Injury Prevention
Injury prevention is a priority for any level athlete but especially professional athletes that rely on their body to support their family. There is no avoiding certain kinds of injuries brought on by contact sports but in general the incidence of sports inuries can be dramatically reduced with the correct physical training program.
Soft tissue injuries such as hamstring pulls occur due to either muscular imbalance or poor nutrition. By addressing strength as a working relationship between all muscles and that these muscles power abilities have to be properly balanced, we are able to dramatically reduce muscle pulls. Poor biomechanics in running technique also contribute to the high incidence of hamstring tears becasue of the focus with high knee drive and forced dorsi flexion which is an illusion of video tape. After the leg has properly pushed off the ground the foot and leg recoil and reload as the opposite leg now pushes from the ground. This recoil affect makes it appear theat the foot/ankle is dorsi flexing when in fact it is returning to a neutral position so it can again push off the ground not into the ground as is so often taught. After the leg pushes off the ground it has to be let go by the athlete to be able to reload the elastic energy and heat into the muscle/tendon complex to again push off when it hits the ground on the next step. As you will hear often, until you have studied human anatomy, it is functionally useless to be teaching biomechanics in anything. The reason being you will always be teaching what you think someone is doing with their body instead of teaching exactly what the anatomy is doing within that biomechanical motion whether it be running, jumping, hitting, or throwing.
There have been over 1 Million injuries caused by conventional weightlifting nation wide in the last 20 years and that's just those that have been documented. Who knows what the real number is as most of the injuries that occur in high school and college weight rooms are not reported to their coach or staff due to the fear of not playing. People often doubt these numbers but this research is independently done and is actually very easy to understand when you think of the human anatomy. The human body on average is 65% water. The dense skeletal structure is held together by very inelastic ligaments. The bones like any working lever, (as described by Leonardo Da Vinci over 500 years ago) are moved by elastic muscles that are attached to the bones through tendons. These muscles have to be stretched quickly to produce plyometric force. The cardiovascular system feeds the muscles through blood and oxygen giving it the necessary energy to produce power. Strength afterall is a function of energy production not excessive muscle mass. The nervous system is laid down throughout the body like cable lines and allows for the muscles to talk to each other. The nervous system is the master control system of the entire human body and it has to be programmed properly to insure that it instructs the muscles on what they are supposed to do and in what sequence. Again, as Da Vinci proved , the human body has mathematical proportion to it, therefore it can only produce maximal force at specific joint angles with the muscles acting in agonist, synergist or antagonist fashion and this always involves 90 degree joint angles which will be fully explained in The Universal Law of Human Biomechanics. Now that we understand the basics of how the body works it isn't hard to understand why the conventional method of weightlifting not only causes so many injuries but also is not the optimal method needed to improve sports performance. The obsession with maximal loading is the primary cause of this and was proved by Yuri Verkoshansky, (the great Russian scientist) to negate speed and rate of force production every time. The key to improving these abilities was improving the neurological processes involved in muscle speed of contraction. Any physical structure whether it be a building, car or anything held together by joints of any kind is very susceptible to damage if those joints are exposed to excessive weight load. Once maximal muscular capacity is exceeded, the connective tissue is then strained to continue supporting the load. Like the roof of a building, if too much weight is put on the roof the building will eventually fail at the joints and the roof will collpase. If the ligaments and tendons are stretched due to excessive weight loading it is often irreversible and creates instability in the joints which causes injury at some point. It is just a matter of time before the dam breaks.
ACL tears among women in youth/college/professional sports and especially those playing soccer has reached epidemic proportions nationwide. There have been many thoughts on the reason for the high incidence of this but my own research and experience training women has definitively exposed the primary causes of this in my mind. Young girls play fewer sports than do their male counterparts although that is beginning to change and they do not develop the neurological processes or muscular balance needed for change of direction, sprinting, jumping etc. This leads to poor running mechanics and muscular imbalance which is a major contributing factor for the high incidence of injury especially in the knees. After testing so many women over the years in terms of muscular strength, it was very rare to find any women with strength in their hips unless they came froma gymnastic or ballet background. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why until I remembered that becasue women have the ability to give birth their hips are often wider and there is a mcuh higher incidence of a "Q" angle in the leg. The integrity of any joint is reliant on the strength of the joints around it and if one is weak it puts undue strain on the next joint in line. Once I started really focusing on the strengthening the hip cavity in women and emphasizing the proper running mechanics it virtually eliminated ACL tears among the females that train here.
Injury prevention among all athletes is a priority but for athletes that train here it is a necessity that the system used to improve their sports performance not put them at risk in terms of injury. I simply cannot afford to injure one athlete within these walls. There is no way that the conventional system of maximal loading does not put the athlete at a higher risk for injury and this is not debatable if you understand the human anatomy and how susceptible it is to damage due to excessive load.
Preventing injuries has to be addressed in the totality of the human anatomy and how it works in athletics. Muscle flexibility, joint mobility, muscular balance, coordination, rhythm, timing, and biomechanics all have to be addressed in order to minimize the chance of injury both on the field and off.
