14 Jan Hamstring Injury Prevention in Soccer, by Jack Nayler

In this post, from the Fooball Sciene Institute we present a comment by Professor Jack Nayler about an important recent article published by Mathew Buckthorpe and collaborators of the Isokinetic group about the recommendations to implement hamstring injury prevention programs in elite football teams .

Jack is currently the Head of Sports Science at Celtic Glasgow CF, and is also part of the faculty of the Football Science Institute. Jack worked on the first team of Real Madrid CF in the 2014 and 2015 seasons, when he was part of the technical staff of Carlo Ancelotti. In those seasons, Jack did a magnificent job of coordination between the different technical departments of the team, facilitating communication between the coaching staff, the physical trainers and the medical service.

“Jack worked on the first team of Real Madrid CF in the 2014 and 2015 seasons, when he was part of the technical staff of Carlo Ancelotti”

Jack shares our comprehensive concept of the Department of High Performance and Health within an elite soccer team focused on the individual soccer player, and in coordination with the coaching staff, more focused on the team. Through the contribution of medical and scientific advances to the player, including physiological control, nutrition, supplementation, recovery, and individual training for technical, mental, visual, biomechanical and injury prevention improvement, sports performance of the players, and therefore of the team, today it maximizes exponentially. This concept is making its way today in many high-level clubs that need to optimize the sports results and the value of the players, and that are creating this kind of sport science structures and high performance.

“Jack shares our comprehensive concept of the Department of High Performance and Health within an elite soccer team focused on the individual soccer player”

In the United Kingdom, and especially since Leicester City won the Premier League with a reduced coaching staff but a very powerful sports science department managed by Paul Balsom, this practice is spreading by many teams of which Celtic FC Jack’s is an example. Outside Europe, clubs such as Club America de México have created sports intelligence departments combining physical, medical, tactical and technical data analysis with excellent and immediate results.

In this comment, Jack offers a good example of what science can contribute in a practical way to a particular problem of football, in this case the most frequent injury in this sport: the hamstring muscle injury, in a must-have article reading. Enjoy.