I hope you are enjoying this series on the ACL.  I have been passionate about preventing and rehabbing these injuries since I began working in PT in 1996.  In today’s post, I am going to briefly discuss one of the critical areas of weakness in athletes that substantially raises injury risk for knees.  Simply put, it is hip abduction weakness.

While I see this in nearly all females, males often have gluteus medius weakness as well.  Why is this an issue?  The gluteus medius is not only responsible for pulling the thigh outward, but more importantly it helps reduce and control rotation/deceleration of the femur with cutting maneuvers.  If you have been reading my blogs or articles, you may see a persistent theme emerging – deceleration matters.

To protect the body from injury, we MUST understand how to train deceleration of the body.  This is often where forces are greatest and present the biggest injury risks.  The hip is a major player in knee prevention programming.  There are lots ofdifferent exercises to strengthen the gluteus medius, but today I will share one of my staples I use in all my knee prevention and rehab programs.  It is called the single leg lateral reach.

 

Master this move and your knee injury risk will be greatly diminished.  It is an effective way to teach athletes to turn on the gluteus medius and learn how to control the valgus and rotational load with all the weight on one leg.  In the upcoming final ACL post, I will reveal yet another way to improve landing mechanics and body control through a simple lateral plyo maneuver.