Quick Board

What most people don’t know is there are neurological changes that occur in the higher centers of your brain after an ACL injury.  These changes can impact the way you move, how the joints move relative to one another and how your body absorbs and produces force.  Functional MRI studies show these changes can be permanent unless you do targeted training for.  Traditional sports PT addressed this with rehab exercises that use internal focus.  This is less likely to transfer to sport and is one reason that research shows that over 27% of ACL reconstructed athletes re-tear their ACL upon return to play.

To create change in the primary motor cortex, you must use both internal and external.  External focus requires visual motor training with real-time feedback.    There has been a lot of research in the area of motor learning and these neurological changes and sadly, if it is not trained, it is not something that just comes back.  Studies show athletes as far a 2-3 years out still have these changes.  This is also the time at which they are at greatest risk for re-injury.

Through Dr. Nessler’s work with Quickboard, he has found this is one of several tools that has a direct impact on the objective measures that are captured with the ViMove+ AMI.  That is one reason that the Quickboard is an essential part of The Athlete Lab’s arsenal of approaches to a very complex problem (ACL injuries).  In addition to the impact on ACL risk, what we also see is that athletes who improve on the quick board also demonstrate significant improvements in vertical jump and sprint speed.