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Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women's Sports
Amy Steadman was destined to become one of the great women's soccer players of her generation. "The best of the best," Parade magazine called her as she left high school and headed off to the University of North Carolina. Instead, by age twenty, Amy had undergone five surgeries on her right knee. She had to give up the sport she loved. She walked with a stiff gait, like an elderly woman, and found it painful to get out of bed in the morning.
Warrior Girls exposes the downside of the women's sports revolution that has evolved since Title an injury epidemic that is easily ignored because we worry that it will threaten our daughters' hard-won opportunities on the field. From teenage girls playing local soccer, basketball, lacrosse, volleyball, and other sports to women competing at the elite level, female athletes are suffering serious injuries at alarming rates.
The numbers are frightening and irrefutable. Young female athletes tear their ACLs, the stabilizing ligament in the knee, at rates as high as eight times greater than their male counterparts. Women's collegiate soccer players suffer concussions at the same rate as college football players. From head to toe, female athletes suffer higher rates of injury, and many of them play through constant pain.
Michael Sokolove gives us the most up-to-date research on girls and sports injuries. He takes us into the homes and hearts of female athletes, into operating theaters where orthopedic surgeons reconstruct shredded knees, and onto the practice field of famed University of North Carolina soccer coach Anson Dorrance.
Exhaustively researched and strongly argued, Warrior Girls is an urgent wake-up call for parents and coaches. Sokolove connects the culture of youth sports -- the demands for girls to specialize in a single sport by age ten or younger, and to play it year-round -- directly to the injury epidemic. Devoted to the ideal of team, and deeply bonded with teammates, these tough girls don't want to leave the field even when confronted with serious injury and chronic pain.
Warrior Girls shows how girls can train better and smarter to decrease their risks. It makes clear that parents must come together and demand changes to a sports culture that manufactures injuries. Well-documented, opinionated, and controversial, Warrior Girls shows that all girls can safeguard themselves on the field without sacrificing their hard-won right to be there.
Warrior Girls exposes the downside of the women's sports revolution that has evolved since Title an injury epidemic that is easily ignored because we worry that it will threaten our daughters' hard-won opportunities on the field. From teenage girls playing local soccer, basketball, lacrosse, volleyball, and other sports to women competing at the elite level, female athletes are suffering serious injuries at alarming rates.
The numbers are frightening and irrefutable. Young female athletes tear their ACLs, the stabilizing ligament in the knee, at rates as high as eight times greater than their male counterparts. Women's collegiate soccer players suffer concussions at the same rate as college football players. From head to toe, female athletes suffer higher rates of injury, and many of them play through constant pain.
Michael Sokolove gives us the most up-to-date research on girls and sports injuries. He takes us into the homes and hearts of female athletes, into operating theaters where orthopedic surgeons reconstruct shredded knees, and onto the practice field of famed University of North Carolina soccer coach Anson Dorrance.
Exhaustively researched and strongly argued, Warrior Girls is an urgent wake-up call for parents and coaches. Sokolove connects the culture of youth sports -- the demands for girls to specialize in a single sport by age ten or younger, and to play it year-round -- directly to the injury epidemic. Devoted to the ideal of team, and deeply bonded with teammates, these tough girls don't want to leave the field even when confronted with serious injury and chronic pain.
Warrior Girls shows how girls can train better and smarter to decrease their risks. It makes clear that parents must come together and demand changes to a sports culture that manufactures injuries. Well-documented, opinionated, and controversial, Warrior Girls shows that all girls can safeguard themselves on the field without sacrificing their hard-won right to be there.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
14 people are currently reading
220 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
August 9, 2011
While researching roller derby drills, I was stunned by this New York Times article about the high rate of injury in girls' and women's sports. The article turned out to be a short version of Michael Sokolove's very troubling Warrior Girls. He reveals that women competing in high school and college-level sports are injured much more often than men - female soccer players, for example, experience catastrophic ACL injuries at eight times the rate of their male counterparts. Warrior Girls is a study of possible biological and cultural reasons for this greater injury rate. Sokolove offers prescriptive advice for reducing injury, but more importantly, he hands down an indictment to the players in the sports industry who have taken no steps to protect athletes from life-changing harm. Warrior Girls offers both useful training advice for athletes of either gender, and a sociological look at the transformation of young athletes into commodities, and of child's play into work, if not war.
