Top 15 ACL Injury Prevention Exercises for Stronger Knees

You plant your foot, cut to change direction, and feel a sting or shift in your knee that sends a chill through your plans for the season. ACL injury prevention exercises focus on practical steps to lower that risk by improving knee stability, quad control, hamstring strength, proprioception, landing mechanics, and balance. This article provides clear strength and mobility drills, neuromuscular training, and movement pattern coaching to help you build strong, stable knees, move confidently, perform better, avoid ACL tears or setbacks, and learn how to recover quickly from a workout. Want to train smarter and stay on the field or trail?
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To help with that, Pliability's mobility app offers guided routines for flexibility, strength, and neuromuscular control that fit your schedule and goals, allowing you to track progress, reinforce proper landing mechanics, and maintain resilient knees.

Summary

• Non-contact mechanics are the primary cause of most ACL tears, with approximately 70% of injuries occurring during non-contact activities such as planting, cutting, or landing when the knee collapses inward.  
• ACL injuries are common across all levels, with roughly 200,000 occurring annually in the United States, and athletes aged about 15 to 25 face higher exposure.  
• Balance and neuromuscular training reduce the risk, with balance exercises lowering ACL injury rates by approximately 30% and comprehensive prevention programs reducing the incidence by up to 50%.  
• Treating prevention as a once-weekly warmup is insufficient; daily 3 to 6-minute mobility and control scans build durable motor patterns that hold up under fatigue and complex sport demands.  
• Single-leg strength and progressive reactive training are central. The article outlines 15 equipment-light exercises and recommends approximately 20 cumulative minutes of high-intensity effort (RPE near eight) to build neuromuscular endurance under load.  
• Sex and lifecycle factors require program scaling, since females are reported to be 2 to 8 times more likely to sustain an ACL injury, so training should adjust during growth and hormone-related phases. 
  

This is where Pliability's mobility app comes in; it provides short, guided routines, a three-minute movement scan, and sport-specific tracks to help teams turn sporadic warm-ups into measurable, daily practice.

How Do ACL Injuries Happen and What Are the Risk Factors?

The ACL is a key stabilizer inside your knee that prevents the tibia from sliding forward and controls rotation. When it fails, the joint loses its ability to resist twisting and sudden deceleration. 

Most ACL tears happen when the foot is planted and the knee collapses inward during a jump landing, sharp cut, or abrupt stop, though direct blows can also cause damage.

How Do Non-Contact Tears Actually Occur?

This pattern appears across levels and ages: 

• Landing from a jump
• Planting to change direction
• Stopping suddenly 

These factors can put the knee into valgus, that inward, knock-kneed position where the tibia can thrust forward off the femur and rupture the ligament. 

According to StatPearls Publishing, 70% of ACL injuries occur during non-contact activities, which is why movement quality matters as much as strength. Think of a skilled soccer player or a basketball player landing after a rebound; the mechanism is the same, whether you are a high school athlete or a professional.

Who Tends To Tear Their ACL?

Your sport matters most: 

• Cutting
• Pivoting
• Jumping sports like: 
  
  • Soccer
  • Basketball
  • Football 

It concentrates risk because it repeatedly demands aggressive changes of direction under load. Younger athletes, especially those between about 15 and 25, face higher exposure simply because they play more and push intensity. 

Prior ACL reconstruction raises the chance of a second tear, and anatomical and hormonal differences contribute to a higher incidence in females in comparable sports. At the population scale, the problem is not rare, as the Mayo Clinic reports that approximately 200,000 ACL injuries occur annually in the United States, highlighting the commonality of this injury across youth and adult populations.

What Movement Failures Put The ACL at Risk?

The failure mode is consistent: poor alignment under load. Weak or imbalanced hip and quadriceps control allows the knee to drop inward; fatigued athletes lose fine motor control and land with a stiffer or straighter leg, both of which are risky. Playing surfaces and inappropriate footwear amplify torque through the joint. 

