Relationship Between Time To Stabilization Measures And Demographic And Self-reported Data

Abstract

PURPOSE: Determine correlations between time-to-stabilization (TTS) and body mass, height, foot size, and leg length. In addition, self-reported leg dominance, brace-use, and past injury were examined with respect to TTS. METHODS: 83 collegiate football players participated in TTS test. Anthropometric data (see Table 1), leg dominance, brace-use, and past injury were gathered. In a bare-foot condition, participants performed a "step-step-hop“ approach, hopped over a 15-cm hurdle which was placed 100% of leg-length from the center of the force plate, and landed on one foot. They performed randomly ordered L- and R-foot landings. GRF were sampled at 200 Hz, and smoothed with Fast Fourier Analysis. TTS was calculated by determining when the sequential average of ML or AP GRF reached ±0.25 standard deviation of the overall mean. TTS and anthropometric data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient, and independent t-tests were used to evaluate differences in TTS between self-reported data. RESULTS: Anthropometric data were moderately correlated with both L- and R-foot AP force TTS but not with ML force TTS (see Table 1). Only R-foot dominant subjects showed significantly higher AP force TTS from R-foot trials (R: 4.664 vs. L: 4.578 sec, p <.05). No differences in TTS measures were found between conditions of brace-use and past injury. CONCLUSIONS: Positive correlations between AP force TTS and anthropometric data suggest that a higher center of mass location requires longer TTS. These results are consistent with those from static stability tests. Self-reported comparisons indicate that R-foot dominant individuals are more stable on their non-dominant leg, but the same cannot be said for L-dominant subjects.Table: No caption provided