June 17, 2022
Play more than one sport, train specifically for injury prevention, and give your body time to rest. These are the takeaways of this book at the individual level. On a broader societal level, they are much bigger. Stop expecting girls to play like boys - recognizing ways in which their bodies are different, training them differently, valuing them for how they actually are versus how they are similar (or not) to boys. While this seems doable, the next seems much more challenging: start investing in research around biological differences, but without the foundational assumption that this means women are inferior. Unfortunately, not much has happened since this book was published to make me feel like we are ready for that...in fact, I think we are worse off in some ways. But I do think there is a feminist argument to be made for more research to be done about the female body in every aspect - even typical initial testing done on rats tends to be on males only so that they don't have to deal with females' estrous cycles...but hormonal cycles are a reality of a female body and shouldn't be ignored. As someone who tore my ACL in high school and was told that part of was related to having wider hips as a female, I had never really thought about this as being problematic to women's sports as a whole, so it was interesting to read many perspectives who wanted to stay away completely from sex differences for fear of the conclusions that would be drawn (and sadly understandable given what I know now). Regardless, it was fascinating to read so much more about ACL injuries in general, and I am so grateful that I was given the opportunity for plyometric training prior to my return to the sport. After hearing of some of the other programs out there for injury prevention, I can only wish that those types of exercises had been integrated into my soccer training from the start, and hope that books like this and its readers can keep pushing the issue to make sports safer for everyone.
December 21, 2017
Interesting book about the ACL injuries that are so prevalent in female sports and the athletes that have been through them.
December 22, 2008
ACL injuries have really devastated women’s sports. Women are much more likely to suffer ACL injuries than are their male counterparts – particularly those women who play sports with lots of directional changes and/or collisions with other players (soccer, basketball, tennis, etc.). And now that many girls play their sports year-round, they have more opportunities to injure themselves and little time to rest. Most parents are swept up in the action and only want what’s best for their girls (opportunities to get scouted, college sports scholarships). ACL injuries are particularly devastating, even though they’re more and more common – they keep the injured out for entire seasons, and girls often reinjure themselves or then suffer injury to the other ACL. Sokolove offers some hope – rest, preventative training, and parental involvement – making sure that their girls get what’s best for them (finding coaches and teams who are willing to work *for* their girls).
I checked this out because I had ACL reconstructive surgery 5 years ago and I was hoping to read about advances in research or surgical technique or cartilage replacement. In that respect it was disappointing. The surgery remains pretty much the same – replacement tissue for the *new* ACL is taken from either the patient’s patellar ligament, or from the hamstring (or from a cadaver, if desired), then holes are drilled in the bones – sites for attaching the new ACL – and the tissue is secured with titanium screws. Cartilage regeneration/replacement remains an experimental procedure – not guaranteed to work (and generally not covered by most insurance). Sokolove spends a lot of time making the case that ACL injuries are more common in girls/women, and are most likely due to overuse, the different mechanics of women’s bodies, and improper movement. He relates a lot of really tragic tales of girls who loved their sports so much that they played through their pain and through their injuries and then ended up broken and sidelined – yearning for the freedom of movement they once knew and the thrill of playing *their* sport. Although, I felt some kinship with the other girls/women whose stories Sokolove included, I wasn’t looking for a sisterhood or to bond over our devastating injuries. I wanted solutions, help, remedies, and I found that these were lacking. While Sokolove describes some of the programs/exercises used by athletes as preventatives to ACL injuries, he does not include illustrations or diagrams of how the exercises might be done. Nor does he offer a program that one might follow. This, too, was disappointing. Still, as I read about Amy Steadman downplaying her pain in front of her father, I started to cry. I know exactly how this feels – to love your sport so much, to have it taken away from you because of your injuries, and to never know what it feels like to be invincible in body and spirit again. It’s not just the physical pain (because you learn to live with that, and if you’re like Amy or me, you’ve fought against it), it’s the loss of joyful, effortless movement and the knowledge that you’ll never be that good again.
I think this will still be useful for parents who don’t know about the increasing incidence of ACL injuries. Sokolove presents research and facts enough to convince anyone that this is a problem that’s on the rise, and something that girls, schools, sports clubs, coaches, and parents need to face and address.
