Is pre-season eccentric strength testing during the Nordic hamstring exercise associated with future hamstring strain injury? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Review written by Adam Johnson info

Key Points

  1. This study highlights that screening of pre-season eccentric knee flexor strength provides limited prediction of future hamstring injuries.
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BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE

As has been widely commented on and discussed within the literature and many previous reviews, hamstring injuries are the greatest cause of time loss in many elite sporting settings. There is a high cost of these injuries both financially (1) and in terms of subsequent team performance and seasonal outcomes (2).

With such high stakes there is an obvious desire for professionals working with athletes to do everything they can to identify those athletes who are most at risk through screening and subsequent intervention. Following the development of more accessible hamstring strength screening tools, this particular test (Nordic hamstring curl) has become part of many pre-season screening protocols.

This paper reviewed all available published literature which examined the association between eccentric hamstring strength in the pre-season and occurrence of future hamstring injury.

Hamstring injuries are the greatest cause of time loss in many elite sporting settings.
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It has never been the case that one simple screening test is able to predict future injury.

METHODS

The authors of this study completed a comprehensive review of all articles against a list of set terms. The search was restricted to articles published since 2013 due to the fact that commercial devices routinely used to measure eccentric hamstring

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