Men and Women are different

In case you missed this story last week, women are more prone to sports injuries than men:

Tim Hewett, of the Sports Medicine Biodynamics Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, says that just after boys go through puberty, they tend to get a big power burst.

"They get much bigger gluteal muscles," he says, "and much bigger hamstring muscles."

But with girls, there's not as much of an overall power spurt. Growth during this stage, for girls, is concentrated in only a few muscles.

"Women tend to be very front dominant," Hewett says. "They use their quadriceps, the big thick muscles in the front of the legs."

This means that women's bodies don't fully activate the muscles on the back side, namely the hamstrings and the glutes.

On the soccer field or basketball court, Hewett says, this is a problem. First, the imbalance of muscle use — something Hewett calls a "muscle turn-on pattern" — ends up putting stress on the ACL.

The ACL is a major ligament that runs through the center of the knee, linking the upper leg bone with the lower one. Tearing an ACL, which female athletes are up to six times more likely to do than men, is brutal. It's an injury that can keep players out of their sports for an entire season.