I checked this out because I had ACL reconstructive surgery 5 years ago and I was hoping to read about advances in research or surgical technique or cartilage replacement. In that respect it was disappointing. The surgery remains pretty much the same – replacement tissue for the *new* ACL is taken from either the patient’s patellar ligament, or from the hamstring (or from a cadaver, if desired), then holes are drilled in the bones – sites for attaching the new ACL – and the tissue is secured with titanium screws. Cartilage regeneration/replacement remains an experimental procedure – not guaranteed to work (and generally not covered by most insurance). Sokolove spends a lot of time making the case that ACL injuries are more common in girls/women, and are most likely due to overuse, the different mechanics of women’s bodies, and improper movement. He relates a lot of really tragic tales of girls who loved their sports so much that they played through their pain and through their injuries and then ended up broken and sidelined – yearning for the freedom of movement they once knew and the thrill of playing *their* sport. Although, I felt some kinship with the other girls/women whose stories Sokolove included, I wasn’t looking for a sisterhood or to bond over our devastating injuries. I wanted solutions, help, remedies, and I found that these were lacking. While Sokolove describes some of the programs/exercises used by athletes as preventatives to ACL injuries, he does not include illustrations or diagrams of how the exercises might be done. Nor does he offer a program that one might follow. This, too, was disappointing. Still, as I read about Amy Steadman downplaying her pain in front of her father, I started to cry. I know exactly how this feels – to love your sport so much, to have it taken away from you because of your injuries, and to never know what it feels like to be invincible in body and spirit again. It’s not just the physical pain (because you learn to live with that, and if you’re like Amy or me, you’ve fought against it), it’s the loss of joyful, effortless movement and the knowledge that you’ll never be that good again.
I think this will still be useful for parents who don’t know about the increasing incidence of ACL injuries. Sokolove presents research and facts enough to convince anyone that this is a problem that’s on the rise, and something that girls, schools, sports clubs, coaches, and parents need to face and address.
June 23, 2012
I generally get angry at biological arguments about women in sports (well women can't do x, y, z because they are biologically programmed to be mothers blah blah blah) but I think Michael Sokolove, the father of a teenage female athlete at the time he wrote the book, does the best he can to avoid this rhetoric. Does he completely succeed? No but he does ok for a white male author.
Sokolove writes out of a sense of urgency in bringing the public's attention to an epidemic of serious sports injuries, particularly ACL tears and concussions, among female athletes. Focusing on the world of elite teenage and young adult women's soccer teams, he looks at the ways in which biological differences in women's bodies after puberty might make them more vulnerable to the adverse effects of overtraining and sport specialization (only playing one sport year round). He also looks at the incredible endurance of female athletes that are highly likely to play through pain, especially at high levels of competition, out of both loyalty to teammates and a strong sense of personal drive that makes them unable to quit until they literally can't run anymore. And he interviews former elite athletes who saw their careers come to a premature close due to multiple debilitating injuries.
What I like about his analysis is that he doesn't claim that this is because women shouldn't play sports, or because these differences exist due to some kind of natural physical inferiority. He seems to understand the nuances of the nature v. nurture argument and the fact that girls have only relatively recently been involved in sport. Instead he focuses on the problem as it exists right now and what could be done to prevent it. He argues that specific team training programs to strengthen and condition girls so that they are less vulnerable to ACL tears in particular are important, as well as encouraging girls to play multiple sports and be physically active off the field so that they are overall more physically fit. He places the responsibility on sports parents to make sure that their daughters are not overtraining, set limits on how many teams they can play on or how much time can be devoted to one sport, and teach their children how to listen to their bodies and not overlook minor injuries.
I am critical of this book because many of the players that are focused on come out of the white suburban soccer arena, but I think Sokolove raises important points and draws attention to an area many parents and even coaches aren't aware of. He also makes the somewhat controversial claim that some of the qualities from men's sports that female athletes are being taught to emulate aren't necessarily better but actually worse--the idea that more is always better, playing through pain is always necessary, and it's better to smash the competition at all costs even if it means placing oneself at higher risk. I think he has a point and, with the wave of concussion investigations in the NFL, Sokolove's writing is especially timely.
Sokolove writes out of a sense of urgency in bringing the public's attention to an epidemic of serious sports injuries, particularly ACL tears and concussions, among female athletes. Focusing on the world of elite teenage and young adult women's soccer teams, he looks at the ways in which biological differences in women's bodies after puberty might make them more vulnerable to the adverse effects of overtraining and sport specialization (only playing one sport year round). He also looks at the incredible endurance of female athletes that are highly likely to play through pain, especially at high levels of competition, out of both loyalty to teammates and a strong sense of personal drive that makes them unable to quit until they literally can't run anymore. And he interviews former elite athletes who saw their careers come to a premature close due to multiple debilitating injuries.
What I like about his analysis is that he doesn't claim that this is because women shouldn't play sports, or because these differences exist due to some kind of natural physical inferiority. He seems to understand the nuances of the nature v. nurture argument and the fact that girls have only relatively recently been involved in sport. Instead he focuses on the problem as it exists right now and what could be done to prevent it. He argues that specific team training programs to strengthen and condition girls so that they are less vulnerable to ACL tears in particular are important, as well as encouraging girls to play multiple sports and be physically active off the field so that they are overall more physically fit. He places the responsibility on sports parents to make sure that their daughters are not overtraining, set limits on how many teams they can play on or how much time can be devoted to one sport, and teach their children how to listen to their bodies and not overlook minor injuries.
