Mellsblue wrote:I have an end of season coaches meeting in a couple of weeks when I will have this on the agenda, and I’d like to be well prepared. What’s the science behind it, ie why does it reduce incidents of concussion?
Fundamentally, it's about both strength and control of muscles that can help limit injury.
Take an ankle, for example. Most common injury is a sprain caused by overstretching the ankle, or "turning it" / "going over it" in common speak.
If you train up the ankle's sense of where it is in space, and its internal stretch receptors, then it can detect that stretch before it's too late, and fire the protective muscles.
If those muscles are also strong enough, then it prevents the injury happening in the first place.
The muscles that control the ankle can be as strong as you like, but if you (for example) can't stand on one leg with your eyes closed for more than 10 seconds without falling over, there's no way in hell, you'll be able to use them in time (or in a proportionate manner) because the neurology just isn't there.
Now, for an ankle, pretty much everyone's muscles will be strong enough (though most in rugby could do with more training anyway - a stronger muscle has greater capacity, and typically has greater control at sub-maximal effort, with some nuance on how it's trained), but without that control, they can't prevent injuries.
For a neck, for example, the muscles probably aren't strong enough either - because, aside from professionals and some dedicated props - who the hell strength-trains their neck muscle regularly? Most people will also have poor control and knowledge of how stretched the joints all are (simple test is to strap a laser pointer to the head; individual centres it on a target on the wall, closes their eyes, looks left, looks right, and tries to find the same starting position before opening their eyes). The neck strength and co-ordination are the ones that can help reduce concussion, rather than ankle sprains, as the head is less likely to flop around uselessly in a whiplash manner after a tackle or head contact.
For the hamstring, for example (where the Nordic Curls Activate incorporates reduce hamstring strains by about 80% IIRC - I should be able to find the individual research if you want it) - most hamstring injuries occur when the muscle is controlling it's own lengthening (eccentric contraction), so learning to do that with better strength and better control, reduces those injuries massively.
TL:DR: You could always present it the same way I mentioned for my squash kid. These are (more or less) the exercises a physio would have you doing if injured. If you do them before the injury then A] you reduce your chance of being injured, and B] you boost your expected recovery, as you've had a head-start on the rehab.
You could also easily take that research I linked on page 1 showing 25% reduction in match-day injuries and 60% reduction in training injuries by doing Activate, typically once a week. Doing it more often had a bigger effect (though the numbers mean that that's a low-confidence statement)
Oakboy wrote:WT, some 10 or so years back when I was involved with training young squash players I became convinced by a guy who condemned stretching without warming up first. His background was football and he reckoned stretching cold muscles led to lots of pulls/tears. Is that still the modern thinking?
It's been a while since I looked into this specifically, but...
It used to be that "everyone knows" stretching before challenging prevents injury.
It was then found to be bullshit, and that it slightly increases the risk, for some injuries and some stretches in some circumstances.
So, in trying to counter the "everyone knows" narrative, people went OTT and laid into stretches, and the baby got thrown out with the bathwater (this sort of thing happens a lot, in all walks of life TBH - if you decide that your previous bias what wrong, humans have a tendency to become "reborn" in the opposite direction for a bit, and typically then mellow their response after a few years of that - and yes, I'm guilty of this myself).
In reality, and in my opinion... pre-event stretching is pretty much useless, you want repeated contraction in the muscle to activate it (both in general, and task-specific), speed up it's responses, and get the blood flowing to it a little more. Stretching in part changes the length of the muscle from what the brain thinks it is (which is kinda the point of stretching) meaning it doesn't have quite the same control, and predisposing to increased injury risk... if stretching is done as the only warm-up for that muscle.
However, the placebo effect is stronger, so if the individual believes that stretching is beneficial, it becomes (mildly) beneficial. If the individual believes that it is harmful, it becomes (slightly more) harmful. If the individual's belief is neutral, then it's a slight increase in injury risk... if the same muscle isn't then warmed up with activation exercises (preferably including all of isometric, concentric, eccentric, and plyometric - if they're going to be used that way in-event).
I hope that answers your questions guys. Though I do have a habit of answering different questions to the ones actually meant, especially if I get on a hobby-horse.
