A new jump-landing protocol identifies differences in healthy,coper, and unstable ankles in collegiate athletes |
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| Authors: | Kathy Liu Caitlin Dierkes Logan Blair |
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| Institution: | School of Public Health, University of Evansville, Evansville, IN, USA |
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| Abstract: | Ankle sprains are the most common injury in sport. With stability being an important risk factor for ankle sprains, a jump-landing protocol that can elicit differences in time-to-stabilisation (TTS) is necessary. The objective of this study was to develop a jump-landing protocol that could identify differences in TTS among healthy, ‘coper’, and unstable ankles of high-level athletes. 61 Division I collegiate athletes (32 females, 29 males; age: 19.9 ± 1.2 years; height: 176.6 ± 9.5 cm; mass: 74.3 ± 10.8 kg) participated in a jump-landing protocol that utilised sporting movements with preparatory steps and a vertical propulsion of the body in two multi-directional jumps. Utilising the landing on a force plate, ground reaction forces were used to quantify TTS. TTS of the unstable group (1.58 ± 0.62s) was significantly longer than the healthy (1.19 ± 0.37s; p = 0.050) and ‘coper’ (1.13 ± 0.49s; p = 0.019) groups in the forward hops. In addition, TTS of the lateral hops in the unstable group (1.55 ± 0.63s) was also significantly longer than the healthy (1.14 ± 0.37s; p = 0.026) and ‘coper’ (1.15 ± 0.39s; p = 0.028) groups. This new jump-landing protocol was able to elicit differences in TTS in high-level athletes that were not found using previous protocols. This new jump-landing protocol could be an effective tool to identify injury risk for high-level athletes. |
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| Keywords: | Time-to-stabilisation ankle copers ankle instability |
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