Bracing for injury: Inside Pitt’s prevention program

Star Pitt receiver Derek Kinder planted his right foot in the turf for a quick turn during a… Star Pitt receiver Derek Kinder planted his right foot in the turf for a quick turn during a Pitt training camp session this summer, and something popped.

He started his cut, and his knee gave out. Three defenders crashed into him. Kinder disappeared beneath the pile.

When the defenders dispersed, Kinder was alone on the turf. Swollen and devastated, the face of Pitt football lay with a season-ending injury.

Kinder had torn his right ACL.

He was supposed to be the team’s field general. Now he’s on the sidelines.

“It’s just a quick turn and a pop,” Freddie Fu, chairman of orthopedic surgery at Pitt’s School of Medicine, said. “That’s all it takes. It’s a non-contact injury usually.”

Pitt head coach Dave Wannstedt was left to pick up the pieces of his program.

“This is how things happen in this game,” Wannstedt said the day following Kinder’s injury. “There are examples on teams every year where unfortunate things happen.”

But can injuries deemed unfortunate be prevented?

“I don’t think we can ever prevent every single knee injury,” Pitt head athletic trainer Rob Blanc said. “We do, however, have a much better understanding of what causes them.”

And now Pitt is taking strides to turn its understanding of the causes into practical ways to stop knee injuries in the future.

Prior to the start of Pitt’s 2007 training camp, Wannstedt introduced mandatory knee braces for all defensive and offensive linemen. It was the first step in a long process toward knee-injury prevention.

Some studies have shown that the braces effectively keep the knee straight when hit from the side.

The braces are sturdy, and the concept is simple: If the knee is hit at any force from either side, it will push against the other side of the brace.

The strength of the brace stops the knee from pushing any farther and prevents any serious MCL injury.

“We had talked about the knee braces for a long time,” Blanc said. “I’ve talked to a lot of colleagues who all say the knee brace can lessen the degree of an injury.”

Wannstedt’s implementation of the braces also made sense to Fu, but they don’t entirely address the problem.

“The braces can be good,” Fu said. “But injuries to the MCL aren’t as common as other knee ligament injuries.”

The braces are also uncomfortable for some.

“It takes a while for the guys to get used to the braces,” Blanc said. “They know it’s serving a good purpose, but it can be annoying.”

The Big Picture

Maxim Magazine’s 2007 NFL season preview noted that more than 50 percent of football players injure themselves each year.

One in six of those injuries are knee-related.

“We see three to five knee injuries each year,” Fu said. “But I don’t think I’ve repaired an MCL injury on a Pitt player in quite some time.”

In essence, Fu said, the knee braces can only be so effective because they still don’t stop ACL tears, and the ACL causes the most problems for athletes.

Oftentimes an ACL tear is a non-contact injury, following a player’s deceleration and sudden change of direction.

But there are ways for a player to avoid hurting his ACL. Players can strengthen the muscles around the knee, protecting it from the stress associated with constant grinding and sudden changes of direction.

They can also learn how to land and how to move side-to-side safely, all while maintaining a high level of athleticism and speed.

“In the Navy SEALs, they teach how to land with your knee flexed,” Fu said. “You can train your reflexes to be better.”

Blanc said the Pitt training staff is doing everything in its power to prevent its athletes from devastating injuries.

“We can control the conditioning and general strength training of the athletes,” Blanc said. “We’ve been doing a lot more jumping, landing and side-to-side movement in training sessions.”

Yet sometimes nothing can be done.

“There are some things we just cannot change any more,” Fu said. “There are different surfaces, cleats, shoes and different conditions. Sometimes things just happen.”

The Road to Prevention

The training staff surrounding Pitt football is constantly working to improve the chances of a Pitt player avoiding a knee injury.

“Every time a player gets hurt, we evaluate the injury,” Blanc said. “If there is something we can do to change the situation next time, we will. But injuries are always going to be part of the game. We just try to eliminate as many as possible.”

And the knee braces are already reducing MCL injuries.

“We’ve had two instances so far this season where the players have been rolled up on and walked away unharmed,” Blanc said. “We assume that, because of the brace, they avoided an injury or anything serious.”

It has to be an on-going study in prevention – the Pitt training and orthopedic surgery staffs can never know the full effectiveness of the braces until the season is over. Even then, at the conclusion of the season, the study will need more data.

“This study is something we are going to have to conduct over time,” Blanc said. “You can never get a full grasp of something’s effectiveness with just a few weeks of testing it out. It takes a long time.”