Swelling, Instability, and More: The Common Symptoms of an ACL Injury

If you've recently injured your ACL, you may have experienced a pop or snap at the time of the injury, or you may have felt pain immediately.

Some people don't feel any pain initially but notice that their knee feels "off."

In the hours and days following the injury, it is common to experience swelling around the knee, instability, and difficulty controlling the movement of the knee.

It is also possible to have additional injuries to the meniscus or cartilage in the knee.

If you have injured your ACL, it is important to seek medical attention to properly diagnose and treat the injury.

Netball Knee Program - Reducing injury and improving performance - Physio Sutherland

Joel is a Physiotherapist from Flow Physio Co Sutherland with a passion for helping sportspeople perform at their best. Today he talks through the Netball Australia KNEE Program for improving performance and reducing injury risk.

What is the Netball KNEE Program?

The Netball KNEE program is a court-side warm up to help players prepare to play, move efficiently and land safely. It was designed by Netball Australia and a bunch of experts from various fields for people of all levels.

The goal is to build strength and control of your body in short, sharp movements that are specific to netball. What we’ve seen it do is improve performance and reduce chance of injuries - because you’re stronger, faster and fitter!

Why do the Netball Knee Program?

Knees and ankles are the most common injuries in netballers and most of these injuries occur when landing. The Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) represents roughly 1/3 of serious injuries reported in netballers every year.

The KNEE Program is based on injury prevention programs that have been proven effective in reducing lower limb injuries generally and specifically reducing ACL injuries from 40–70% (Netball Australia).

How can we implement it?

What we want to do at Flow is to provide an individualised exercise program for any netballer that comes into the clinic based on this program. We want to teach you this program to be able to use it as your warm up for training and games to reduce your injury risk and improve your performance on the court.

We would run you through a 1 on 1 assessment, looking at injury history and where you want to improve, then we will design a program individualised for you that you can complete in our group classes here in the clinic.

If you want to use this as a fitness session for you and a few team members, we can organise sessions just for you and your teammates. If you want to work individually on improving yourself, we are happy to work with that too!

Get in touch and we can chat about how it might work best for you!

STRENGTH TRAINING FOR DECREASING INJURY RISK - FLOW KNOWS

Craig from Flow Physio Co Sutherland talks to us about a recent study that looked at the effects of strength training on injury risk. Read on for more.

Strength training programs as a whole reduced the likelihood of injury by 66% (Lauersen et al 2018)

A recent meta-analysis of 6 studies with a combined total of 7739 participants aged from 12-40 published in the BJSM looked at strengthening intervention on injury risk.

It was found that strength training programs as a whole reduced the likelihood of injury by 66% with 95% certainty!

It was also found that the longer programs provided the most favourable results.

The programs had an average of 8 months with zero adverse effects reported.

Strength training appears to have a direct preventative effect for injuries of the hamstrings, ACL and anterior knee pain.

Take Home Messages:

• This study obviously indicates the benefits of implementing a strengthening program for all athletes and weekend warriors regardless of age or sport

• Consistency over time provides the greatest benefits

• Strength training is safe

• Appropriate dosage and progression is important

Reference: Lauersen JB, Andersen TE, Andersen LB. Strength training as superior, dose-dependent and safe prevention of acute and overuse sports injuries: a systematic review, qualitative analysis and meta-analysis Br J Sports Med 2018;52:1557-1563.

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Returning to sport after ACL surgery - When are you ready?

What is guiding your return to sport after your Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) surgery?

What makes you confident in your decision to return to sport?

We too often see clients who have no clear pathway to return to sport. Here is a brief snapshot of what we assess to make sure we are helping our clients decrease their risk of re-injury when returning to sport:

1. >90% on lower limb strength testing comparative to uninjured side

2. >90% on hop testing comparative to uninjured side (single leg hop, single leg triple hop, single leg crossover hop, timed 6m hop, lateral hop)

3. >9 months post surgery

4. Implementation of an ongoing prevention program

5. Confidence to return to sport as assessed through questionnaires

We know that returning to cutting sports like AFL, soccer, rugby, netball after an ACL surgery means around a 4 times greater risk of re-injury. Making sure you meet these criteria before return to sport has been shown to reduce injury rates by up to 84%.

What guiding your decision to return to sport after ACL reconstruction? We’d love to know!

84% decrease in ACL re-injury risk using simple decision rules

A recent study outlines simple decision rules that may decrease re-injury risk by up to 84% after ACL reconstruction.

The main take-aways from the study were:

1. Patients who returned to pivoting and cutting sports had a 4.32 times higher re-injury rate than those who did not

2. Re-injury rate was significantly reduced by 51% for each month return to sport was delayed until 9-months after surgery

3. Almost 40% of those who failed return to sport criteria suffered re-injuries versus 5% of those who passed

4.  More symmetrical quads strength prior to return significantly reduced knee injury rate

SEE STUDY HERE