5 Effective Ways To Prevent An ACL Tear

Julio Jones 1 year ago 3 min read

An anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear is one of the most devastating injuries an athlete can suffer. The discomfort an ACL tear causes can hugely limit your mobility, ending your season and keeping you sidelined for a long time as well.

Therefore, if you are at risk of a Glendale ACL tear, you should take measures to reduce your likelihood of injury. This article highlights some of the best ways to avoid an ACL tear. Continue reading to learn more.

Exercise All Year Round

You can avoid an ACL tear by keeping the muscles surrounding your knees flexible and strong with a stringent exercise routine. Exercise helps keep your body in shape, and improve your balance.

While you cannot always control every previous injury you had, you can control your level of physical fitness. Keeping your body in shape can help you withstand greater stress and thus help control your likelihood of injuries.

Pay Attention to How You Move

Landing a jump on stiff legs stresses the ligaments and joints. The ACL absorbs more of this force, which raises your likelihood of injury. You can reduce this stress by bending at the hips and knee as you turn.

Bending at your knees also aligns them with your feet. Therefore, when you land, your hamstrings, glutes, and quadriceps work together to offer stability and keep the ACL form bearing the entire brunt of the force.

Avoid Exercising when You Are Overly Fatigued

It is difficult to maintain correct form when you are feeling tired. You can avoid an ACL tear by ensuring you are getting adequate sleep and by knowing when to halt workouts for the day to avoid fatigue.

Pushing yourself till you feel exhausted could also lead to muscle fatigue, which is the inability of muscles to generate force. Muscle weakness can happen for various reasons, including aging, vigorous exercise, and obesity.

Strengthen Your Quadriceps and Hamstring

The hamstring muscle on the back of your thigh functions with the quadriceps muscle at the front of your thigh to straighten and bend your legs. Strengthening these muscles helps protect against knee injuries, such as ACL tears.

If you are not familiar with exercises you can perform for your hamstring, consult your doctor or physical therapist. Your provider can instruct you on the correct exercises for your fitness and activity level.

Do Not Forget Your Core

Strengthening your hamstrings, quadriceps muscles, and glutes is crucial to reducing your likelihood of ACL tears. Nonetheless, having a stable and strong core is just as crucial. When you exercise your core, it helps your body move more effectively.

One good core workout to try is the basic plan. Besides strengthening the core, this exercise also strengthens your back, legs, shoulders, arms, and glutes, because you hold up your weight with your forearms and arms.

While ACL tears are quite common in athletes, they can also occur in non-athletes. For this reason, it is important to adopt the measures highlighted above to reduce your risk of suffering this injury.

However, should you still sustain an ACL tear, it is important to consult a specialist. Your physician will provide a professional diagnosis of your condition and suggest the most appropriate treatment, be it conservative measures or surgery.