Hammers move to reduce risk

West Ham United's Sport Medicine and Sport Science department hope a
unique new system will keep players out of the treatment room.
In partnership with the University of Ghent (UGent) and Vrije
Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Belgium, the Hammers have introduced
individual risk profiles for every professional.
The profiles will cover two specific areas - injury prevention and
performance progression - and allow head of sports medicine Andy Rolls
and first-team physiotherapist Stijn Vandenbroucke to constantly monitor
player's individual performances, risk areas and injury histories.
With the help of the two universities, each profile will be updated
on a daily basis throughout the season and will be accessible via a
password-safe website to enable players and staff to keep tabs on their
condition from anywhere on the planet.
To kick-off the project Rolls, Vandenbroucke and the Hammers' medical
staff have started screening squad members using a range of balance,
flexibility and strength tests. The test results will help them to
identify areas of individual strength and weakness and tailor each
player's training schedule to minimise their chances of being injured.
Following next week's pre-season trip to Switzerland, the players
will undergo performance progression screening at Chadwell Heath later
this month, adding to the data available. Regular tests will be held
throughout the season.
Vandenbroucke explained the purpose of the screening in detail on West Ham TV.
"We are testing for injury prevention because we want to create an
up-to-date risk profile for every player for throughout the season," he
said.
"Therefore we need to know what their weaknesses and their strong
points are, so we're testing their flexibility, strength, stability,
core stability and balance, jumping and a few other things.
"From there on, together with the universities, we can wank out what they need to do during the pre-season and the season."


Vandenbroucke said the pre-season tests would stand the players in
good stead ahead of what will be a busy and demanding season in the
npower Championship.
"I think it's going to be a very tough season with a lot of games and
physical demands on the players, so I think in the pre-season we have
to grab the chance to make everybody as strong as possible so we can go
as far as possible in the competition."
Belgian-born himself, Vandenbroucke said the roles played by his fellow countrymen at UGent and VUB would be of huge benefit.
"We have worked together with these universities because they have
created an algorithm [list of instructions] which will help us on a
daily basis with injury prevention and performance progression.
"After each training session, they will help us to create an
injury-risk profile for the following day so we know if players have
trained well, if they are fatigued or if they are at risk of suffering a
certain injury.
"We're trying to use evidence-based data and use Sport Science at a high level."

Well lets hope this works as we certainly have had our fair share of injuries over the past few seasons.

Sounds good, Im assuming this is Sams doing, he has always been up on the sports science side of the game.

If all goes well what will we do with an empty treatment room ?

its about time someone pulled thier finger out of thier arse and done something about the injury problems , its been a huge problem for a number of years now

damn right

A masterplan !

Releasing Kieron Dyer obviously helps the stats too !