Neuromuscular warm-up has been shown to decrease the risk of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury improving muscular firing patterns. All preventive training programs described in the literature have a duration of several weeks. To date, no studies have explored the immediate effect of a neuromuscular warm-up exercise on pre-activation time of the knee stabilizer muscles. Thus, this proof-of-principle study aimed at evaluating the acute effects of a neuromuscular warm-up exercises on the electromyographic activation of knee stabilizer muscles’ activation pattern. We included 11 professional football players, mean aged 23.2 ± 4.5 years, from a Southern Italy football team. All of them underwent a standard warm-up exercise protocol at the first day of the evaluation. At 1 week, they underwent a structured neuromuscular warm-up exercise protocol. We assessed as outcome measure the pre-activation time (ms) of rectus femoris (RF), vastus medialis (VM), biceps femoris (BF), and medial hamstrings (MH) upon landing. Outcomes were assessed before and after the standard warm-up and neuromuscular warm-up. Pre-activation time of RF, VM, BF and MH significantly improved only after neuromuscular warm-up (p < 0.05); moreover, there was a significant (p < 0.05) between-group difference in pre-activation time of all muscles after the neuromuscular warm-up compared with the standard warm-up. These findings suggested that physical exercise consisting of a structured injury prevention neuromuscular warm-up might have an immediate effect in improving the activation time of the knee stabilizer muscles, thus potentially reducing the risk of ACL injury.
Aplicación de la dinamometría isocinética para establecer perfiles de riesgo de lesión isquiosural en futbolistas profesionales. [The use of isokinetic dynamometry to establish risk profiles of hamstring injury in professional football players].
