Women and Girls’ Injury Risk for the Knee: Getting Under a Barbell Sooner Rather than Later

As sport and recreational strength training participation has grown in popularity over the last thirty years, it has shed light on the fact that women are more likely to have a knee injury, specifically an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear, compared to men. Further, researchers have found that women have greater losses in bone mineral density and muscle compared to men, which has been attributed to lower participation in strength training from an early age and creating a strength disparity gap. An avenue to minimize the detrimental loss of bone mineral density and muscle is early participation in sports and athletics, and participating in resistance training from a young age. Strength and conditioning programs provide girls the necessary building blocks for muscle growth and mass, and safeguards needed to support the structure of the knee and other injury prone joints. The purpose of this article is to highlight the increased injury risk in women and girls, the strength training disparity between women and men, and to provide potential solutions that could encourage women to start strength training earlier as a prevention strategy.