After working with a college club soccer team for a nine-month season, the pattern became clear: drills that taxed decision-making under fatigue revealed the same collapse into valgus in almost every athlete who later reported knee pain, which demonstrates that neuromuscular control, not just strength, is the choke point.

Why Single Warmups Fail, And What Changes That?

Most teams treat ACL prevention as a warm-up or a checklist item, which feels efficient and familiar. That works in the short term, but the hidden cost is that neuromuscular patterns are not consistently built, so gains fail to carry over into late-game fatigue and complex sport situations. 

Platforms like Pliability provide a different path: 

• They deliver short, daily mobility and stabilization routines
• A three-minute phone movement scan to individualize progress
• Sport-specific tracks that scale with skill

It helps athletes turn sporadic warm-ups into measurable, repeatable practices that teach the knee to track safely under load.

How To Train The Body That Protects The ACL

Train proprioception and movement patterns progressively, not just raw strength. Start with single-leg balance on stable ground, then add unstable surfaces and reactive elements, and finally layer in controlled deceleration drills and sport-specific cues. 

Fatigue training matters: practicing high-effort intervals for at least 20 cumulative minutes at an RPE near eight while maintaining proper landing and cutting mechanics builds the endurance of the neuromuscular system, so movement quality holds when you tire.

What Athletes Actually Feel And Worry About

It’s exhausting when an athlete returns from surgery feeling stable but still unsure about trusting their knee. 

I worked with a midfielder nine months post-op who could cut in training but hesitated in: 

• Games
• Fearful
• Indecisive

That anxiety is real and teachable, because rebuilding confidence involves repeated exposure to progressively harder, measurable movements that demonstrate objective progress and reduce doubt.

That solution sounds solid, but the most challenging part is turning it into a daily habit that sticks and actually changes how your knee behaves under pressure.

Related Reading

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• Signs of Injury
• Hip and Knee Pain
• Why Do the Insides of My Legs Hurt When I Run
• Deadlift Back Pain
• Signs of Overtraining Cycling
• Deloading Week
• How Do You Know if You Tore Your ACL
• Injuries in Weightlifting
• How to Prevent MCL Injuries

Top 15 ACL Injury Prevention Exercises

Equipment-Free, Scalable Movements

1. Forward And Backward Band Walk

Strengthens glutes and hip flexors.

How to:

Stand with a resistance band around your thighs or ankles, feet hip-width apart.

• Forward
  
  • Knees bent at 45° and pushing outward. (Do not collapse inwards.)
  • Slowly and carefully walk forward while maintaining constant tension on the band.
• Backward
  
  • Knees bent at 45° and pushing outward.  (Do not buckle inwards.)
  • Slowly and controlled walk backwards while keeping constant tension on the band.
• Sideways
  
  • Knees bent at 45° and pushing outward. (Do not buckle inwards.)
  • Walk to the left while keeping constant tension on the band.
  • With your lead foot at the start of each step, lead with your heel.
  • Repeat to the right.

2. Single Leg Bridge

Strengthens: 

• Glutes
• Hamstrings
• Core
  

How to:

• Lie on your back with knees bent and feet flat on the floor.
• Place your arms by your sides to help with stability during exercise.
• Squeeze your abdominal and buttock muscles. Pull your belly button in towards your spine.
• Straighten your left leg and raise it to be parallel with the opposite leg. Flex your foot.
• Raise your hips to create a straight line from your knees to your shoulders.
• Hold 3-5 seconds.
• Return to the starting position and repeat on the opposite side.

3. Single Leg Chair Squat

Strengthens: 

• Glutes
• Hamstrings
• Core

How to:

• Stand in front of a chair and balance on one leg.
• Slowly and carefully squat down to sit on the chair. The raised leg should remain straight with the foot flexed.
• The knee on your standing leg should not pass over your toe and should not bow to either side.
• Stand up and repeat on the opposite side.
  

