CONSEQUENCES OF ANKLE SPRAIN ON JOINT INSTABILITY AND REACTION TIME IN HANDBALL PLAYERS

Abstract

In handball, ankle sprains represent 20% of all injuries and are more common than hand or shoulder injuries. Ligament and soft-structure lesions arising from an ankle sprain involve the aforementioned peripheral receptors and lead to a decrease in the quality of peripheral feedback provided to the central nervous system, which influences the muscle reaction time. Depending on the severity of the sprain, the recovery period ranges between two and four weeks, sometimes being even longer. The literature presents the multiple consequences of ankle sprains on the athletes’ functional abilities, for instance: a decrease in muscle strength and endurance, an increase in the activation time of antagonist muscles, the occurrence of chronic joint instability, the early onset of osteoarthritic processes, which leads a decline in sports performance. The present paper was carried out on 17 handball players aged between 15 and 16 years and aimed to highlight the existence or nonexistence of correlations between the variables represented by: number of ankle sprains, position on the field, degree of joint instability, muscle reaction time, level of pain. Following the analysis of the results, the existence of statistically significant direct connections between the analysed variables is demonstrated. The paper provides specialists with an overview of the functional consequences of ankle sprain, which can have an influence on the results achieved in sports performance.