Stay in the Game: 4 Physio Tips for Reducing Groin Injuries in Football

As football season approaches, it's important to take steps to prevent groin injuries. Groin injuries are common in sports that involve running, jumping, and quick direction changes. These types of movements can put a lot of strain on the adductor muscles, which run along the inner thigh and are responsible for moving the leg toward the midline of the body.

Here are 4 tips to help minimise groin injury this season:

1. Include adductor strengthening in your strength and conditioning program.

Reduced hip adductor strength is associated with an increased risk of groin injury in sport (Whitaker et al 2015). Therefore, it's important to incorporate exercises that target the adductor muscles into your strength and conditioning program. Examples of exercises that can strengthen the adductors include side-lying leg lifts, standing hip adduction with resistance bands, and adductor machine exercises.

2. Include some flexibility training targeted to the adductors or groin muscles.

Stretching is an important component of injury prevention. Including flexibility training that targets the adductors or groin muscles can help reduce the risk of injury. Examples of stretches that can help improve flexibility in the adductors include the butterfly stretch and the standing adductor stretch.

3. Include speed work with straight and curved line elements.

Gradually exposing the body to high-speed running that will be required in-season can help reduce the risk of groin injury. Incorporating speed work with straight and curved line elements into your training program can help improve your body's ability to handle these movements.

4. Perform an injury reduction warm-up program like the FIFA 11+, Touch Time, Footy First.

Warm-up programs that are specifically designed to reduce the risk of injury can be highly effective. The FIFA 11+ program, for example, is an injury reduction program that incorporates specific strengthening, motor control, and jumping/landing exercises into a structured warm-up session 2-3x weekly. The FIFA 11+ has been shown to reduce football injuries in recreational/subelite football by 39% (Harøy et al 2019). It was also shown to reduce hamstring, hip/groin, knee, and ankle injuries (60%, 41%, 48%, and 32% respectively). A meta-analysis (a statistical procedure for combining data from multiple studies) showed that injury reduction programs (like FIFA11+), can not only decrease ACL injury up to 50%, but all knee injuries by 30% (Thorborg et al 2017).

It's important to note that injury prevention/reduction is more nuanced than just completing a specific warm-up. However, incorporating the FIFA 11+ warm-up program can provide a valuable tool to help guide future directions in minimising the burden of injury in the football population.

In conclusion, preventing groin injuries requires a comprehensive approach that includes strengthening, flexibility, and speed work, as well as incorporating an injury reduction warm-up program. At our physiotherapy clinic, we can help develop a personalised injury prevention program that is tailored to your specific needs and goals. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you stay injury-free this season.

Flow Knows Episode 3 - Exercise Management of Osteoporosis

Jason & Craig sat down to talk about the Clinical Guidelines for managing Osteoporosis and Osteopenia.

Flow Know Episode 2 - Strength training to reduce injury risk in sport

Craig and Jason sat down this week to talk about why they place such a big emphasis on strength training for their clients and how they can help people bridge the gap to improve their function and performance in sport and life. ⁣ ⁣

Source: Lauersen et al (2018) Strength training as superior, dose-dependent and safe prevention of acute and overuse sports injuries: a systematic review, qualitative analysis and meta-analysis⁣

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!

Flow Turns 2 - Flow Physio Co Sutherland

Last week Flow Physio Co Sutherland celebrated 2 years operating in the Sutherland Shire.

Jason sat down to talk through the 2 years and give a big thank you to the Flow community.

His top 2 tips from the 2 years:

1. Prioritise your health. Without your health, how do you expect to look after your family, run a business and do all the things you want to do?

2. Learn how you manage your stressors. Stress is inevitable and a part of a healthy life. It’s not in the stress that you bear, it’s how you handle it.

Happy ✌🏽 years.
Here’s to many more.