Normative range of weight-bearing lunge test performance asymmetry in healthy adults

Abstract

Reduced dorsiflexion is a clinical consideration during the management and rehabilitation of several lower extremity injuries (Landrum et al., 2008;Youdas et al., 2009). Decreases in dorsiflexion are often the result of triceps surae muscle tightness (You et al., 2009) or local arthrokinematic restrictions in posterior talar glide in reference to the ankle mortise (Denegar et al., 2002). Additionally, reduced dorsiflexion has been and identified as a risk factor for sustaining lower extremity injury in military recruits (Pope et al., 1998), male physical education students (Willems et al., 2005), and adult volleyball players (Hadzic et al., 2009). Reduced dorsiflexionmay bemodifiable risk factor for lower extremity injury that can be easily identified during clinical examination. The weight-bearing lunge test (WBLT) is a functional and reliable method to indirectly assess dorsiflexion by measuring the maximal advancement of the tibia over the rearfoot in a weightbearing position (Bennell et al., 1998). Previous investigators (Bennell et al., 1998;Jones et al., 2005;Vicenzino et al., 2006) have reported robust inter-tester and intersession reliability associated with the assessment of WBLT performance in healthy adults along with a robust correlation(r 1⁄4 0.95) between degrees of dorsiflexion range of motion and maximal lunge distance. Furthermore, there is a significant positive correlation between WBLT performance and peak ankle sagittal plane kinematics during walking and running (Barrett & Caulfield, 2009); as well as, reach distance on the Star Excursion Balance Test (Hoch et al., 2010b). Lunge distance asymmetries on the WBLT have been used to identifyweight-bearingdorsiflexion impairments in individualswith