- Roar Amundsen is a research fellow at the Department of Sports Medicine at NIH.
- Read the news article about the project: One in five top league players are out with injuries every week: - Many of the injuries could have been avoided
- Read the thesis here
- Watch the defense on NIH's YouTube channel
About the project
In this project, we have documented injuries and illnesses in the Norwegian premier league of women’s football (Toppserien) for the 2020 and 2021 seasons. We hypothesised that the rapidly increasing level and demands for high-speed running in women’s football had raised the risk of muscle injuries, and therefore, had an extra focus on hamstring injuries in this project.
On average, 22% of players had an injury or illness that prevented them from participating or performing optimally every week. The results confirmed that muscle injuries (such as hamstring strains, quadriceps, and groin injuries) were now the most common type of injury in soccer. Anterior cruciate ligament injuries, concussions, and hamstring injuries were the injuries that led to the most absence among players. We specifically focused on hamstring injuries because the majority of research on hamstring injuries has been conducted on men.
Compared to what is reported among male soccer players, we observed that hamstring injuries in women were more often overuse injuries. Furthermore, while the lateral hamstring muscle is most often injured in men, we observed that in women the medial hamstring muscle were more often affected. These studies provide valuable information about the most common and severe injuries in women's soccer and, therefore, should be the focus of injury prevention training.
The Nordic hamstring exercise can reduce the risk of hamstring injuries, probably because it increases hamstring strength. In a study involving two female 1st division teams, all players performed the Nordic hamstring exercise for 8 weeks during the preseason. However, one group trained with high training volume (3 sessions per week), and the other group trained with low training volume (1 session per week).
The high-volume group also did more sets and repetitions than the low-volume group, totalling about 5 times as many repetitions as the low-volume group. Despite the significantly higher training volume, there was no difference in strength progress between the two groups. This suggest that a relatively low training volume can still be effective.
Committee
Associate professor Elin Kolle, Norwegian School of Sport Sciences (NIH), chairperson
Professor dr. med. Tim Meyer, Saarland University, 1.st opponent
Professor Eamonn Delahunt, University College Dublin, 2nd opponent
Supervisors:
Main supervisor: Roald Bahr, professor at the Department of Sports Medicine, NIH.
Co-supervisor: Merete Møller, associate professor at the Department of Sports Medicine, NIH.
Program
10.15-11.00: Trial lecture: ”Soccer heading - a sub-concussive head impact with potential long-term implications; what is the evidence?
13:00-16:00: Defense of the thesis: "Hamstring injuries in women´s football"