During this exercise, ensure your back remains straight and your head and neck are in a neutral position. A good way to remember this is to start by finding a spot in front of you to focus on, keeping your shoulders down and back, and keeping your chest open.

4. Forward T

Strengthens glutes and also helps balance and coordination.

How to:

• Standing up straight, balance on one leg.
• Keep one arm down by your side and bring the opposite arm, as the lifted leg, up to your ear. The standing leg should have a slight bend at the knee.
• Bend forward at your hips to create a “T.”
• Stand up and repeat on the opposite side.
  

Keep your hips and toes pointing forward during this exercise; there should be no rotation.

5. Bulgarian Lunge

Strengthens glutes and quads. Increases stability and flexibility.

How to:

• Facing forward, place your foot on a stable elevated surface behind you.
• Your front foot should be facing forward or slightly pointed outward.
• Squat down to perform a lunge.
• Your upper body should remain in a fixed upright position.
• Keep your hips squared and ensure your knee is not passing over your toes.
• Repeat on the opposite side.

6. Side Plank With Leg Lift

Strengthens core and hips.

How to:

• Lie on your side with your forearm on the ground and your legs extended so that your body creates a straight line.
• Flex your feet and stack them on top of each other.
• Put your hand on your hip or raise it straight up into the air.
• Engage your core and lift your body off the ground, maintaining a straight line from your shoulders to your ankles.
• Lift your top leg slightly higher than your hip.
• Hold until you fatigue or lose control.
• Repeat on the opposite side.

7. Single Leg Plank

Increases core strength as well as shoulder and glute strength.

How to:

• Start in a pushup position with your shoulders stacked on top of your elbows and forearms.
• Your head and neck should be in a neutral position.
• Squeeze your abdominal and buttock muscles to maintain stability and alignment. Pull your belly button in towards your spine.
• Lift your left leg off the ground 3 to 5 inches.
• Hold.
• Repeat on the opposite side.

8. Single Leg Balance With Ball Toss

Helps improve: 

• Agility
• Coordination
• Balance
  

How to:

• Standing up straight in front of a wall or partner, balance on one leg.
• The standing leg should have a slight bend at the knee.
• While maintaining your balance, toss a ball at a wall or to your partner and catch it as it bounces back or is thrown back to you.
• Repeat on the opposite side. 

Once you’ve mastered this, you can increase the difficulty by: 

• Using a weighted medicine ball
• Standing on foam or a BOSU
• By throwing/catching the ball from different angles/directions

9. Single Leg Balance With Ball Toss

Helps improve: 

• Agility
• Coordination
• Balance
  

How to:

• Standing up straight in front of a wall or partner, balance on one leg.
• The standing leg should have a slight bend at the knee.
• While maintaining your balance, toss a ball at a wall or to your partner and catch it as it bounces back or is thrown back to you.
• Repeat on the opposite side. 

Once you’ve mastered this, you can increase the difficulty by: 

• Using a weighted medicine ball
• Standing on foam or a BOSU
• By throwing/catching the ball from different angles/directions

10. Single Leg Lateral Jumps

Helps develop: 

• Power
• Strength
• Stability
  

How to:

• Create a line on the ground using tape.
• Standing up straight, balance on one leg.
• Hop side to side over the line without touching it.

11. Zig Zag Shuffle

Helps improve: 

• Agility
• Coordination
• Balance
  

How to:

• Shuffle to the right at a 45⁰ angle for three strides.
• Stop by planting your right foot.
• Repeat on the left side.
• Repeat this motion continuously, first forward and then backward.

12. Forward Jump

Helps improve: 

• Strength
• Agility
• Coordination
  

How to:

• Stand with feet together.
• Jump forward and land in a squat.
• When landing, ensure your feet are hip-width apart and your knees do not pass over your toes.
• Hold squat for 3 to 5 seconds.
• Repeat.

13. Calf Raises | 30 Reps

Targets: Calves

How To:

• Stand upright with your feet hip-width apart and your toes pointing forward.
• Raise your heels off the floor and squeeze your calves.
• Return to the starting position by slowly lowering your heels, and repeat the movement.