I am critical of this book because many of the players that are focused on come out of the white suburban soccer arena, but I think Sokolove raises important points and draws attention to an area many parents and even coaches aren't aware of. He also makes the somewhat controversial claim that some of the qualities from men's sports that female athletes are being taught to emulate aren't necessarily better but actually worse--the idea that more is always better, playing through pain is always necessary, and it's better to smash the competition at all costs even if it means placing oneself at higher risk. I think he has a point and, with the wave of concussion investigations in the NFL, Sokolove's writing is especially timely.
August 16, 2014
This was absolutely fascinating. As skeptical as I am of anything that has a blurb from Dr. Oz, I thought this was well researched and well argued.
I picked this book up because I was reading about concussions in sports, and it's really not about that at all--one very short section about concussions--it's mostly about ACL ruptures. I really got some good takeaways as a parent. Now, let me be clear--the genetic chances of my son (now 6) getting seriously involved in sports are pretty slim. What I want for him is what I had--the chance to participate in sports at a low-key level if he's interested. We have not put him in soccer (he has been uninterested), which pretty much means he'll never be able to play around here. You gotta start 'em early. But what I learned is that my instincts are correct--that early specialization in one sport, year-round teams, and tournaments are not only ridiculous, they're actually very bad for young athletes.
So there, Northern Virginia sports culture.
I picked this book up because I was reading about concussions in sports, and it's really not about that at all--one very short section about concussions--it's mostly about ACL ruptures. I really got some good takeaways as a parent. Now, let me be clear--the genetic chances of my son (now 6) getting seriously involved in sports are pretty slim. What I want for him is what I had--the chance to participate in sports at a low-key level if he's interested. We have not put him in soccer (he has been uninterested), which pretty much means he'll never be able to play around here. You gotta start 'em early. But what I learned is that my instincts are correct--that early specialization in one sport, year-round teams, and tournaments are not only ridiculous, they're actually very bad for young athletes.
So there, Northern Virginia sports culture.
January 8, 2010
Even though I'm neither an athlete nor a parent, the writing style is engrossing enough that I stayed up Too Late to read more of this book. And it is fascinating, even though I found the girls' dedication to sports (mostly soccer) completely alien. I ... have never had that. And they're ruining themselves for it. Fascinating.
June 14, 2017
Persuasive, impassioned plea for athletes, parents, and coaches to reexamine competitive sports culture as it shapes the careers and physical and emotional health of young women athletes. The research is broad and informative, and I especially liked the personal interviews with athletes, parents, coaches, trainers, and orthopedic surgeons. Amy Steadman's story was the most moving and heartbreaking, and beautifully told. Perhaps the psychological and emotional element of why girls push themselves through and past injury could have been better explored -- beyond gender difference and compensation for social expectation, why do girls return to sports faster than boys following major injury? what makes them tolerate higher levels of pain, emotionally, psychologically speaking? So many of the girls Sokolove interviews repeat how much they love the sport and no one can stop them from doing all they can to get right back in the game, even if they know a fast rehab course can lead to quicker re-injury. Why? One of the elite youth soccer players says, "If I can’t play, I’m not happy. It’s just what I do." How does a young woman get to a point where a sport is her all-consuming passion, with little beyond it? Do we read this as heroic passion (which is how the UNC and national team coach Anson Dorrance reads it), pathology, parental and societal deficit, a personality trait -- in short, unhealthy and destructive, or passionate and powerful? Sokolove expertly brings out the political implications of pathologizing young women's drive to excel - post Title IX, to claim that women are somehow different and need to "slow down" is liable to be misused as fodder for the old argument of women's athletic inferiority. Perhaps the biggest take-away of this book is how Sokolove shows the way to sidestep this argument and argue for preventive programs and greater awareness of how women athletes are different, without undermining the tremendous gains of women in sports in the last few decades.
Read
October 24, 2019This was a story I choose to read because of my recent ACL injury. In this story, it begins with the story of Amy Steadman. Amy was a girl who was very naturally athletic and was amazing at soccer. It explains her story facing an ACL injury and how difficult it was for her to not be able to play and the rehab it took for her to get back to playing the sport she once loved.
The story continues to talk about research doctors and scientists around the world are doing to find a way to make this horribly common injury less common. It explains multiple theories and backings to those theories. It goes into depth about those theories and shows experiments they have tried to support them.
