Lower Body Strength Training to Prevent Injury

During athletic pursuits, your leg, butt and core muscles act as shock absorbers and joint stabilizers. Strengthening these muscle groups is essential to sport performance, but without proper alignment, balance, spatial awareness and sport-specific coordination, even Herculean strength will not prevent injuries. The most effective lower-body injury prevention programs blend traditional strength exercises with workouts that simulate the movements of the sport.

  1. Strength and Alignment

    • Strength exercises performed with improper alignment do not prevent injuries. If anything, they increase your susceptibility. The emphasis on precise movement and control that characterizes the Pilates method helps correct lower-body alignment issues. It's not just the Pilates apparatus workouts that effectively strengthen your hamstrings, quads, glutes and core muscles. It's the manner in which the exercises are taught. The equipment's gliding carriage moves back and forth, observe the tracking of your knees and make the necessary adjustments if your knees roll inward or outward. Other machines, such as the seated or supine leg press, provide similar benefits.

    Proprioception

    • Many sport coaches incorporate balance-training devices into their athlete's lower-body strength programs. This type of equipment improves proprioception, a word that describes your body's awareness of the position of your feet and the surface beneath them. Athletes do not look down while playing their game. Their innate sense of proprioception allows them to sense changes in the terrain and engage their stabilizers to make the appropriate adjustments. When you perform a one- or two-legged squat or a lunge on balance equipment your stabilizers -- including your abductors, adductors and core muscles -- engage to protect your hips, back and knees.

    Integrated Training

    • The National Academy of Sports Medicine developed the Integrated Training Module, which pairs a traditional strength-training exercise with one that uses similar muscle groups and movement mechanics on a balance-training device. Complete one set of barbell squats, then lighten or eliminate the weight and perform the squat on a balance-training device, such as a balance board, a balance disc, a half-ball or a foam roller. The first exercise recruits the appropriate muscle fibers, and the balance exercises teaches you how to stabilize your joints.

    Hamstring Strength Importance

    • Hamstring weakness, as well as muscle imbalances between your hamstrings and quads, increase your likelihood of incurring an injury. A force equal to three or four times your body weight travels through your joints during running and jumping activities. This force prompts your thigh bone to slide forward on your shin bone. Strong hamstrings contract, bend your knees and prevent this potentially deadly slide. Weak hamstrings let it happen.The sliding action creates shearing forces in the cartilage, which in turn weaken the entire knee area. A well-designed hamstring-training program protects you from injury.

    Hamstring Exercises

    • A combination of traditional strength exercises, balance training and plyometrics make an effective hamstring injury prevention program. Start with a set of hamstring curls on the prone, seated or standing leg curl machine. Follow it with the stability ball bridge and curl. Lie supine with your feet on the ball. Lift each vertebra, form a spinal bridge, and remain in bridge as you bend and extend your legs. Plyometric exercises train you to use your hamstrings to bend your knees when landing from a jump. Start with simple movements, such as jumping up and landing in a squat, then progress to advanced exercises such as jumping over hurdles and jumping on and off boxes.