463: Sprint Acceleration Technique and Injury Risk

Uh-

No, we don't

...

this article [laughs] this article was published in, uh, the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport in 2026.

Uh, this is Sprint Acceleration Technique is Associated with Lower Limb Injury Epidemiology in Professional Male Rugby Union Players: A Seven Season Analysis.

Uh, lead author James Wilde.

Uh, the background on this one is, uh, to ef- effectively assess whether technique in sprint acceleration is associated with specific injuries, uh, injury patterns in the lower limb during rugby play.

It's pretty, pretty straightforward.

So-

Yep

... seven seasons' worth of data.

Uh, this was a, uh, this was a retrospective analysis, so they basically just collected information over the course of seven seasons, then went back and looked at it.

Uh, so there were 62 players that sustained 123 non-contact lower limb running-based injuries.

So they did, um, they did remove a lot of like the contact injuries out of the analysis, which is why when you look at, um, some of the figures, and we'll talk about injury types later on-

Mm

...

there are a lot of injuries that are suspiciously missing that you're like, "Wait a minute, how were there no knee ligament injuries?"

Yeah, right.

They removed that.

It's because these were all, these were all running-based non-contact.

Now that still means that they didn't have any non-contact ligament injuries, which is impressive over seven seasons in rugby.

Yeah.

Um, but we'll-

Or-

... talk about that later