CORE PERFORMANCE MEASURES AND BODY SEGMENT KINEMATICS FOLLOWING KNEE JOINT LOADING AMONG FEMALE COLLEGIATE ATHLETES

Open Access
- Author:
- Armistead, Matthew James
- Graduate Program:
- Kinesiology
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- March 23, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Giampietro Luciano Vairo, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Sayers John Miller III, Committee Member
Wayne Joseph Sebastianelli, Committee Member - Keywords:
- ACL
Core
Trunk
Women's Ice Hockey
Women's Lacrosse
Field Hockey
Single-Leg Landing
Core Fatigue
Core Strength
Core Endurance
Lateral Trunk Lean
Knee Valgus
Body Segment Kinematics - Abstract:
- Women participating in sports are three-times more likely to suffer anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury than men. Consequently, incidence of injury varies among different sports in which women engage; specifically, women’s ice hockey players display a markedly lower rate compared with lacrosse, and field hockey. While the inherent dynamics of individual sports influence incidence, modifiable factors may also contribute to these disparate ACL injury rates, and represent variables that clinicians could address to reduce risk. Core strength, and endurance are such variables proposed to be related to ACL injury risk, and intervention programs targeted at improving these measures are suggested to curb incidence. During dynamic movement tasks in sports, such as landing, lesser measures of core performance may cause the center of mass to shift in a manner that heightens knee valgus angle, which may load the ACL, and result in injury. Landing represents a common non-contact mechanism of ACL injury, and biomechanical approach to studying body segment responses to knee joint loading; thus, the aim of this study was to compare core performance, and kinematic landing profiles among Division-I collegiate female student-athletes participating in ice hockey, lacrosse, and field hockey. We hypothesized that ice hockey players would demonstrate greater core performance measures as well as lesser lateral trunk lean, and knee valgus angles upon landing compared with lacrosse, and field hockey. The outcomes of this study demonstrate that ice hockey players demonstrate greater core performance measures, which may influence body segment kinematics associated with knee loading mechanisms that result in ACL injury. Practitioners that operate in competitive athletics may use these data to identify modifiable factors, like core performance, in an effort to potentially improve body segment responses to destabilizing loads imparted to the knee joint for diminishing ACL injury risk in collegiate women’s sports.