14. Jump Squat | 10 Reps

Target muscles: 

• Glutes
• Hamstrings
• Quads
• Lower Abs
• Calves
  

How To:

• Starting with feet hip-width apart, do a regular squat, engage your core, and jump up explosively.
• When you land, push your butt back and lower down into a 45-degree squat position to complete one rep. 
• Once you have appropriately landed, repeat the same motion.

15. Skater Jumps | 6 Each Side

Target muscles: 

• Glutes
• Hips
• Quads
  

How To:

• Standing feet shoulder-width apart, lift your left knee in the air and get into a quarter squat. 
• Using the momentum from your left leg, jump horizontally to about 2-3 ft, landing on your left leg. 
• Absorb impact for 1-2 secs and repeat the motion with your right leg as the lead to complete one rep. Be sure to pump your arms to increase the momentum.

Why Single-Leg Work Matters For Durability

When we rebuilt routines for club teams over the course of a full season, a pattern became clear: programs that skip single-leg training leave measurable side-to-side gaps, which manifest as instability late in matches. 

That imbalance shows up as awkward landings and hesitant cuts, which is precisely where prehab needs to act, not react.

From Warm-Ups to Lasting Movement Habits

Most teams treat prevention as a checkbox, and that makes sense; it is familiar and fast. The hidden cost is that sporadic warm-ups do not establish durable neuromuscular habits, resulting in movement quality that breaks down under fatigue and stress. 

Platforms like Pliability change that pattern by turning short, daily mobility practices into measurable progress with: 

• Expert-led
• Short videos 
• A three-minute phone movement scan

It provides athletes with personalized routines they can repeat anywhere.

Evidence for Balance and Prevention

Balance training is not optional if you want lasting results, and the evidence supports this, according to the Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery and Research. Balance training exercises included in injury prevention programs can decrease ACL injury rates by 30%. 

Broader program implementation matters too, as a 2025 study found that the implementation of ACL injury prevention programs can reduce the incidence of ACL injuries by up to 50%.

Stability Starts at the Hips

A simple image helps: think of knee protection like tuning a tripod, not replacing a leg. Strength in the hips, precise single-leg control, and a steady balance level the load, so the joint never has to improvise under stress. 

That is why daily, short drills that seem insignificant on the calendar can change how you move when it matters most.

Stability Over Symmetry

I know it wears on you when routines feel generic and leave one side weaker, because athletes and desk workers both report tight hips and weak cores that show up in the same way, as pelvic misalignment and tension in movement control; the antidote is consistent, focused practice on single-leg strength and isometric control, so the pelvis becomes stable rather than a variable.

Curiosity loop: What most people call “prevention” looks like a warmup until you see the one habit that actually keeps knees healthy over the years.

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• Shoulder Impingement Exercises to Avoid
• How to Prevent Achilles Tear
• Ankle Mobility for Runners
• ACL Injury Prevention Exercises

7 ACL Prevention Tips for Long-Term Health

Maintaining knee health in the long term is about adopting smart habits that you can repeat, rather than engaging in heroic workouts only once a season. 

Focus on: 

• Predictable load management
• Daily micro-practice that preserves range and control
• Measurable checkpoints that catch breakdowns before they become tears

1. Periodize Load And Recovery

Treat training like a schedule you can adjust, not an all-or-nothing sprint. Block hard work into finite cycles with planned deloads, and track acute to chronic workload ratios so you can see when volume or intensity is drifting into risk territory. 

When athletes skip this, technique breaks down under fatigue, and tiny errors compound into injuries; controlling volume and inserting lighter weeks keeps movement quality available when it matters.

2. Short, Daily Movement Checks

Build 3- to 6-minute mobility and control scans into your daily routine, so you notice tightness or asymmetry early and address it before it alters your mechanics. Use a consistent, simple test each morning, then follow a two-minute corrective routine for any restriction you find. 