I think this story was good because it really connected with me. It connected with me because in the story it shows Amy being hardworking and it explains how hard it was for her to take 6-8 months off soccer. This is basically exactly what I'm going through now so it felt good to know that she experienced these same emotions. Another reason this story was good is that in the story it goes into depth about her accident being a jump tear incident, which is what happened to me. I didn't know how much more rare those kinds of tears where until I read this book. So all in all think this was a very good read for me.
The story continues to talk about research doctors and scientists around the world are doing to find a way to make this horribly common injury less common. It explains multiple theories and backings to those theories. It goes into depth about those theories and shows experiments they have tried to support them.
I think this story was good because it really connected with me. It connected with me because in the story it shows Amy being hardworking and it explains how hard it was for her to take 6-8 months off soccer. This is basically exactly what I'm going through now so it felt good to know that she experienced these same emotions. Another reason this story was good is that in the story it goes into depth about her accident being a jump tear incident, which is what happened to me. I didn't know how much more rare those kinds of tears where until I read this book. So all in all think this was a very good read for me.
June 2, 2021
Taking a deeper look into women’s sports injuries, specifically in soccer, and directing readers to take a stand in the current sports culture, the author does a great job of presenting the data and research alongside interviews of injured athletes. Having played club soccer and varsity sports, I was immediately attracted to the cover and summary in the book jacket. For someone not interested in recognizing the divide between women’s body structure and men’s (strength, anatomy, etc), you may want to pick this up and see the numbers for yourself. Women and men are not created equally, but women also haven’t had the time to develop where men are today. Sports can do a lot for personal growth and I think this book highlights a lot of those different roles.
January 18, 2023
As a female athlete who has witnessed a lot of injuries, I was eager to learn the causes of injuries and any ways to lessen them. The key research and lessons from this book could have been an article. There were a lot of unnecessary digressions and times where the author went way beyond his scope to talk about gender differences and sports history. I hope this book will inspire more research and more writing on this subject. I would love to read something more geared towards the audience of the athletes themselves rather than parents of young female athletes.
October 4, 2021
Everyone who coaches a female athlete or has one as a daughter should read this book.
January 13, 2015
well-researched deep dive into the pandemic of injuries in girls/women's sports, with some focus on concussions but particular emphasis on knee injuries, ACL tears in particular. He got some great interviews with coaches and with athletes who have had multiple ACL tears, incl. one who played college soccer at a high level but is now more or less disabled and in chronic pain at age 26.
It's not a self-help guide as such, but he does delve into some evidence-based programs for ACL prevention [sounds like more or less working on how to land more softly, as well as improve your balance, and strengthen core and hamstrings to improve stability] and argue for their more rapid dissemination.
His thinking about causes is versatile across levels of analysis, from equipment issues (why do women, who have on average smaller heads, use same size/weight of soccer ball as men?)to athletic subculture issues (travel soccer teams playing far too many games in a short span of time at showcase tournaments etc.) to general culture issues (excessive one-sport specialization at early ages lending itself to overuse injuries, parental/cultural pressure to do anything at all to try to get college scholarships.......).
Some of the wider-culture stuff got a little formulaic (kids in earlier generations would roam freely and make up their own outdoor activities rather than play computer games indoors until their parents drive them to hyper-organized extracurriculars or sports? You don't say.) -- the movie version will likely have The Judds' "Grandpa [tell me about the good old days]" on the soundtrack. But on the whole, he makes a compelling case for much greater attention to this issue.
PS Michael Sokolove, as a Montgomery County guy, you should know that the number of people who refer to Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, home of the Barons, as "Bethesda" is zero. It's B-CC!!!!
It's not a self-help guide as such, but he does delve into some evidence-based programs for ACL prevention [sounds like more or less working on how to land more softly, as well as improve your balance, and strengthen core and hamstrings to improve stability] and argue for their more rapid dissemination.
His thinking about causes is versatile across levels of analysis, from equipment issues (why do women, who have on average smaller heads, use same size/weight of soccer ball as men?)to athletic subculture issues (travel soccer teams playing far too many games in a short span of time at showcase tournaments etc.) to general culture issues (excessive one-sport specialization at early ages lending itself to overuse injuries, parental/cultural pressure to do anything at all to try to get college scholarships.......).
Some of the wider-culture stuff got a little formulaic (kids in earlier generations would roam freely and make up their own outdoor activities rather than play computer games indoors until their parents drive them to hyper-organized extracurriculars or sports? You don't say.) -- the movie version will likely have The Judds' "Grandpa [tell me about the good old days]" on the soundtrack. But on the whole, he makes a compelling case for much greater attention to this issue.
