This article provides a summary of the Knee Control injury prevention programme for young floorball athletes. Special considerations for girls are listed.
Who
471 community-level floorball athletes aged between 12 to 17 (Sweden).
floorball – a form of hockey with 5 players and a goalkeeper; played in 68 countries
Design
Cluster randomised controlled trial.
cluster – all teams from the same club were randomised to be in the same group
Intervention group
- Running warm-up and the Knee Control injury prevention programme: lower limb and core strength, neuromuscular control, balance, jumping and landing.
- 10-15 minutes used before each training session in-season (and running component used before each game)
- on average 1.45 (±1.02) sessions per week
Control group
- trained as usual
Main results
- There were 349 unique injuries in 222 athletes (47%) during the study.
- The intervention group had a 35% lower incidence of all injuries and a 45% lower incidence of acute injuries compared with the control group.
- There was no difference in overuse injuries.
- Females in the intervention group had a higher prevalence of knee injuries compared to the control group. Most of these knee injuries were overuse injuries.
- Compliance with intervention programme was on average 84% (range 13 - 100%) (F: 83% M: 85%).
Take home message
Original article
Åkerlund I, Waldén M, Sonesson S, Hägglund M. Forty-five per cent lower acute injury incidence but no effect on overuse injury prevalence in youth floorball players (aged 12–17 years) who used an injury prevention exercise programme: two-armed parallel-group cluster randomised controlled trial. British journal of sports medicine. 2020 Jan 28.