smac wrote:Also can be attributed to being 'top heavy' I believe - the arms/shoulders/pecs are too bulky for the knees to carry when doing the twisting you speak of FC.
I think the term you are looking for is muscle imbalance between the hamstrings and the quads when the quads have a far greater strength ratio to teh hamstrings than is optimal. This can be due to training and fatigue.
lots of research on Quad to hamsting strength ratios on the aetiolgy of ACL injury in teh late 80s and early 90s.
Locky is it a function of the training or the change in game tactics where there is far more jogging and high speed running in todays game compared to the 60s and 70s and it was much more stop start.
Studies done by Jaques and pavia in the 70s showed a relatively high proportion of player activity (compared to now) was standing and walking - this gave the the players time to recover between efforts.
Nowdays with the amount of high intensity running and jogging being so much greater - flooding and run and carry handball orientated games the modern football athlete just doesn't stop hence the muscles get fatigued and then pop....
in the 80s studies showed that players rarely ran at high intensity for more than 4 s at a time. And only 7% of game time was spent in high intensity running.
GPS data and the pineapple head data from teh 90s showed that players are spending more game time at high intensity running and that the average epoch (time spent at high speed) was drifting out to six and eight seconds.
Actually there is a train of thought the higher the training intensity and volume the better the athlete is able to cope with this modern style of play...
IMO it isn't the training per se it is the change in tactics (more handball orientated and running game) that has led to more muscle strains and knee sprains.
I blame Jack Oatey and Len Smith....
