ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

Minerva Ortopedica e Traumatologica 2011 February;62(1):9-17

Copyright © 2011 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Agility, power, and speed performance measures of non-injured athletes while using a functional knee brace use (Pilot Study)

Rishiraj N. ^{1, 2}, Taunton J. E. ³, Lloyd-Smith R. ³, Niven B. ⁴, Regan W. ⁵, Woollard R. ⁶

¹ School of Physiotherapy, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand 2 ACTIN Health & Rehabilitation Inc., Vancouver, Canada 3 Allan McGavin Sports Medicine Centre, Primary Care, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada 4 Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Centre for Application of Statistics and Mathematics, University of Otago, New Zealand 5 Allan McGavin Sports Medicine Centre, Orthopaedics, University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada 6 Department of Family Practice University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada

Aim. The aim of this paper was to examine if functional knee brace (FKB) use by healthy athletes hindered performance. If performance was affected, could accommodation to wearing a FKB occur?
Methods. A 2×3 non-braced (NBR) and braced (BR) repeated measure crossover design. Five healthy athletes (aged 19- to 23-years) completed the pilot study. Agility, lower extremity power, and speed performance measurements were recorded over three NBR and then over three BR testing day and data sets were used to determine if performance was hindered while using a FKB and if accommodation to FKB use was possible.
Results. Non-significant higher group mean vertical jump height and slower group mean agility performance, for the three testing days, were recorded for BR subjects; statistically slower (F1,4=12.85, P=0.023) group mean performance was recorded for the BR subjects during the 10-meter sprint. With continued brace use, performance improvements were noted in all tests.
Conclusion. Initial use of a FKB hindered performance during the agility and speed tests but not during the vertical jump test. However, with accommodation to the FKB, performance measures were not hindered during any test.