QUANTITATIVE EVALUATION OF PROPRIOCEPTION ON SURFERS AND INJURED ATHLETES

Abstract

Proprioception is related to neural input to the brain regarding the position, speed and direction of the movement, vibration and pressure in a particular joint. It protects against excessive forces and injury. The PURPOSE of this study was to evaluate active and passive proprioception in 5 surfers, 4 injured athletes and 5 controls. The HYPOTHESIS was that the injured subjects have lower proprioceptive indices than the surfers. An isokinetic device (Biodex 3) was used with the knee at 20° of flexion. Testing was done following Guido's protocol. The perception of the joint position was recorded with active and passive actions. The subjects were blinded and performed 3 trials for each repositioning. The score was the difference between the repositioned angle and the starting angle of 20° degrees. The mean ± sd were calculated. RESULTS:Tablea) p = 0.003, surfers: active vs passive; b) p = 0.001 surfers vs injured; c) p = 0.001 surfers vs controls; CONCLUSION: The surfers showed better scores (p = 0.001) than the injured and the controls groups. The active re-positioning occurred with less error than the passive repositioning, and this might mean that the muscle contraction of the active mode was a stronger stimuli for the proprioceptors than the stretching of the same receptors during the passive mode, resulting in better proprioceptive feedback.