Injury Prevention Programs for Groups
Myklebust G, Skjølberg A, Bahr R. ACL injury incidence in female handball 10 years after the Norwegian ACL prevention study: important lessons learned. Br J Sports Med. 2013 May;47(8):476-9
After implementing ACL prevention programs in handball teams for over 10 years, the authors sought to answer the question of what made the injury prevention programs successful. They came to 3 main conclusions for successful programs:
- “must have coach as a “partner” in the process.”
- The prevention program was efficient
- The message “we delivered to coaches in seminars, through pamphlets, interviews and on our website, was no longer ‘may reduce injury risk’, but ‘will reduce injury risk by at least 50%’. This ‘specific’ information meets one of the Heath Brothers’ criteria for ‘sticky’ messages—messages that have influence.”
Finally, the authors concluded:
“Risk factor studies are necessary to identify the individual’s needs for special training and optimise the selection of preventive exercises. In the meantime, we suggest that team sports include prevention exercises in their warm-up, tailor the exercise programme to the specific sport and focus on coach education as a key factor”
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