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Eccentric hamstring exercises linked with reduced injury rates in baseball
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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Utilization of eccentric hamstring exercises in major and minor baseball leagues reduced the incidence of hamstring injuries, according to results presented here.
“We believe that the study and the program we instituted [was] effective in reducing [the] incidence of hamstring injuries in both major and minor league clubs,” James Zachazewski, DPT, MS, said in his presentation at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine Annual Meeting. “In the 2014 and 2015 seasons, eccentric hamstring exercises appear to be a critical component in this program and program compliance may also be paramount and an important factor.”
A total of 213 minor and Major League Baseball (MLB) players completed a questionnaire detailing their history of hamstring injury. Zachazewski and colleagues instructed the team physician, certified athletic trainer, and strength and conditioning coach on how to implement a hamstring injury prevention program and collected weekly individual compliance with the program and injury data. Researchers compared program compliance and hamstring injury rates to the control data in the MLB HITS database.
“[The] average program utilization for those in the uninjured group was 25.3 and in the injured [group] was 13.5,” Zachazewski said. “Although this did not rise to level of significance, we feel that this is important to know and we hope that this would rise to the level of significance with a larger sample size.”
Results showed a 25% reduction in hamstring injuries in the major baseball leagues and a 40% reduction in hamstring injuries in the minor baseball leagues. Major and minor baseball leagues also had a significant reduction in time loss due to injury, according to researchers, with a 65.3% reduction in time loss in the major baseball leagues and a 45.3% reduction in time loss in the minor leagues. – by Casey Tingle
Reference:
Silvers HJ, et al. Paper #130. Presented at: American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine Annual Meeting; July 8-11, 2016; Colorado Springs, Colo.
Disclosure: Zachazewski reports a publishing relationship with Elsevier Publishers.