Gallucci On How Puberty Impacts Player Performance
SoccerToday announced John Gallucci, Jr., MLS Medical Coordinator is the popular soccer news site’s newest columnist and will be writing a regular column on Injury Prevention and Treatment.
A dynamic expert in injury prevention, rehabilitation, sports medicine and athletic conditioning, Gallucci is the Medical Coordinator for Major League Soccer (MLS), overseeing the medical care of 600 professional soccer players. Gallucci is the former Head Trainer of the New York Red Bulls MLS team and is a Sports Medicine consultant for professional athletes in the NHL, NFL, NBA, MLB, and USA Wrestling. Gallucci, Jr. is also President, JAG Physical Therapy & JAG Pediatric Therapy.
Diane Scavuzzo: How can puberty impact player performance?
John Gallucci, Jr.: There is a lot of various ways that puberty can impact, such as a psychological component, a social component, and of course, a physical component.
Everybody grows differently, but when you are looking at a pre-pubescent to pubescent athlete, you must take in those factors of emotion, which is the psychological and social integration component, and then of course, the physical components.
You can take 2 14 year old boys and put them next to each other, and although they are both 14 years old, one can be 6ft tall at 160lbs, the other one could be 5’2” at 100lbs. So it is very important to understand that everybody has different growth spurts and different levels of development.
Tips to dealing with growth spurts: It is important for people to understand that when you’re talking about a growth spurt, usually you are looking at an injury that occurs when your bones grow quicker than your tendons and they cause a pulling on the bone, and when we look at the knee, that injury is called Osgood-Schlatters disease.
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If we look at the heel, it is called Severs disease, and ultimately what usually helps with those two different diagnoses is increasing flexibility, increasing strengthening, and decreasing the overall inflammatory process around the knee and around the heel.
Claudio Reyna with John Gallucci Jr.
Diane Scavuzzo: Why do many girls suffer ACL injuries?
John Gallucci, Jr.: This is a definitively broad answer. We have found out through research that it can be anything from biomechanics of a female landing properly, to a vastus medialis weakness, to a hamstring/quadriceps variant ratio weakness, to a laxity of tendons and also based on the variants of your femur going into your knee joint based on the key angle of the hip widening.
So it is important to know that although there are numerous different rationales of causes of ACL injuries in females, what we do know is that through a strengthening protocol of the lower extremity, some injuries such as the ACL can be prevented.
Diane Scavuzzo: What are the biggest potential injuries and how to prevent them?
John Gallucci, Jr.: As we discussed previously, female athletes have a higher incidence of ACL injuries. These injuries are sustained for a myriad of reasons, which can include bio-mechanical, hormonal, landing techniques, strength components, and ratios.
It is important that research has shown us over the years that appropriate ways to increase the flexibility, teach the biomechanics, increase the overall strength ratio between the quads and hamstrings that can decrease the incidence of the female ACL injury. When looking at female knee injuries, more are based on the instances I have given.
Male injuries are interesting in soccer; they’re usually sustained more from collision, especially when looking at the 14-20 year old male athletes. Also, not really understanding the rules of the game, or not following the rules of the game. You ultimately see more collision injuries in that grouping of male athletes. Otherwise, overall, the commonality of soccer injuries is pretty equal except for the knee injuries we have seen.
When we talk about male and female concussions, it’s actually interesting that female concussions outweigh male concussions. There has been different neuropsychological testing; there have been different data collections, which try to explain why there is a difference. Ultimately, researches have come back with a component that the females might just be more honest and report their symptoms. So it is important to understand that both athletes can become concussed, and it can be very difficult to prevent a concussion.
Diane Scavuzzo: What does the medical coordinator for Major League Soccer do? What does it mean to oversee the medical care of more than 600 professional soccer players and protect their careers and teams?
John Gallucci, Jr.: My position as the Medical Coordinator of Major League Soccer is to assist our Medical Director, Dr. Larry in organizing and implementing the policies and procedures of medical care throughout our league in collaboration with the 20 Major League Soccer teams and their medical staffs. This consists of utilizing the medical policies and procedures to provide the best optimal care to take care of over 600 athletes. Within these policies and procedures there are guidelines in reference to different protocols on hydration care, concussion care, physicals, implementations of our workman’s compensation program, first report of injuries, and various other subject matters. As it pertains to what I do in overseeing the medical care, it’s basically to assist the team in making sure the provision of health-care for all of the athletes is done accordingly and within the appropriate credentialing manner of Major League Soccer’s requirements.
