More and more children are suffering from ACL injuries. Here’s what can be done to prevent this

There is no doubt that participation in exercise and sports is extremely beneficial for children and teens. It improves their health and wellbeing, creates opportunities for social interaction and builds resilience and leadership skills for life.

However, sports can also lead to injuries. A particularly nasty sports injury is damage to the ACL, the anterior cruciate ligament in the knee, which attaches the femur (femur) and shin bones (tibia). ACL injuries have skyrocketed among children in EnglandAnd our researchsuggests that one cause of this is that children do not develop basic movement skills, such as jumping and jumping.

Rising injury cases

The ACL plays an important role in providing stability to the knee joint. In particular, it helps prevent excessive forward movement of the tibia and rotation of the knee joint during movements such as rapid changes of direction during sprinting, turning and jump landings. All these movements are key to many sports.

ACL injuries are debilitating at any age, but an ACL rupture during childhood can have lasting consequences on health and well-being. These include the early onset of degenerative diseases such as osteoarthritis, a health condition often associated with older age.

When someone experiences an ACL tear or tear, the knee swells and becomes unstable. It may become difficult to bear weight and the leg may not straighten properly. Without surgery the knee will not recover. Recovery from surgery takes nine months to a year, and even then athletes may not be able to return to sports at the same level as before.

Historically, ACL injuries are uncommon during childhood. But in the last 20 years there has been an incidence in children has increased. Research into ACL operations Research carried out in England between 1997 and 2017 found that these figures increased 22 times among people in their twenties over this period.

Our recent research investigated the causes of ACL injuries in children. In particular, we looked at whether a lack of basic sports skills could increase the risk.

These skills, known as fundamental movement skills, include running, jumping, leaping, jumping, throwing and catching. Competence in these skills is necessary for more complicated movements, such as the pivots and landings that put stress on the ACL.

Lack of skills

Research by one of us (Michael Duncan) and others show that British children are not developing these basic skills at the age they ideally should.

The grammar school curriculum suggests that children should master these basic movement skills around the age of seven, but in Britain this doesn’t happen until years later – towards the end of primary school or even later. We wanted to see if there was a link between this lack of competence and injury risk.

We assessed fundamental movement skills in a group of 98 10- to 13-year-olds playing basic football. We then determined their risk of ACL injury by assessing the mistakes they made when performing a risky movement – ​​a drop jump – linked to ACL injury.

We found that fundamental movement skills explained almost 50% of the ACL risk score in children. The children who were classified as ‘poor’ due to the biomechanics of their landing – meaning they were at higher risk of ACL injury – had significantly poorer fundamental movement skills compared to their peers.

If children do not become sufficiently competent in the wide range of movement skills that form the basis for sports participation, they will be physically unprepared for the demands of sport-specific training and may increase the risk of ACL injuries.

For teachers or community coaches, focusing on these foundational movement skills first and ensuring children can move effectively can be critical to preventing later injuries. The development of good movement competence during childhood has the potential to translate into more effective movement later, reducing the prevalence or severity of ACL injuries.

Good quality physical education at school and sports coaching in the community are crucial to ensure that children develop these fundamental movement skills effectively.

Primary school physical education teachers and community coaches need ongoing training in teaching these skills to children. In addition, there should be sufficient teaching time for physical education in schools so that teachers can prioritize the appropriate development of these fundamental movement skills.

This article is republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.