Preventive training of Anterior cruciate ligament injuries in female handball players: A systematic review

Abstract

Handball is a sport which involves the repetition of high-intensity movements and actions, such as single-leg landing and one-on-one actions, which are conducive to anterior cruciate ligament injury mechanism. Preventive training can modify the neuromuscular risk factors associated with the danger of this injury in women athletes. Determining their characteristics (duration, frequency, type of exercise, etc.) and components (strength, plyometrics, balance, etc.) is critical when designing specific and individualised training for players. The objectives of this study were to identify and categorise the common components of preventive training programmes for anterior cruciate ligament injury in women handball players and to describe and classify the exercises involved in each category. A systematic review was conducted following the guidelines of the PRISMA Statement in the Web of Science, Sport Discus, PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane and ScienceDirect databases. The inclusion criteria were: (a) participants were female handball players of any age, (b) there was a preventive training intervention, and (c) injury incidence was reported with the number of ACL injuries. Six studies were included and their methodological quality was assessed using the ROB 2.0 tool. The results show that most interventions included more than one training component with a median duration of 15 minutes and that the exercises which varied most across the programmes were plyometrics.