Test-Retest Reliability of Single-Leg Time to Stabilization Following a Drop-Landing Task in Healthy Individuals.

Abstract

Single-leg stability has been associated with injury risk and is a key component of many injury prevention interventions. Methods of measuring single-leg stability are varied yet often unreliable. To establish within- and between-day test-retest reliability for single-leg time to stabilization (SL-TTS) following a drop-landing maneuver of 20cm in height among a healthy cohort. Test-retest reliability study. Healthy cohort from a third-level educational institution. Nineteen (11 females and 8 males) healthy individuals. The SL-TTS in the vertical plane. The SL-TTS showed good within-day (intraclass correlation coefficient = .715) and excellent between-day (intraclass correlation coefficient = .83) test-retest reliability. The minimal detectable change was calculated as 171.6ms for within-day contexts and 123.8ms for between-day contexts. This method of measuring SL-TTS is reliable and could be used to detect changes over time in a healthy cohort. This could be of value to clinicians in injury risk factor identification or assessing the effectiveness of single-leg stability training. However, further research is needed to investigate its reliability in pathological populations.