PS Michael Sokolove, as a Montgomery County guy, you should know that the number of people who refer to Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, home of the Barons, as "Bethesda" is zero. It's B-CC!!!!
June 2, 2016
Overall, I would give this book 4/5 stars. The author, Michael Sokolove, did a great job of making the book factual yet filled with anecdotal evidence from real athletes. The story follows different female athletes who had suffered multiple major injuries due to their hardcore devotion to a sport. However, it is not at the fault of the women, the problem is sprouting from the fact that these athletes are being pushed to limits that cannot be reached without proper training. The book brings a new problem needing to be fixed to the world, and people are responding positively to it. Most people on Goodreads gave this book 3.86 stars. I don't agree with the star rating, but I do agree with what some said about he book. After reading some reviews from others, I could tell that other readers were just as astonished about the statistics in the book as I was. They were very surprised at the statistic that females will tear their ACLs at a rate of eight times or faster than male athletes. I think that the type of reader that would enjoy this book would be an athlete. By reading this book, they can learn the consequences of improper training and excessive playing time in a sport. I think that some strengths of this book are that it has an intriguing perspective and its character development is very strong. The author takes a more scientific perspective and adds in anecdotal evidence from real athletes. This makes the book more like we are following the athlete through their career and it makes it easier and more fun to read. This characteristic of the author also contributes to to the character development because we meet the athletes at a young age and follow them through life. Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to any athletes, especially females who are planning to pursue their sport as a career in the near future.
May 2, 2024
Great book explaining how to protect our daugthers from over doing it in year around travel sports. Lots of research. Sometimes, a little too much. I really don't need to read 50 pages about how an ACL tears. I get the point! That's the only critcism.
The book discusses ways to do preventive exercises to protect girls from ACL injuries through proper warmup. I started skimming the clinical stuff after awhile and just read for suggestions that are actionable.
I never realized the full extent the sports industry geared towards making money off our children. It's way beyond buying Nike or Adidas shoes. From weekend tournaments to trainers and clinics on how to improve, everyone is interested in making a profit. And the parents have our share of the blame. Parents see sports as a differentiators on college admissions so they press to get their girls on the best teams where they will get the most visibility from college recruiters.
As parents, we need to realize that the only ones that care about our girls are us. Everyone else has their motivations for seeing their team succeed. This book does a great job of opening your eyes to the competitiveness and unhealthy aspect of youth sports. The only reason I don't give it five stars is because of the unnecessary long dive into how ACLs tear. That was too much detail and too long a section of the book. I'd recommend to read the first ten pages, and then skip past that section of the book. You won't be sorry.
The book discusses ways to do preventive exercises to protect girls from ACL injuries through proper warmup. I started skimming the clinical stuff after awhile and just read for suggestions that are actionable.
I never realized the full extent the sports industry geared towards making money off our children. It's way beyond buying Nike or Adidas shoes. From weekend tournaments to trainers and clinics on how to improve, everyone is interested in making a profit. And the parents have our share of the blame. Parents see sports as a differentiators on college admissions so they press to get their girls on the best teams where they will get the most visibility from college recruiters.
As parents, we need to realize that the only ones that care about our girls are us. Everyone else has their motivations for seeing their team succeed. This book does a great job of opening your eyes to the competitiveness and unhealthy aspect of youth sports. The only reason I don't give it five stars is because of the unnecessary long dive into how ACLs tear. That was too much detail and too long a section of the book. I'd recommend to read the first ten pages, and then skip past that section of the book. You won't be sorry.
June 30, 2014
A little unbalanced in terms of providing so much info on ACL injuries and less on concussions, but a very interesting read. From the final chapter on prescriptives, some good advice for parents:
1/ parents need to stop abdicating responsibility and must start protecting their daughters. They should seek out ACL prevention programs (e.g. Www.aclprevent.com/pepprogram.htm) and demand that they be instituted for the club and school teams
2/ inquire with potential trainers about how they tailor training to female athletes for a specific individual and sport. Do not embrace the warrior girl mentality. Recognize that young women have different bodies than males' and that they change throughout the teen years in different ways.
3/ do not be bullied into specializing in one sport at the expense of giving up other sports/. Be well rounded and know that cross training is more likely to prevent injuries and promote athleticism.
4/ bring he same thoughtful Wed to sports parenting as is used in daily parenting. Have reasonable limits. Build in time for rest and physical training, not just skills acquisition.
5/ provide a holistic vision of body awareness, fitness, and exercise that is not derived solely from competitive sports.
