Win More Soccer Games with the 11+ Program
What if I told you that implementing a short pre-practice routine can serve as a your warm up, boost performance, and prevent injury? It’s a no brainer right?!
The 11+ neuromuscular training program is a dynamic warm-up specifically designed to address lower extremity injury incidence in soccer athletes. It has been demonstrated to decrease time loss to injury by 28.6%.(2)
The 11+ program is intended to serve as a pre-soccer warm up as well as improve mechanics at the hip and knee to protect against overuse and non-contact injury, most notably, the non-contact ACL tear.(3) It consists of 20 minutes of on-field exercises that include the following:
Running exercises
Cutting, change of direction
Deceleration
Landing technique
Strength
Plyometrics
Balance
Core strength
Eccentric control
Proprioception
There are three levels to the program, each with increasing difficulty. The 11+ program of course takes care of the other components of a dynamic warm-up, including oxygen uptake, increasing core temperature, and prepping the body physiologically for soccer.(4)
A recent study, “High Compliance with the 11+ Injury Prevention Program Results in Better Win-Loss Records” by Silvers-Granelli, et al. (2023) was published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy.(1) This awesome study provides evidence that the widely utilized 11+ program for soccer players actually results in greater wins and less losses in a season.(1)
Let me say this again – there is an existing program already built for soccer players that has been academically supported to prevent injury and result in more wins!
DI and DII soccer teams were divided into two groups – teams participating in the 11+ program and teams using their own warm-up protocol. The teams participating in the 11+ program won more games and had fewer losses!(1) Teams that demonstrated the greatest amount of compliance to the 11+ program had more wins compared to teams that had moderate or low compliance to the program. Teams with the highest compliance had an average of 13.11 wins in the season while teams who did not participate in the 11+ program had an average of 8.15 wins in the season.
Athletes participating in the 11+ program improved several key performance metrics: vertical jump height, knee biomechanics, leg strength, sprint speed, balance, and stability.(5)
The 11+ program should be an essential, if not mandatory, component of any soccer team’s pre-practice/pre-game routine. It is evidence-based and research supported to boost performance decrease risk of injury.
Book an appointment with our sport performance coach today to optimize your athletic performance and compete at your best!
If you’ve had an injury and are in need of a return to play program, schedule a physical therapy session with us to get back to your sport ready to meet your sport specific and position specific demands.
References
Silvers-Granelli H, Bizzini M, Mandelbaum B, Arundale A, Pohlig R, Snyder-Mackler L. High Compliance with the 11+ Injury Prevention Program Results in Better Win-Loss Records. Int J Sports Phys Ther. 2023 Sep 1;18(5):1065-1075.
Silvers-Granelli H, Mandelbaum B, Adeniji O, et al. Efficacy of the FIFA 11+ injury prevention program in the collegiate male soccer player. Am J Sports Med. 2015;43(11):2628-2637.
Pappas E, Nightingale EJ, Simic M, Ford KR, Hewett TE, Myer GD. Do exercises used in injury prevention programmes modify cutting task biomechanics? A systematic review with meta-analysis. Br J Sports Med. 2015;49(10):673-680.
Bizzini M, Impellizzeri FM, Dvorak J, et al. Physiological and performance responses to the “FIFA 11+” (part 1): is it an appropriate warm-up? J Sports Sci. 2013;31(13):1481-1490.
Impellizzeri FM, Bizzini M, Dvorak J, Pellegrini B, Schena F, Junge A. Physiological and performance responses to the FIFA 11+ (part 2): a randomised controlled trial on the training effects. J Sports Sci. 2013;31(13):1491-1502.
Disclaimer: This SciSport blog post is a summary of an article printed in an academic research journal. The purpose of this blog post is to provide readers with academic and educational content in an easy-to-understand format. We take no credit for the material and knowledge presented, and we encourage readers to take a look at the original source provided in the References section.
