Research shows men kick the soccer ball differently than women. The study, published this month in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, finds males activate certain hip and leg muscles more than females during the most common soccer kicks – the instep and side-foot kicks. While men activate more muscles, the data may explain why female players are twice as likely as male players to sustain anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury.
“By analyzing the detailed motion of a soccer kick in progress, our goal was to home in on some of the differences between the sexes and how they may relate to injury risk,” said orthopaedic surgeon Robert H. Brophy, MD, the study author and assistant professor of orthopedics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.To conduct the study Dr. Brophy and colleagues from Motion Analysis Laboratory and Sports Medicine Service at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York used 3D video-based motion analysis and electromyography to examine the differences between 13 male and 12 female college soccer players. The researchers used eight to 10 video cameras, 21 retroreflective markers and 16 electrodes simultaneously to measure the activation of seven muscles. Those were iliacus, gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, hamstring, and gastrocnemius. Movement was measured both in the kicking and supporting legs. The hip abductors and tibialis anterior muscles were also studied in the kicking leg.
The conclusion is that male players activate the hip flexors, muscles inside the hip, in their kicking leg, and hip abductors on the outside of the hip in the supporting leg during a kick. In the kicking leg, men generated almost four times as much hip flexor activation as females. In the supporting leg male subjects generated more than twice as much gluteus medius activation and vastus medialis activation as female participants.
The findings may explain a higher proportion of injuries in female soccer players over male. Research can also work towards better equipment and prevention of such injuries.