The effect of leg preference on postural stability in healthy athletes.
In research regarding postural stability, leg preference is often tested and controlled for. However, leg preference may vary between tasks. As athletes are a group of interest for postural stability testing, we evaluated the effect of five leg preference tasks categorization (step up, hop, ball kick, balance, pick up) on single-leg postural stability of 16 field hockey athletes. The 'center of pressure speed' was calculated as the primary outcome variable of single-leg postural stability. Secondary variables were 'mean length of the GRF vector in the horizontal plane', 'mean length of the ankle angular velocity vector', and 'mean length of the hip angular velocity vector', as well as the separate outcomes per degree of freedom. Results showed that leg preference was inconsistent between leg preference tasks. Moreover, the primary and secondary variables yielded no significant difference between the preferred and non-preferred legs, regardless of the applied leg preference task categorization (p>0.05). The present findings do not support the usability of leg preference tasks in controlling for bias of postural stability. In conclusion, none of the applied leg preference tasks revealed a significant effect on postural stability in healthy field hockey athletes.
Research Institute MOVE, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Electronic address: a.huurnink@gmail.com.
Arnold
A
Huurnink
Research Institute MOVE, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Duncan P
DP
Fransz
Research Institute MOVE, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Idsart
I
Kingma
EMGO Institute, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Maarten D W
MD
Hupperets
Research Institute MOVE, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Jaap H
JH
van Dieën
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000842:Ankle; D000843:Ankle Joint; D056352:Athletes; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006688:Hockey; D006801:Humans; D007866:Leg / Q000502:physiology*; D035002:Lower Extremity; D008297:Male; D008953:Models, Anatomic; D004856:Postural Balance; D011312:Pressure; D013314:Stress, Mechanical; D055815:Young Adult
Balance performance; Biomechanics; Leg dominancy; Postural control; Single leg stance