OSLO, Norway - Injuries to soccer players can be cut nearly in half if an additional warm-up program developed by FIFA is strictly followed, experts told a world sports congress on Friday.
"The prevention programs will reduce injuries if they are applied," FIFA's chief medical officer Jiri Dvorak said by telephone from the congress in the Arctic city of Tromsoe.
Results of a Norwegian study on the warm-up program, called F-MARC 11+, was presented at the Second World Congress on Sports Injury Prevention, which drew about 700 experts from 55 countries on Thursday through Saturday.
The Norwegian study divided about 2,000 female soccer players into two groups. One stuck to the new warm-up systems, while the second used their traditional methods.
"There was a 32 per cent reduction of overall injuries, and 50 per cent on some types of injuries," said Dvorak. He said many of the techniques would also work in other team sports.
The program was developed by FIFA's medical research centre, often called F-MARC, in co-operation with international experts. It can be carried out in 10-15 minutes with no equipment other than a ball, after normal stretching and warm-up exercises.
It includes special exercises, such as one-leg balances, leg swings, special training of thigh muscles, and fast, powerful movements, called plyometrics, when a muscle is loaded and contracted in rapid sequence.
"It is very easy to learn by the coach and by the players," Dvorak said.
Dvorak said FIFA was also looking at other ways to reduce injuries, such as tougher enforcement of existing rules on late, and two-legged tackles.
"Head and brain injuries can also be reduced if the laws of the game are applied," he said. "An elbow to the head means a red card."
The Tromsoe conference follows up on an Oslo congress in 2005 that was organized by the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center.
Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IOC Medical Commission, said future sports injury conferences would be organized under the IOC umbrella because of the importance of the work. The next will be in Monaco in 2011.
Roald Bahr, who heads the Oslo research centre and was key in organizing the first two congresses, said other sports are starting to look more closely at injury prevention but "FIFA is clearly the leader of the pack."
He said another study presented at the conference show that, in one season, one third of all alpine World Cup skiers suffered an injury that temporarily sidelined them and 12-15 per cent were so badly hurt that it ended their season.
He said the most common injuries where to the knee, followed by head and neck, shoulder and torso, all of which could be reduced by looking the design of course, weather and equipment, such as bindings.
