New research indicates that a program to prevent hamstring injuries in minor league and major league baseball (MLB) players could be useful. The researchers are presenting their work at the 2016 American Orthopaedic Society of Sports Medicine’s (AOSSM) Annual Meeting.
Hamstring Injury Prevention Programs Can Work
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“Hamstring injuries, both acute and chronic are on the rise in baseball and injury prevention programs may help stem this trend, ” said lead author, Holly Silvers-Granelli, MPT, Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Delaware, in the July 8, 2016 news release.
As indicated in the news release, “Silvers-Granelli and her team assessed 213 athletes from minor league (173 players) and major league (40 players) teams and provided a portion of these individuals with a hamstring injury prevention program, including both concentric and eccentric hamstring exercises and lumbo-pelvic stability exercises preparing the athlete for the demands of competitive baseball from a neuromuscular perspective. The average weighted utilization of the injury prevention program was25.3 doses for the uninjured group and 13.53 doses in the injured group. In those individuals who followed the injury prevention program there was a 40% reduction in hamstring injuries. In addition there was a significant reduction in playing time lost due to injury in both groups who participated in the program. For the Major League players there were 9 vs. 25.9 days lost, or a 65% reduction. The Minor League players who participated in the prevention program had a similar reduction of 45.3% in lost playing time.
“This research was a prospective cluster cohort study. Each athlete completed a questionnaire detailing their hamstring injury history. The injury prevention program was disseminated to each team medical staff (team physician, certified athletic trainer and strength and conditioning coach). The medical staffs were instructed on how to implement the program. At the end of the season, the data was analyzed for compliance and injury rates and compared to the MLB control date in the HITS database.”
Silvers-Granelli told OTW, “We are in the third year of this project with Major League Baseball and minor league baseball. We predicated much of this work based off of our experiences in professional and collegiate soccer and the high rate of acute and reoccurring hamstring injuries in that sport as well. Having spent 16 years working in the realm of injury prevention in athletes, we were not surprised that a focused injury prevention/reduction program would work. There are many authors globally that have demonstrated this fact, including us. Our largest obstacle remains to be program adherence and compliance.”
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This is a fascinating development. In my practice we've seen similar outcomes with the revised protocol. The key differentiator seems to be patient selection criteria. Has anyone else noticed the correlation with BMI thresholds?
Great point. I'd push back slightly on the conclusion, the sample size in the cited study is too small to draw population-level inferences. That said, the directional signal is compelling and worth a larger RCT.
We implemented a similar approach last year. Early results are promising but we're still gathering 12-month follow-up data. Happy to share our protocol if anyone is interested.
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