This year has been huge for women’s sport, from the Lionesses winning the Euros for the second time to the Red Roses winning the Rugby World Cup on home soil. It’s hard not to feel inspired by their successes and thousands of women and girls are expected to take up new sports as a result.
In fact, research by Cromwell Hospital shows that over a third of women say watching teams like the Lionesses and Red Roses motivates them to try new sports or return to old ones.
It is estimated that 129,000 more women are playing football than five years ago and the number of women playing rugby has risen by 38%, with over 500 clubs now offering women and girls games.
With taking up a new sport comes the risk of injury and Cromwell Hospital has seen a rise in women’s sports injuries over the last five years.
The research also found that two-thirds say they’ve experienced a sports injury, with over half admitting they usually wait and hope an injury improves before seeking help.
Nearly half feel that women’s injuries aren’t taken as seriously in sport as men’s and four in ten believe that injury-prevention programmes ignore women’s specific needs.
Miss Samantha Tross, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at Cromwell Hospital, said: “Year on year we are seeing an increase in women and girls presenting with sports injuries, which range from ACL tears, stress fractures and shoulder injuries.
While it is wonderful to see more women and girls getting involved in new sports or staying in these sports, it’s evident that more needs to be done to help prevent injury and support women to get back into sport after recovery. With the successes of our women’s teams this summer, we’re expecting to see an influx of injuries off the back of the sports continuing to grow”
Injury prevention should be an important part of any athlete’s training schedule; however, when something does happen it is vital to act quickly and not brush it off in order to keep playing. It could lead to worse outcomes, explains Miss Tross: “If you pick up an injury while playing sport, it’s really important that you stop and get treatment as soon as possible. Don’t leave it till it gets worse as it could become a lot more serious and recovery can take longer. For some injuries, you will immediately feel the impact of the injury and be unable to continue with the sport, in this case it’s incredibly important you receive medical treatment as soon as possible.”
Miss Tross outlines common sports injuries in women and her tips on how to reduce the risk of them happening:
ACL injuries:
An ACL injury is a partial or complete tear, a stretched ligament, or a detachment of the ligament from the bone.
Your knee is a hinge joint comprised of three bones: the thigh bone (femur), shin bone (tibia), and kneecap (patella). These bones are connected by bands of tissue called ligaments. A ligament is a structure that holds the bones together and helps to control joint movement.
There are four main knee ligaments: there is a ligament on each side of the knee called the collateral ligaments, and two ligaments deep inside the joint called the cruciate ligaments, which cross each other.
The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) runs through the middle of the knee. The ACL helps to control rotational movements of the knee as well as prevent the shin bone from sliding forward in front of the thigh bone.
Most ACL injuries occur during sports that involve sudden changes in direction, like in football. ACL injuries can also be caused by excessive bending or straightening of the leg, a blow to the knee, twisting movements, or awkward landings when jumping, for example when playing basketball, netball, or rugby.
We’ve seen a huge rise in ACL injuries in women and girls who play football. Research has found that female athletes are 3-6 times more likely to get an ACL injury compared to men, and there’s a lack of evidence to explain why that is.
Stress fractures:
Stress fractures are tiny cracks in a bone and repeated stress to the bone causes them. They often occur when using the same part of the body too much, this could include jumping up and down or running long distances. Stress fractures can also happen when bones are weaker due to conditions such as osteoporosis.
Stress fractures are most common in the lower leg and foot and tend to occur if you start a new exercise or sport and do too much too soon.
At first, you might barely notice the pain from a stress fracture, but it tends to become worse if you do more of an activity that puts stress on the cracked bone. It will start as a tender feeling in a certain spot which gets better with rest.
Women are at higher risk of stress fractures, and this is thought to be linked to not getting enough nutrition to support training demands.
Shoulder injuries:
Female athletes are prone to overuse injuries like rotator cuff tears, impingement syndrome, and labral tears, often linked to repetitive overhead movements and factors such as hormonal fluctuations.
Common shoulder injuries include overuse injuries, shoulder instability, labral tears and shoulder dislocation.
High-impact collisions or falls in sports like rugby are often the most common cause of shoulder injuries.
It’s important you are taking steps to protect yourself against injury when playing sport and this can be done by:
- Always warm up properly before playing any sport
- Ensure to include stretches into your routine, in particular your thighs, calves and hips.
- Strengthen your hips and thighs as they provide support to your knees and can help prevent injury. Squats, walking lunges and core strengthening are some exercises to include in your routine.
- Balance, agility, jumping and landing can all be improved with practice
- REST is essential
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