A novel hamstring strain injury prevention system: post-match strength testing for secondary prevention in football

Despite the resources applied to the prevention of hamstring injuries in sport, between 2001 and 2014 the hamstring injury incidence and burden did not decline in male professional football.1 2 Consideration of alternative and complementary prevention strategies are needed.3 One-time only preseason screening for hamstring injury risk factors has limited value for preventing hamstring injuries.4 In-season monitoring of hamstring function has been advocated as a secondary prevention strategy.3 Since a player’s isometric knee flexion strength may decrease before suffering a hamstring strain (HS) injury,5 regular hamstring strength monitoring may be valuable. In-season monitoring can ensure players have restored hamstring muscle strength after the demands of a match and prior to undertaking high workloads in training or playing another match. Identifying a post-match impairment (‘subclinical stage of injury’),6 7 allows for early intervention and may be a practical way to lower susceptibility of hamstring injury (online supplementary material figure 1). ### Supplementary data [bjsports-2019-100707supp001.pdf] In this letter, we report our proof-of-concept hamstring injury prevention system that incorporated secondary prevention for hamstring injury in football. We also compared …