Pre-season prescription for injury prevention

Rahoul Ghose
ACFC Web Producer

In an all-encompassing game like soccer, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” when it comes to avoiding unnecessary injury.

Whether you’re a competitive footballer contesting the English Premiership, or a local soccer enthusiast playing 7s at the Santa Monica Airport, an injury free season – while never guaranteed – is much more achievable with the correct equipment and training practices.

Personal fitness should always be on the top of that ‘to do’ list of pre-season goals. But the method and order of training routines is as important as the duration and types of training you do.

For instance, prior to any practice or match a good stretching routine can help to prevent strains and even muscle tears. But before the stretching can truly be effective it is always a good idea to warm up your muscles with a few laps around the field. Include forward, backwards and side-to-side (crossover) movement as well as raised knees and butt kicks during the laps, dividing the laps into quarters where movements transition.

Stretching cold muscles can often do more harm than good. An even more common recipe for injury is starting your soccer routine with either long passes or hard shots on goal, which require a wide range of movement and produce a sharp impact on muscles. This habit can result in groin and hamstring pulls, especially in older players. Warm-up laps and a full stretching routine from head to toe should always precede heavy on field exercise or game play. The same routine should also become part of your end routine – ending practice with a warm-down lap and stretches. Maintaining this cycle will keep your training effective and productive.

With the movement towards all-weather artificial turf fields, equipment choices can also affect your susceptibility to common injuries: muscle pulls, turned or twisted ankles, knee hyperextensions, etc.

Boot choice, and in particular cleat patterns, can play a role in ankle and knee injuries. While boots with blade-like cleats (such as adidas Predators) are very effective on grass pitches – where the ground breaks away easily – they are a common cause of turned and twisted ankles on turf pitches, which have no give if a cleat gets caught. This effect can even extend up the leg into knee injuries as extra pressure is put on the ligaments if a boot gets caught and a leg twists.

For turf fields, obviously rubber turf shoes are ideal, with a greater concentration of lower profile studs. However, for those who want a multi-use boot for turf and grass, one with rounded cleats is far more advisable as it is less likely to get caught on the turf.

Leather outers are also preferable to nylon plastic ones which provide less cushion if you’re stepped on. Look for a boot with a thicker upper lip. There are a multitude of small bones in the foot which can be broken if you are stepped on in the wrong way. Metatarsal injuries have sidelined many pro strikers for weeks or even months.

A regular routine of taping ankles and using shin guard anklets can also strengthen your ankles for inevitable tackles and collisions during game play. Both thicker, wider sports tape or thinner and more flexible electrical tape can provide added support. Tape should be wrapped around both sides of the ankle and under the foot in a figure eight pattern. This will still allow movement, but will prevent unwanted turns for those with already injured or weakened ankle ligaments.

Another recent addition to the soccer equipment arsenal is compression wear. All major companies produce a version – adidas, nike, Puma, Under Armour – of both shorts and shirts. Compression shorts, in particular, have lowered the instance of groin and hamstring injuries by helping to prevent over extension during tackles and shots. Cost for the shorts can range anywhere from about $20 to more than $60 for the more technical varieties, which include rubber ribbing for added support.

Compression shirts can help to maintain upper body strength as a player tires. These are available in short, long and no sleeve versions. While compression wear is particularly useful for colder weather play, when it takes longer for muscles to warm up, they can be equally effective in the summer months at preventing injury.

Ultimately, nothing will make you 100 per cent injury proof. But following proper warm-up and stretching routines and choosing equipment suited to the playing environment can keep you on the field longer and performing better.