Significance of hamstring muscular reactivity development for ACL protection
Nowadays, when you meet medical professionals and ask them questions concerning the most efficient way to protect your ACLs* and lower the chances of you tearing them while doing sports, they most of the time answer that well developed hamstrings equals to a well protected ACL. Following these statements, isokinetic tests are usually prescribed to you to evaluate the strength of your hamstrings and eventually you are told you need to reinforce them.
The same applies to people who underwent surgery. It is indeed common that during the months following the surgery, patients tend to lose muscular strength in the muscles surrounding the body part that was operated due to the limitation of range of motion they are imposed. This especially applies to orthopaedic surgeries as the joints in our body often connect several muscles. Concerning the knee joint for example, there are three groups of muscles surrounding it:
- The quadriceps muscles
- The hamstring muscles
- The calf muscles
Therefore following ACL surgery, losing muscular strength in some of these muscles (frequently in the hamstrings) is often the case and this leads doctors to making you do isokinetic tests and exercises. In the medical field, it is common knowledge that the hamstrings constitute the first barrier in protecting the ACL.
Through this article, I do not want to say that enhancing hamstrings is a bad but rather that it is not enough to protect the ACL.
When a person does pivot sports, the ACL is often put in stress increasing the chances of a potential tear. This is the case because while doing these agility sports, the tibia tends to move a lot around the femur and the ACL's role is to hold it in place. Abrupt movements are often responsible for a torn ACL but thanks to mother nature, most of them do not lead to rupturing the ACL. Our body indeed has its own defense mechanism against those kinds of movements!
This defense mechanism is called the ligamento-musculor reflex and studies have proven that this reflex takes up to 50-60 ms to make its apparition following a movement that puts the ACL in stress. A torn ACL therefore happens when the stress applied on the ACL is too high and when it occurs under 50-60 ms.
What I am saying is that developing hamstring muscular reactivity is also necessary on behalf of developing the hamstring muscles to attain optimal protection of the ACL.
Following this conclusion, the company GENOUROB created a medical device called the GNRB REHAB IP which allows patients to develop the muscular anticipatory contraction of the hamstrings by providing specific exercises.
GNRB REHAB IP: It is an effective medical device that analyses the anterior cruciate ligament and provides exercises to enhance the protection of the ACL
The exercises provided by this device are the following: The tibia is subjected to a force obliging the patient to contract its hamstrings before the ACL is put in stress. This allows to create a new pattern (reflex) to protect the ACL adding new neuro-motor programming. Consequently, when a patient finds himself back on the field doing agility sports, a second defense barrier is present for the protection of his ACLs (this is done unconsciously).
This device has proven to be efficient because over the past few years, GENOUROB has gained data on professional athletes and in a lot of cases it was seen that in one hand they had well developed hamstrings but on the other low muscular reactivity. This can explain why some of them tend to more often tear their ACLs.
If you are interested in knowing more about the GNRB REHAB IP, check out this website:
You can also contact me on [email protected] or leave me a comment.
In the description of the device (next to the picture of the device), it is written that this device also analyses the state and performance of the ACL. To get more information on this function, I invite you to read the other articles I wrote which are available on my profile page:
- Importance of ACL state follow-up : A new vision of ACL rehabilitation
- How to ensure the success of ACL surgery
-Yves Crystal
*Anterior Cruciate Ligament