Hamstring Injury Prevention Programmes: Efficacy in Trials, Compliance in Squads, and the Gap Between
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22548633Keywords:
Hamstring injury, Nordic hamstring exercise, Injury prevention, Compliance, Implementation, FootballAbstract
Eccentric hamstring-strengthening programmes, most prominently the Nordic hamstring exercise, have
among the strongest randomised trial evidence of any injury-prevention intervention in sports medicine,
with pooled estimates suggesting a substantial reduction in hamstring injury incidence when delivered at
the prescribed dose. Real-world implementation studies in elite football, however, consistently report
programme compliance well below the levels achieved in supervised trial settings, and the observed
injury-rate reduction at league level has lagged behind trial efficacy accordingly. This review synthesises
the trial-efficacy literature alongside the separate, more recent compliance and implementation literature
to characterise the gap between what these programmes can achieve and what they typically do achieve
in practice, and what has been reported to narrow it.
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