Relationship between single-leg balance, single-leg hop, and agility running performance in female field hockey players: Implications for lower extremity injury prevention screening.

OBJECTIVES

In field hockey, there is limited information regarding lower extremity (LE) injury prevention screening protocols. To help inform the design of field hockey LE injury prevention screening protocols, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether static and dynamic single-leg balance (SLB), single-leg hop (SLH), and agility running tasks with unilateral limb-loading bias capture similar or different aspects of LE motor performance.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional.

SETTING

Indoor training facility.

PARTICIPANTS

Thirty adult female players.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

For the right and left LE, Pearson's correlations (r) and the coefficient of determination (r) assessed between-task relationships and shared variance, respectively, for: eyes-closed SLB, Star Excursion Balance Test - anterior reach, triple-hop-for-distance, 6-m-hop-for-time, modified pro-agility test.

RESULTS

Across all correlations, 50% were not statistically-significant. Statistically-significant (P < 0.05) relationships were returned for the right LE (r = -0.69 to 0.42, r = 0.17 to 0.48) and left LE (r = -0.62 to 0.53, r = 0.17 to 0.38). Overall, between-task shared variance was ≤48.0%.

CONCLUSIONS

Because between-task shared variance was ≤48.0%, static and dynamic SLB, SLH, and agility running tasks with unilateral limb-loading bias each assess different aspects of LE motor performance. Therefore, practitioners should incorporate a range of LE motor performance tasks when designing field hockey LE injury prevention screening protocols.