you remember that big ouch moment in football games your soccer I got you when one of the players tackled skillfully right into the knees of another play bending it into an unnatural pose or when there's a player who makes a drastic stop or turn in the middle of a run and ends up rolling over the field writhing in agony these types of scenarios usually cause the anterior cruciate ligament or ACL to be torn what is torn ACL to understand the torn ACL we need to learn a little bit about the anatomy of our knee our knee consists of three bones the femur or thigh bone the tibia or our shin bone and the patella or the kneecap they are stabilized and held together by the ligaments the collateral ligaments like the medial or MCL on the inner side of our knees and lateral or LCL on the outer side prevent the knee from bending out of position then there is the posterior cruciated ligament or PCL and the anterior cruciate ligament inside the knee joint they control the back and forth motion of our needs and also provide rotational stability lastly the cartilage such as the articular and meniscus along with the quadriceps and hamstrings muscles are there to help articulation of our knees so yes this ACL is the part that is affected by the injury risk factor some factors may increase the risk of ACL injury females naturally have higher risks due to the difference in muscle strength and hormonal influence doing particular sports like football American football gymnastic some downhill ski wrong movements such as moving the knees inward when doing squats or conditioning before doing sports playing on unsuitable or poor quality tough wearing loose shoes or other equipment causes injuries to ACL are not only sustained by professional athletes but by people doing Recreational Sports as well it can be caused by several of these reasons one receiving a force or blow to your knees for example during a sliding tackle 2. pivoting or turning when your foot is firmly planted three a drastic change to your running speed 4. Landing awkwardly after a jump type of injuries injured ligaments can be graded depending on the condition after the injury grade 1. the ligament is mildly damaged and stretched but can still help stabilize the knee great too this rare grade has a ligament that is stretched far enough until it becomes loose also called a partial tear grade three known as the complete tear the ligament splits into two pieces and the joint becomes unstable the evolution of ACL is when one of the ends of the ACL is detached from the bone this one is more common in kits in extreme cases such as when the blow to the knee happens when the foot is firmly planted the three important structures of the knee the ACL MCL and meniscus would easily be torn apart by the impact this has always caused debilitating pain and a serious amount of unhappiness granting it the name of unhappy triad injury more info about first AIDS and diagnosis are upcoming in the second part of this video [Music]