Male soccer player kicking
Photo by Ben Weber

The mechanism behind hamstring injuries in professional soccer

Paper summary Prevention Rehab

This is a summary of the insights from the research paper "Hamstring injury patterns in professional male football (soccer): a systematic video analysis of 52 cases".

Hamstring injury patterns in professional male football

What causes non-contact hamstring injuries in professional soccer? 🤔

ℹ️ Hamstring injuries are amongst the most common injuries in soccer. Based on the video analysis of 52 cases, researchers found that 48% of hamstring injuries that occurred were sprint-related and 52% stretch-related. 🤕

  1. Rapid movements with high eccentric demands of the posterior thigh are likely the main hamstring injury mechanism.

Sprint-related injuries occur during linear acceleration or high-speed running, whereas stretch-related injuries occur in closed chain movements like braking or stopping with a lunging or landing action and open chain movements like kicking.

  1. The Biceps femoris was the most affected muscle (79%) of all included cases.

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👉 Read the full paper here.