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Kelvin Benjamin tears ACL


boyst

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Can anyone with a medical background and/or strength training/PT background attempt a theory as to what is going on with NFL players tearing ACL seemingly so often? What gets me is that the ACL tears happen frequently on non/low contact plays.

 

My thought is something I've seen others propose--that these guys have become SO big and SO muscular that their inertia when going one direction and then switching quickly to another creates a load that is too much for the knee to handle. It can't take the force of the change of direction and then tears.

 

Now, I have no data that shows there are more ACL/knee ligament injuries than back in the day, but when OLineman used to be 240 pounds it's just a totally different scenario for the body.

 

I also liken this to Tiger Woods' situation. He had already had knee troubles fairly early in his career because of the sheer viciousness of his swing, especially the snapping motion of his left knee through impact. His trainers/doctors told him not to get above 180 lbs because his knee couldn't handle the load, yet he ignored them and bulked up to almost 200 lbs, having an especially large upper body.

 

Are these guys TOO big and muscular for their own good?

 

Also, this got me thinking. I'm surprised that sports doctors haven't yet come out with a way to provide reinforcement to the ligaments of athletes, especially in the knees, in an effort to prevent tears. These guys and girls are absolute beasts compared to athletes of years ago, yet the vulnerabilities of the joints and ligaments remain unchanged. Yes, the treatments are better for tears, but I just wonder when someone will be proactive about things like ACL tears and actually create procedures to help prevent these injuries.

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Can anyone with a medical background and/or strength training/PT background attempt a theory as to what is going on with NFL players tearing ACL seemingly so often? What gets me is that the ACL tears happen frequently on non/low contact plays.

 

My thought is something I've seen others propose--that these guys have become SO big and SO muscular that their inertia when going one direction and then switching quickly to another creates a load that is too much for the knee to handle. It can't take the force of the change of direction and then tears.

 

Now, I have no data that shows there are more ACL/knee ligament injuries than back in the day, but when OLineman used to be 240 pounds it's just a totally different scenario for the body.

 

I also liken this to Tiger Woods' situation. He had already had knee troubles fairly early in his career because of the sheer viciousness of his swing, especially the snapping motion of his left knee through impact. His trainers/doctors told him not to get above 180 lbs because his knee couldn't handle the load, yet he ignored them and bulked up to almost 200 lbs, having an especially large upper body.

 

Are these guys TOO big and muscular for their own good?

 

Also, this got me thinking. I'm surprised that sports doctors haven't yet come out with a way to provide reinforcement to the ligaments of athletes, especially in the knees, in an effort to prevent tears. These guys and girls are absolute beasts compared to athletes of years ago, yet the vulnerabilities of the joints and ligaments remain unchanged. Yes, the treatments are better for tears, but I just wonder when someone will be proactive about things like ACL tears and actually create procedures to help prevent these injuries.

overtraining and not enough recovery time. Guys of all sizes are going down, not just bigger ones like benjamin. Stretching is probably the worst thing ... ligaments shouldn't be stretched, all that does is weaken them

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Unfortunate, but the nature of the game. So many good young ones have gone down over the years, including Bills. I remember when we had a monster rookie fullback named Ben Gregory, who everybody was raving about. He tore up his knee in one of his first few games and never made it effectively back.

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I am a NASM certified trainer and I can tell you for the most part ligaments don't stretch...The philosophy is to strengthen the stabilization muscles around a joint by putting the body in an unstable environment .After sufficiently strengthening those muscles you can support more strenuous conditions.The body has a natural defence system built in to combat over stressing muscles,tendons and ligaments.A good example would be hypertension of your elbow and the reaction being your bicep flexing uncontrolled as a response to the stress.Theses athletes push that envelope of power and speed and that reaction sort of adapts to being pushed further and further.It could be conditioning but these strength and conditioning coaches are really good.More likely it's just bad luck combined with pushing the natural boundaries of the body a little to far.

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