6/ encourage movement in activities of daily living and also honoring one's body by paying attention to pain, soreness & fatigue.
1/ parents need to stop abdicating responsibility and must start protecting their daughters. They should seek out ACL prevention programs (e.g. Www.aclprevent.com/pepprogram.htm) and demand that they be instituted for the club and school teams
2/ inquire with potential trainers about how they tailor training to female athletes for a specific individual and sport. Do not embrace the warrior girl mentality. Recognize that young women have different bodies than males' and that they change throughout the teen years in different ways.
3/ do not be bullied into specializing in one sport at the expense of giving up other sports/. Be well rounded and know that cross training is more likely to prevent injuries and promote athleticism.
4/ bring he same thoughtful Wed to sports parenting as is used in daily parenting. Have reasonable limits. Build in time for rest and physical training, not just skills acquisition.
5/ provide a holistic vision of body awareness, fitness, and exercise that is not derived solely from competitive sports.
6/ encourage movement in activities of daily living and also honoring one's body by paying attention to pain, soreness & fatigue.
August 26, 2015
Good coverage of most of the issues surrounding the rise of the ACL injury epidemic among female athletes, especially younger girls and young women. A bit sensationalist, fraught with the emphasis and desperation of a father of a female athlete at times, but at other times, pretty reasonable tone.
As a sports coach who teaches a lot of female athletes, this type of reading is important to me. Some of the ideas and fears presented in this book are decades old (I studied them when I was still in college), and some are much newer.
What comes of all this, however, is the basic sense that the science surrounding ACL injury prevention, especially for women, is still in it's early phases, and lacks, as of yet, the power to move people. How do you prevent something when you don't even understand the injury mechanism?
I felt misled, though, by the title. I was hoping for discussion in several women's sports or perhaps injuries other than ACL ruptures. Nah. For the most part, this book is about ACL ruptures happening to girls and women in soccer. There's some research being done by the military, and for other sports, but this is about soccer, and not other sports, really.
As a depiction of the soccer epidemic in America, and much that is wrong with it, it's also eye-opening. It makes me glad that I'm not involved in soccer.
As a sports coach who teaches a lot of female athletes, this type of reading is important to me. Some of the ideas and fears presented in this book are decades old (I studied them when I was still in college), and some are much newer.
What comes of all this, however, is the basic sense that the science surrounding ACL injury prevention, especially for women, is still in it's early phases, and lacks, as of yet, the power to move people. How do you prevent something when you don't even understand the injury mechanism?
I felt misled, though, by the title. I was hoping for discussion in several women's sports or perhaps injuries other than ACL ruptures. Nah. For the most part, this book is about ACL ruptures happening to girls and women in soccer. There's some research being done by the military, and for other sports, but this is about soccer, and not other sports, really.
As a depiction of the soccer epidemic in America, and much that is wrong with it, it's also eye-opening. It makes me glad that I'm not involved in soccer.
April 19, 2013
I found this book at the doctor's office my son was a visiting for his concussion. Fascinating subject! In all sports, girls are injured at mugh higher rates than boys. For back pain, concussions, knee problems and broken bones. Girls ruin their ACLs 8x more often than boys.
Scientists are only now beginning to study why, and this research has been controversial as many like to believe girls and boys bodies' are equal, but injury rates clearly show this not to be the case. Why, then the higher rates? Estrogen? Wider hips? Early sport specialization which causes muscular inbalance? More flexibility = less stability on joints? More upright running? The answer is not yet known.
Solutions to keeping girls in sports healthy: 1. Use preventive stretching exercises. 2. Do not specialize in one sport. Play a variety of sports and take rests. 3. Tournaments are particularly injurious. Kids should not play more than one game per day (and are not allowed to do so in Europe). Fatigue leads to more injuries. 4. Realize the coach/club does not have your daughter's best interests at heart. They want to win and make a profit. Parents must advocate for their daughters.
Scientists are only now beginning to study why, and this research has been controversial as many like to believe girls and boys bodies' are equal, but injury rates clearly show this not to be the case. Why, then the higher rates? Estrogen? Wider hips? Early sport specialization which causes muscular inbalance? More flexibility = less stability on joints? More upright running? The answer is not yet known.
Solutions to keeping girls in sports healthy: 1. Use preventive stretching exercises. 2. Do not specialize in one sport. Play a variety of sports and take rests. 3. Tournaments are particularly injurious. Kids should not play more than one game per day (and are not allowed to do so in Europe). Fatigue leads to more injuries. 4. Realize the coach/club does not have your daughter's best interests at heart. They want to win and make a profit. Parents must advocate for their daughters.
