Lower limb risk prevention in athletes: evaluation and strategies

Abstract

Risk prevention of sports-related lower limb musculoskeletal injuries in adult and youth athletes is an important topic encompassing health and economic factors. For example, muscle injuries in professional football players could expose these athletes to recurrence, creating a significant economic problem for the football club. Such observations have led to the development of prevention programs, predominantly exercise-based injury prevention strategies, which may be multi-component or single-component. These programs focus on intrinsic risk factors, such as strength deficits, lack of flexibility, poor balance, coordination, endurance, previous injury, body size, anatomical alignment issues, foot shape, age, and sex. The FIFA 11+ program is an important example of an exercise-based program. It was developed under the leadership of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association with the aim of evaluating and, where necessary, implementing preventive training routines for soccer players. Despite the program being designed for soccer players, it has shown efficacy in other sports too. Many studies also emphasize the importance of identifying and avoiding extrinsic risk factors related to type and level of activity, shoe type, bracing equipment, etc. Understanding of the incidence, the severity, and the etiology of a specific injury is required in order to provide adequate prevention measures and to reduce the need for surgery. The present study focuses explicitly on identifying and evaluating possible interventions for lower limb injuries.