Why are women more susceptible to ACL injuries?
• Girls generally become involved in athletics later in life than boys. • Females are entering the athletic arena without an extensive history of athletic participation and without a high level of training or conditioning as compared with males. Training histories are almost always very different from the histories of male athletes. For example, young boys can start playing youth football at the age of 5; the girls are standing on the sidelines cheering. Girls are late with coaching and late with conditioning or participation in contact sports. • Different social expectations are placed on young boys’ participation in sports, compared to the social expectations placed on young girls. Girls are still pushed to pursue feminine activities like dance, cheer and synchronized swimming. These expectations result in different degrees of conditioning in girls and boys. • Girls are less understood and less well studied compared to boys, especially in the areas of performance factors, repetitive
