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- Issue 99
- The protective effect of preseason running…
The protective effect of preseason running workload against in-season hamstring strain injuries in elite soccer players
Key Points
- Within this specific cohort of professional Japanese soccer players, higher levels of sprint distance (<24km/h) and number of sprint exposures in the final four weeks of preseason appeared protective to hamstring injury in the following season.
BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE
The biggest injury concern within elite soccer is hamstring injuries, where despite greater understanding of anatomy, injury mechanisms and risk factors the burden continues gradually increase (1). For this reason, there is a continuing growth in the desire to better understand potential mechanisms to reduce the risk of hamstring injury within the cohort of elite soccer players.
This study looked to retrospectively analyze preseason running loads at differing speeds to understand the potential effects on reduction of hamstring strain injury through the course of the following competitive season. The authors hypothesized that higher exposure to sprint-related metrics in preseason would reduce the risk of in-season hamstring injury.
The study found that sprint distance of greater than 842 meters and sprint count of greater than 33.5 repetitions within the final four weeks of preseason mitigated the risk of hamstring injury.
METHODS
This study utilized a retrospective cohort analysis, where after exclusions due to missing data, 67 athlete seasons in 42 unique athletes formed the data for the study.