Investigating the Effect of Warm-up Exercises FIFA 11+ on Injury Prevention for Football Athletes: A Narrative Review

Introduction: Football is one of the most popular sports in the world, however, the risk of injury in football players is high. So, it is necessary to do exercises that prevent injury. The FIFA 11+ warm-up program is one of the most recent injury prevention programs developed by FIFA. This program includes warm-up preparation exercises. Recently, many studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of this program in injury prevention. The purpose of this review study was to investigate the effect of FIFA 11+ training on the extent to which football players are injured and their performance. Methods and Materials: Using the keywords of Football, Soccer, Injury prevention, FIFA 11, and FIFA 11+ in the Google Scholar, Science Direct, and PubMed databases, related studies were searched from 2002 to 2019. Finally, 6 studies had the inclusion criteria. Results: Players who used the FIFA 11+ program reported less damage. Also, those who followed the intermittent exercise program showed a significant improvement in performance and health-related factors. Conclusion: FIFA 11+ training is recommended as a type of warm-up exercise due to its ease of use in soccer athletes, as it has been shown that doing this exercise program can significantly reduce the risk of injury in footballers

The Effect of Strengthening Exercises on Functional Ability in Patients with MS: A Review Study

Introduction: Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) usually report gait and balance disorders. Exercise therapy, especially strengthening exercise, is a safe and effective treatment approach in these patients. Therefore, the aim of this review study was to determine the effect of strengthening exercises on functional ability in patients with MS. Methods and Materials: A search of databases such as PubMed, science direct, Cochrane library, and Google scholar was reviewed to determine the existing articles on the effect of strengthening exercises on functional ability in patients with MS. Results: According to the evaluation of studies from 2000 to 2020, 8 articles met the inclusion criteria. These articles examined the effect of strengthening exercises on functional ability in patients with MS. The results showed that strengthening exercises improved balance variables, functional ability, strength, and quality of life. Conclusion: Various interventions including stretching, balance, strengthening exercises, and electrical stimulation have been used to treat balance disorders, decreased muscle strength, gait efficiency and quality of life in patients with MS. Among these interventions, strengthening exercises have been shown to play an effective role in improving functional ability, although more studies are needed in this area

Measurement of superficial and deep abdominal muscle thickness: an ultrasonography study

BACKGROUND: Real-time ultrasound imaging is a valid method in the field of rehabilitation. The ultrasound imaging allows direct visualization for real-time study of the muscles as they contract over the time. Measuring of the size of each abdominal muscle in relation to the others provides useful information about the differences in structure, as well as data on trunk muscle activation patterns. The purpose of this study was to assess the size and symmetry of the abdominal muscles at rest in healthy adults and to provide a reference range of absolute abdominal muscle size in a relatively large population. METHOD: A total 156 healthy subjects with the age range of 18–44 years were randomly recruited. The thickness of internal oblique, external oblique, transverse abdominis, and rectus abdominis muscles was measured at rest on both right and left sides using ultrasound. Independent t test was used to compare the mean thickness of each abdominal muscle between males and females. Differences on side-to-side thicknesses were assessed using paired t test. The association between abdominal muscle thicknesses with gender and anthropometric variables was examined using the Pearson correlation coefficient. RESULTS: A normal pattern of increasing order of mean abdominal muscle thickness was found in both genders at both right and left sides: transverse abdominis < external oblique < internal oblique < rectus abdominis. There was a significant difference on the size of transverse abdominis, internal oblique, and external oblique muscles between right and left sides in both genders. Males had significantly thicker abdominal muscles than females. Age was significantly correlated with the thickness of internal oblique, external oblique, and rectus abdominis muscles. Body mass index was also positively correlated with muscle thickness of rectus abdominis and external oblique. CONCLUSIONS: The results provide a normal reference range for the abdominal muscles in healthy subjects and may be used as an index to find out abnormalities and also to evaluate the effectiveness of different interventions

Investigating the Effect of the Routine Physical Therapy with and without Reflexology on the Level of Pain, Disability and Endurance of the Trunk Extensor and Flexor Muscles in Subjects with Chronic Nonspecific Low Back Pain

Introduction: low back pain is one of the most common and expensive musculoskeletal disorders which due to its disability, the health care system is faced with great problems such as social and remedial ones. Different methods are used in order to alleviate the pain .one of the most common way to alleviate the complications of the low back pain is the foot reflexology. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of adding this kind of treatment as an inexpensive nonaggressive way to the routine physical therapy plan. Methods and Materials: In this quasi experimental study, 30 women with chronic nonspecific low back pain returnee to physiotherapy clinic in Tehran, first were selected by purposive sampling then they with random allocation method had been divided to two groups: routine physiotherapy (electrotherapy and strength training of flexor and extensor muscles) and routine physiotherapy plus foot reflexology. The amount of pain and functional disability and flexor and extensor endurance were measured by VAS and Oswestry disability questionnaire and ITOO test before, just after 8 weeks treatment and with a month interval after intervention. Data were analyzed using repeated measure ANOVA. The statistical significance was resumed to be a P&lt;0.05. Results: Before intervention anthropometric, quantitative, and qualitative specifications were not significantly different between two patients groups participating in this study. Immediately after completing their physiotherapy treatment plan, although the pain and disability reduction were seen in both groups, the reflexology group was better than routine physiotherapy (P&lt;0.05), Endurance of trunk muscles was not significantly different in both groups. A month after the final physiotherapy session, the pain, disability and endurance were not significantly different between two groups (P&gt;0.05). Conclusion: Adding reflexology to the treatment plan had a positive effect only for a short term in improving the pain and disability, but in long term, applying reflexology besides the routine physiotherapy treatment had no additional effect and the routine results were established. Future studies with more subjects and in acute low back pain is recommended