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Ramgator
One....Players dive into players to make a tackle on bring down (Goes with my gripe about helmets being TOO easy on the head and TACKLING not being taught from Pop Warner up..............Second....Call me crazy and I know I'll catch flak....PLAYERS ARE TOO BIG!! O line men are ALL over 300 LBs. Safeties are the size of D line guys 30 years ago. Everyone is faster. BUT.........The ACLs are STILL THE SAME SIZE!!! You can juice up, protein shake up, bulk up ALLLLLLLLLLL ypu want but the ACL is STILL a tiny band holding knees / CAREERS together. IMO.......I say again..........IMO.....There is gonna HAVE to be a size limitation to each position or all of this will get WORSE!
The research discussed in the article only looks at non-contact knee injuries. Which btw is a large percentage of them.
What they find is that there are certain drills and exercises that can lower the number of injuries.
The problem:
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Mandelbaum...spent nearly two decades studying how to prevent and reduce ACL injuries, a quest that began when he and other doctors saw a spike in knee injuries among female teenage athletes in Southern California. They realized that when the athletes were jumping, landing or decelerating, deficiencies in their hip caused the upper legs to turn in, excessive strain on the ACL.
A possible effective solution:
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In response, he developed the PEP program, which consists of warm-up and strengthening exercises, plyometrics and stretches in order to promote better posture and control.
And he has results:
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Mandelbaum said that he has helped some high school and college teams reduce the frequency of non-contact ACL injuries by upwards of 70 percent.
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