900 BO13 – Down, set, record: assessing neuromuscular training warm-up use in Canadian youth football

Background The burden of musculoskeletal injuries and concussions is high in adolescent tackle football. Primary prevention strategies including neuromuscular training (NMT) warm-up programs have yet to be investigated in Canadian adolescent tackle football, but show promise given the 30–60% injury reduction in other team contact and collision sports that use NMT Objective To evaluate the utilization of NMT warm-up components by Canadian adolescent tackle football players. Design Cross-sectional video-analysis study. Setting & Participants Nine community tackle football teams and including youth participants were recruited in Calgary, Canada. Main Outcome Measures Video recordings of 46 warm-ups for nine youth tackle football teams were obtained. Video-analysis software (Dartfish 10.0) was used to tag and describe warm-up characteristics with respect to NMT. Multivariable mixed effects models were used to describe the time spent in NMT components (aerobic, strength, agility, balance, head-on-neck control) by session type (i.e., training, competition), period of the season (i.e., weeks 1–3, weeks 4–6, weeks 7–9), and component. Results Teams (N=9 teams, 46 sessions) spent a median time of 456.2 seconds (s) (range;276.79–532.30) in warm-up prior to football competition and training sessions (mean= 275s;range 231.0–319.2) in active NMT components. The most common NMT components used were aerobic (mean=119s,95%CI;89.6–148.4) and strength exercises (mean=34.17s,95% CI; 22.2–46.2). There were no differences between practice (mean=290.3s,95%CI;239.0–341.5) and competition sessions (mean=259.4,95%CI;201.8–316.9) with the difference being 30.9s (95%CI;-32,8–94.6) (p=0.34). Teams spent less time in aerobic component exercises in period 3 compared to period 1; 23.3 seconds (95% CI: -70.9–24.4) (p=0.04) and period 2: -66.5 (95% CI:-130.1–2.80) (p=0.04). Agility, balance, and head-on-neck control exercises were rarely used in Canadian tackle football warm-ups. Conclusions Most teams utilized aerobic and strength exercise NMT components and rarely performed agility, balance, or head-on-neck control exercises. Future research should aim to evaluate the implementation of football-specific NMT programs in youth tackle football.