Those small actions become: 

• A durable bank balance
• They compound quietly
• They are easier to keep than long, occasional sessions

3. Video-Based Movement Audits

Record athletes in training and review one short clip per week focused on alignment under load, not performance highlights. Objective video feedback reveals recurring patterns of collapse in real tasks, which can be corrected with targeted cues and low-dose drills. 

Since most breakdowns occur in real game contexts, the audit should include high-speed reps and the final minutes of practice, allowing you to observe fatigue-driven faults.

4. Manage Surfaces, Footwear, And Environment

Matching traction and stiffness to the athlete and session reduces unexpected torque through the knee. Rotate shoes across surfaces and avoid excessive grip when preparing for cutting drills, because small surface-foot interactions repeatedly magnify stress on ligaments. 

This is a low-effort intervention that prevents repeated microtrauma from accumulating silently.

5. Build Systemic Resilience With Sleep, Nutrition, And Loading Variety

Tend the tissue bedrock: 

• Sleep quality
• Protein timing
• Daily movement variety
• Speed recovery
• Keep connective tissue adaptable

Alternate impact days with low-impact aerobic or swim sessions, and include intentional mobility-only days. Treat recovery as training time, because underrecovery is the common point where disciplined athletes often find themselves making the same mistakes repeatedly.

6. Create Team Habits And Accountability

This challenge is prevalent in military-style physical training and among competitive lifters: inadequate conditioning and excessive high-intensity sessions lead to preventable knee and hip issues, as well as rising medical downtime, because no one is tasked with day-to-day maintenance. 

To ensure consistency, make the maintenance: 

• Task explicit
• Assign short daily routines
• Measure adherence

Social accountability moves a short routine from an optional extra to a nonnegotiable habit.

7. Scale Programs For Sex-Specific Risk And Lifecycle Changes

Because Females are 2 to 8 times more likely to sustain an ACL injury than males, the program must be adaptable. 

This involves: 

• Increasing neuromuscular emphasis during growth spurts
• Using more frequent low-level reactive training when hormone fluctuations alter ligament stiffness
• Prioritizing frequent scans during key transitional periods

The 2018 NATA position statement makes clear the risk difference, so planning that changes across phases of life or seasons is not optional; it is innovative prevention.

From Checklists to Consistency

Most teams manage prevention as a once-a-week checklist because it is familiar and fits schedules, which is understandable. That approach hides a cost, because sporadic attention fails once fatigue and complex decision-making processes come into play, and predictable breakdowns return. 

Solutions like daily mobility apps provide short expert videos, objective movement scans, and sport-specific progress tracking, giving teams a consistent, measurable way to turn a checklist into a repeatable habit while keeping interventions accessible and gear-free.

Precision Through Small Adjustments

Think of this as tuning a precision instrument, not swapping parts; minor, repeatable adjustments keep the whole system working together. 

Add one vivid practice: 

• Pick one daily micro-scan
• Log it
• Never miss the check for two weeks in a row

Watch how often minor problems resolve themselves. That simple shift feels small until it stops the next avoidable setback, and then you know it was everything.

Improve Your Flexibility with Our Mobility App Today | Get 7 Days for Free on Any Platform

We observe this pattern among athletes and active individuals: they seek structured, effective programs that offer variety and translate directly to improved performance, not just aesthetics. 

If your knee feels unreliable or mobility is affecting your confidence, consider Pliability and try the seven-day free trial. With over 1 million downloads across all platforms and 80% of users reporting improved flexibility within four weeks, it's clear that Pliability helps people build a consistent, measurable daily practice that actually prevents injury and enhances movement.

Related Reading

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• Signs of Overtraining Running
• Eccentric Quadriceps Exercises
• How to Start Working Out Again After Knee Injury
• Scapular Mobility Exercises
• Glute Activation Exercises
• Injury Prevention for Runners
• SI Joint Mobility Exercises
• Running Injury Prevention Exercises

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