Followers of female sports will be all too familiar with Anterior Cruciate Ligament injuries.
Damage to the ACL, located in the knee, is one of the most horrific leg breaks an athlete can suffer. With it comes 9 months of rehabilitation and the real chance that players won’t come back to their previous level.
USA Women Footballer Megan Rapinoe has ruptured her ACL three times in her career. Arsenal Ladies star Danielle Carter ruptured her ACL in July, on her first game back from an ACL rupture she sustained the previous May.
There’s no doubt that women are more at risk of these kinds of injuries than men. 4 – 6 times more likely, in fact.
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Multiple factors contribute to this, including the poorer quality of pitches, courts and fields that women play on. As well as that, most sportsgear like boots is still designed solely for men’s bodies.
According to a leading knee surgeon, landing mechanics, and by extension patriarchal attitudes, is the biggest contributor to women sustaining ACL injuries.
Declan Gallagher, speaking to Tim Stillman of the Arsenal Women Arsecast, explains this phenomenon.
“It’s definitely the case that female athletes – footballers, basketballers – rotational athletes, are much more at risk of this injury.
“Things like the width of the pelvis and footwear haven’t been proven to make a difference, although it’s been suggested in the past. But things like the way that women footballers land from jumps and the way that the muscles around the thighs and the pelvis interplay with each other has a really big effect on the rotational force that goes through the knee. There’s been a huge amount of work done on jumping and landing mechanics for female footballers to reduce the risk of these injuries.
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“Essentially, ladies tend to land with their knees coming towards each other because it’s more dignified historically. That means that the knee tends to twist inwards and rotate around themselves as they land on it. So landing mechanics is probably the most influential factor when it comes to female athletes getting injured.”
