The Duke Medical Minute allows Duke specialists to give a brief snapshot into health offerings at Duke.

In this episode, Kelly Hess speaks about common soccer injuries and tips for how to prevent them.

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Podcast Transcript

Announcer: We’re talking with Kelly Hess, physical therapist at Duke Sports Medicine. World Cup is here and we’re seeing a lot of these great athletes in their top form despite the fact that they’ve been playing in just about every league possible leading up to this. How do these guys do it?

Hess: They need to stay in top fitness. They need to make sure that they’re training on a consistent basis, staying strong, and working on technique to prevent these injuries.

Announcer: We hear a lot about things that happen after an injury, but we’re talking about injury prevention. What are the steps that you have to take in order to make sure that you’re in top form?

Hess: Staying fit with strength is very important. Making sure you have good hamstring strength, core strength, and gluteal strength goes a long way in preventing knee injuries, as well as working on technique with jumping and landing and cutting.

Announcer: Now Duke Sports Medicine is in the community, helping teams and schools make sure that they understand what is all about injury prevention, correct?

Hess: That’s right. We work with local youth soccer clubs and we run speed and agility camps, injury prevention training sessions. We also do some in-house things where athletes can come to us and have individual or small-group training.