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Sixteen cameras surround a patch of artificial turf. An athlete, covered in 66 sensors from head to toe, approaches the turf where a soccer ball awaits. On the word “Go!” she runs to the left, pivots back to the right, and dribbles the ball to the end of the turf. Off to the side, , PhD, watches closely, focusing on the knees and for a movement and a moment that could change an athlete's life in the blink of an eye.

“Our goal is to prevent an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury before it happens,” explains Pasanen, a professor in the University of Calgary’s and co-director of the Integrative Neuromuscular Sport Performance Lab. 

Pasanen and her team use 3D motion capture and force plates to analyze an athlete’s movement in fine detail, measuring joint angles, forces and whole-body biomechanics with a real-time data-processing app that delivers results instantly. 

“Traditional biomechanical analysis would take about three days to process,” says Pasanen. “With our app, we can see results immediately, adjust the athlete’s technique, and re-test the movement on the spot.”

How you move matters as much as how hard you play

Many ACL injuries occur in non-contact situations, such as rapid direction changes, sudden stops or landing from jumps, rather than collisions. Early results of Pasanen’s research show about a 30-per cent reduction in ACL injury-related knee loading with technique changes, with real-life applications happening on our own UCalgary courts and pitches. 

Pasanen and her team have been working with Dinos teams to do pre-season testing of athletes, providing drills and training techniques to practice, either on their own or in live team-practise environments.

“The players have noticed that the training is making them faster, and so far, no knee injuries amongst those who have participated in the testing,” she says. “Hopefully, they’re understanding that this is very important for their knee health and for improving their movement technique and movement performance.”

International pipeline of innovation 

A former ice hockey player, high-performance coach and physiotherapist, Pasanen had seen many severe knee injuries in her lifetime, but thankfully had never suffered one herself. She wondered why these injuries were happening so often. She decided to return to school to study the phenomenon, building her research program at the UKK Institute for Health Promotion Research and University of Tampere in Finland, and began a collaboration with a Norwegian research group that has spanned almost 20 years.

“This collaboration has a strong focus on ACL injuries and risk factors, specifically in female athletes,” she explains. “What I’m doing with my lab now, and the app we’re using, is a continuation of this long-term project we’ve been doing in both Norway and Finland.”

Notice soccer’s most demanding movements 

As soccer fans around the world turn their attention to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, they may not be able to pinpoint an exact movement or moment that causes an ACL injury, but, according to Pasanen, there are patterns viewers may be able to recognize that could be a precursor to injury.

“We may not be able to spy with our little eye the loading patterns, but we can see how often players perform direction changes and sudden stops, movements to outplay their opponent,” she says. “It’s those movements that happen hundreds of times in a game that fans might notice and think about the loading patterns and biomechanics that could be affecting the knee joint and the ACL.”