurf) and modern, 3rd-generation surfaces. Only 1 study in football players found a reduced risk of ACL injury on synthetic playing surfaces. No soccer cohort found an increased risk of ACL injury on synthetic surfaces.