ACL / Knee Injury Prevention Part 2 - Rose's Landing Technique Has Thorns
- Sep 30, 2014
- 4 min read
Dr. James Andrews is a world renowned orthopedic surgeon whose specialty is knees, shoulders, and elbows. He has performed surgeries on professional and amateur athletes for over 40 years with clients that include Drew Brees (shoulder) and Robert Griffen III (knee). These are his observations regarding the increase in youth athletic injuries.
"I started seeing a sharp increase in youth sports injuries, particularly baseball, beginning around 2000," Andrews told The Cleveland Plain Dealer. "I started tracking and researching, and what we've seen is a five- to sevenfold increase in injury rates in youth sports across the board. I'm trying to help these kids, given the epidemic of injuries that we're seeing. That's sort of my mission: to keep them on the playing field and out of the operating room.”
He stated “As sports physicians, we've all been amiss for years worrying about putting people back together and fixing things and new techniques. But we've largely ignored the real problem: prevention of injuries. Everybody now agrees that the time is right to keep these kids from getting hurt so often.”
Philadelphia Children’s Hospital studied their records and reported a 400% increase in ACL surgeries from 2003 to 2013. Preventing ACL injuries has become an issue in the sports medical community. Several orthopedic surgeons have done extensive film study of actual ACL injuries. They concluded that ACL injuries were most likely to occur:
When landing from a jump
Decelerating from a sprint
Changing directions rapidly
Performing these movements with the knee at full extension or near full extension.
The center of mass was typically behind or beside the support base.
“Correct” landing technique according to many in the sports medicine community is to land with the feet, knees, and hips aligned vertically. To land “soft” on the balls of the feet, rolling back onto the heels and bending the knees to absorb the impact force. This is not the correct way to land for two reasons. Athletes are often so focused on making a play that they land haphazardly with no regard for their lower body posture. They are unaware of how their posture magnifies or reduces the force of impact. Landing with the legs straight or worse yet, landing on one leg with the knee straight when moving at high speed applies a tremendous amount of force to the lower body. If they mistime their landing and don’t land “soft”, the force of impact pushes the upper and lower leg bones violently into the meniscus. Repeated landings done without bent knees may lead to cartilage damage.
Even timed correctly, landing with the feet, knees, and hips aligned vertically puts more stress on the lower body than landing wide, with the feet spread roughly 1 ½ times shoulder width and the knees bent to the point that the thighs are halfway to parallel with the floor. It isn’t obvious to the naked eye that landing narrow stresses the lower body differently than landing wide, but it does. Stand with your feet shoulder width and do 20 partial squats. Do 20 partial squats with the feet spread 1 ½ times shoulder width and it becomes apparent that these simple movements stress the lower body differently. Squatting or landing narrow focuses the landing stress on the quadriceps and minimizes involvement of the glutes and hamstrings. Landing or squatting wide uses the glutes, hamstrings, and quads. You can squat more weight squatting wide; you can take more landing impacts landing wide. You can’t mistime your landing attempting to land “soft” landing wide and abuse the meniscus.
While writing this post with SportsCenter on for a little background noise, they interviewed Derrick Rose, the all-star guard for the Chicago Bulls. He has missed almost all of the last two seasons due a torn ACL and torn meniscus. Both were non-contact injuries caused by repetitive stress. He was injured making moves that he routinely made without a problem. During the broadcast, they showed a highlight of him dunking during a recent practice for the US Men’s FIBA basketball team. He jumped up and threw down a tremendous two handed dunk, and landed on his left leg, knee straight, with his right leg bent and held up in the air. The force of landing was absorbed solely by one leg. During that dunk highlight he stated in a voice over that, “His confidence was through the roof”. Unfortunately his awareness level on how to reduce the stress of play on his lower body is not. Every jump shot he takes he lands with his legs straight and feet narrow, and often when he’s moving, he lands on one leg. These mistakes, landing narrow, straight legged, and on one leg, all increase stress to the lower body, and provide no performance advantage to justify their use. His durability would improve by modifying his landing technique. He would be less likely to suffer another repetitive stress injury landing wide.
Kids copy their athletic heroes. If Derrick Rose lands on one leg, with his knee at full extension, it can’t be wrong in their minds.
Dr. Robert Litchfield, Medical Director of the Fowler Kennedy Sport Medicine Clinic at the University of Western Ontario and is part of the Canadian Alpine Ski Team medical group. Dr. Litchfield believes an athlete like LeBron James will never suffer an ACL tear. “When he comes down from a dunk, he comes down very low and powerfully versus coming down on an extended leg.” In short, LeBron’s legs are bowed, and athletes who bow their legs generally don’t tear their ACLs.
LeBron’s landing technique minimizes the force of impact. Derrick Rose’s landing technique is careless, puts needless stress on his lower body, and increases his risk of injury. This is true for young athletes as well. Protect your legs by landing like LeBron!
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