Landing on Your Toes Protects Your Knees

Changes in training of female athletes can reduce shear forces on knee joints and anterior cruciate ligament injuries, a new UC Davis study, published online in the Journal of Biomechanics, says.

David Hawkins, professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior at UC Davis conducted the study at the UC Davis Human Performance Laboratory with graduate student Casey Myers, and he said that by focusing on easy intervention shear load could be reduced in 100 percent of the volunteers.

The two researchers worked with 14 female basketball players from UC Davis and local high schools, whom they fitted with instruments that measured their movements and muscle activity and also calculated the forces that acted on their knee joints.

Sandy Simpson, UC Davis women's basketball coach, said that most ACL injuries do not involve a collision between players or a noticeably bad landing.

The anterior cruciate ligament that lies in the middle of the knee and provides stability to the joint is highly solicited and “It almost always happens coming down from a rebound, catching a pass or on a jump-stop lay-up, it doesn't have to be a big jump.”

For the experiment, scientists first recorded the normal movements of the athletes and then they instructed them to jump higher to land more steeply, land on their toes and bend their knees more, before taking off again.

Once the new techniques were applied, the 14 volunteers were able to reduce the force passed up to the knee joint through the leg bone by an average of 56 percent and at the same time they were able to jump an inch higher without losing speed.

Even though this study does not prove that these techniques will reduce ACL injuries, Hawkins recommends warm-ups that exercise the knee and focusing on landing on the toes, e! Science News reports.

Simpson said that the team had tried making some changes during last year's preseason, but once the full regular season began, they found it difficult to continue the focus.

“We will be talking about this again this season,” he said.