Re-thinking head injury prevention in football: The role of tactics and technique

Exercise-based injury prevention programmes are currently the go-to approach by health professionals to reduce sport-related injury risk, with included exercises generally focusing on increasing tissue capacity so players can handle more load (e.g. muscle-tendon injuries) or improve neuromuscular function to reduce the load that a tissue needs to withstand during specific actions (e.g. ligament injuries). But can such an approach be applied to head injury prevention? Whilst implementing an exercise-based programme with the sole aim of increasing brain tissue capacity appears inconceivable from a physiological and ethical perspective, improving strength and neuromuscular function of the muscles controlling the head to reduce head acceleration forces on impact has been trialled.