The Safe Landing warm up technique modification programme: An effective anterior cruciate ligament injury mitigation strategy to improve cutting and jump-movement quality in soccer players Olivares Jabalera, Jesús Fílter Ruger, Alberto Dos Santos, Thomas Ortega Domínguez, José Soto Hermoso, Víctor Manuel Requena, Bernardo Injury risk reduction ACL injury mechanisms Change of direction The objective of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Safe Landing (SL), a 6-week technique-modification (TM) programme, on cutting and jump-landing movement quality in football players. In a non-randomized design, 32 male semi-professional football players from two Spanish clubs participated in the study: one served as the control group (CG, n = 11), while the other performed the SL (n = 15). Performance and movement quality of drop vertical jump and 70º change of direction (COD70) were evaluated through 2D video footage pre- and post-intervention. In such tasks, the Landing Error Scoring System for first (LESS1) and second (LESS2) landings, and the Cutting Movement Assessment Score (CMAS) were used for assessing movement quality. Pre-to-post changes and baseline-adjusted ANCOVA were used. Medium-to-large differences between groups at post-test were shown in CMAS, LESS1 and LESS2 (p < 0.082, ղ2 = 0.137–0.272), with small-to-large improvements in SL (p < 0.046, ES=0.546–1.307), and CG remaining unchanged (p > 0.05) pre-to-post. In COD70 performance, large differences were found between groups (p < 0.047, ղ2 = 0.160–0.253), with SL maintaining performance (p > 0.05, ES=0.039–0.420), while CG moderately decreasing performance (p = 0.024, ES=0.753) pre-to-post. The SL is a feasible and effective TM program to improve movement quality and thus potential injury risk in cutting and landing, while not negatively affecting performance. 2024-05-24T11:00:39Z 2024-05-24T11:00:39Z 2023-03-23 journal article Jesús Olivares-Jabalera, Alberto Fílter, Thomas Dos´Santos, José Ortega- Domínguez, Víctor M. Soto Hermoso & Bernardo Requena (2022) The Safe Landing warm up technique modification programme: An effective anterior cruciate ligament injury mitigation strategy to improve cutting and jump-movement quality in soccer players, Journal of Sports Sciences, 40:24, 2784-2794, DOI: 10.1080/02640414.2023.2193451 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/92060 10.1080/02640414.2023.2193451 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Taylor & Francis Group