URJC, awarded for a study on muscle injuries

Javier Martínez Tubío

The study has won third place in the National Sports Medicine Research Awards, organized by LALIGA. The research, which involved Professor and Researcher Juan del Coso from URJC, focuses on hamstring injuries, which are very common in soccer players and have a high recurrence rate.

The Physical Education and Sports teacher explains that "many players return to competition without being fully recovered, and that increases the risk of suffering the injury again."

The main novelty of the research is its individualized approach to each footballer's recovery process. Instead of using absolute values, the research analyzes whether the athlete is able to reach at least 90% of their pre-injury maximum speed, using their own performance as a benchmark.

“We realized that many players were returning to competition before they had fully recovered their previous fitness levels, which explains why there are so many relapses with these types of injuries,” Del Coso points out. Teams are increasingly aware of the importance of establishing individualized thresholds for each player, based on objective data, before authorizing their return to competition.

The research was conducted within the framework of a collaboration agreement between URJC and LALIGA, with the participation of Miguel Hernández University and clubs such as Villarreal CF and FC Barcelona, ​​who provided the injury cases analyzed. According to Del Coso, “continuous contact with physical trainers and professional teams allows the results of our research to be directly applied to the clubs' daily work.”

This recognition adds to the first prize obtained in 2022 by the same research team and reinforces the role of the Rey Juan Carlos University in applied research to sport and health.