October 15, 2014
This book made me want to cry. We are all doomed. It's like watching 12 Years a Slave. Every page was agonizing. Of course no one reads this book until they have a knee injury, and then it's relevant, but sooo bleak. As the third derby girl in my inner circle to have ACL surgery on her right knee in the last 5 months, I can relate to a lot in this book. Hips, and knees that tilt in when I skate? Check! Even though my league started doing PEP this year, I fear that we aren't doing it often enough to have a positive effect. Heck, I don't even know if we are doing the exercises correctly. I also wonder if they translate to our on-skates behavior. Derby doesn't have the same problems as child soccer players. We don't have to depend on parents and coaches. We just need to know what to do to stop getting injured, and we will do it. The problem has been identified, but the solution is less clear...
February 1, 2016
I think this book was overall interesting and a good read. It taught me things that I didn't know. From the beginning I really enjoyed this book because it was more specific to a certain situation. Throughout the book, it jumped to different situations which helped to understand what they were talking about. I feel like there was a lot of repeating done in this book, though. It did get very boring because I feel like it was just repeating and repeating what it said earlier. When it didn't repeat though , some of the information and facts were very cool and interested me. This is a long read especially since, like I just said it was a lot of repeating information which got boring to read after a while. I would recommend this book to someone who really enjoys learning about how sports and injuries connect but beware because this is a very long and slow moving book to read!!
July 16, 2012
Most of this book was stuff I'd already read about in the newspaper (some of it verbatim): girls who play soccer at a high level tear their ACLs way too often; they should rest, play other sports, and learn how to land properly. All good stuff, but no need for it to be repeated a hundred times. (I picked up the book because I thought it would be about MMA, that's usually the sport that uses the word "warrior".)
The description of what actually happens during ACL reconstructive surgery was pretty eye-opening ... it made me want to vomit. Good thing I'm not a doctor.
The description of what actually happens during ACL reconstructive surgery was pretty eye-opening ... it made me want to vomit. Good thing I'm not a doctor.
September 6, 2014
Thoughtful, well-researched, and important. Everyone involved in girls'/women's sports should read this. The focus is on ACL injuries in soccer, but Sokolove talks about many other aspects of girls and girls' sports that contribute to injuries. My favorite quote: "To play multiple sports is, in the best sense, childlike. It's fun. You move on from one good thing to the next. But to specialize in one conveys a seriousness of purpose. It seems to be leading somewhere - even if, in fact, the real destination is burn out or injury." (p. 210)
June 8, 2009
This book explores the causes of injuries in women's sports with a particular focus on ACL injuries. Although parts of the books seemed repetitive, the author discusses important topics such as the "professional" nature of young children's sports, the impact of Title 9 on research into women's injuries, and research into the causes of these debilitating injuries. As a coach of middle school athletes, I enjoyed reading it and feel much more informed than before.
May 13, 2012
Very informative to read as an athlete. Content is well-structured and researched, with stories of personal struggle. The author writes with passion, with caution of damaging the ideals of female athletes. But most of all, there are things that can be done to prevent knee injury, especially if athletes start early with training exercises and by allowing for cross-training and rest in our young female athletes.
October 20, 2013
An easy, interesting read. It is extremely relevant to what's going on with my current teammates, as well as other women's sports teams at our school. The author highlights some really interesting research, and the interviews are fascinating because they are so emotional and "raw." I completely agree with the author's suggestions for changing the culture of women's sports, especially starting at the youth level. All female athletes should read this book and pay attention to the lessons!
December 14, 2008
Amazing book that makes clear one-gender-fits all for sports training is harming our girls. Our training regime's have been based on male bodies. It's more than past time for us to adjust girl's training for what their bodies need so they can get stronger, play better, and experience far less injury.
August 25, 2008
A journalist view of the rise of female athlete's acl,mcl and other crippling sports injuries. A female athlete is generally 10 times more likely than a male to have a serious debilitating injury, most likely an acl. 80% of female athletes either come into college sports with at least one acl scar or will have at least one acl scar by the time they graduate.
July 1, 2011
great book to introduce people to some of the injury problems to female athletes. it harps on knee injuries, particularly those to the ACL (not the only injury female athletes have). even for those of us that study and work in sports injury/public health/rehabilitation, this brings a different perspective to the problems and only emphasizes the need to do more research and fund better studies
January 2, 2016
This book mostly discusses ACL knee injuries to teenage girl soccer players. The book connects the overplaying that is occurring in some communities to injuries that impact the young women for the rest of their lives. interesting read as a physician, but does not change my opinion that youth athletics should be diverse and not like a job.
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