Hamstring injury rates have increased during recent seasons and now constitute 24% of all injuries in men’s professional football: the UEFA Elite Club Injury study from 2001/02 to 2021/22.

Review written by Adam Johnson info

Key Points

  1. Despite the greater awareness and recognition of best practice injury prevention practices, hamstring injury incidence and burden continues to increase.
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BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE

As clinicians it is vitally important for us to understand what injuries are most prevalent within the cohort we are working with. Firstly, so we can identify which injuries are likely to affect our players during the season ahead. If we have a clear understanding of what may affect our players then we can put into place interventions aimed at reducing the risk of these injuries, and subsequently give us the best chance of a successful season.

Secondly it may also be important for us to benchmark ourselves against similar clubs to highlight if there is a discrepancy between the injury patterns seen locally compared to the competition. If this is the case then again, actions can be made to try and address these discrepancies.

What has been known for a long period of time is that hamstring injuries provide one of the biggest challenges to medical professionals working with elite football. This was highlighted within the work of Ekstrand in 2016 (1), where an increasing annual trend in the burden of hamstring injuries was identified.

The objective of this particular paper was further analyse the trends of hamstring injuries within the past 21 years of the UEFA Elite Club Injury Study, with specific attention being paid to the previous eight years and the location, mechanism and recurrence of these injuries.

What has been known for a long period of time is that hamstring injuries provide one of the biggest challenges to medical professionals working with elite football.
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Have we settled into a belief that by implementing one exercise, we can rest easy in the knowledge that we have done “our bit” to prevent hamstring injuries in our own environment?

METHODS

The study took data from the past 21 years of the UEFA Elite Club Injury Study, whereby all teams who qualified for the group stages of the UEFA Champions League were invited to take part. This resulted in a total

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