LE3 .A278 2015

2015

Landry, Scott

Acadia University

Bachelor of Kinesiology

Honours

Kinesiology

Kinesiology

The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is one of the four main ligaments in the knee, and it resists anterior translation of the tibia on the femur. Post-pubescent female athletes are two to eight times more likely to sustain an ACL injury compared to their male counterparts; however, this gender disparity is not present before puberty. Addressing the prevention of ACL injuries is imperative because these injuries provide a significant burden to the health care system, not only in the costs of surgery and rehabilitation, but also in the costs of treating the knee osteoarthritis that often follows such a devastating knee injury. Analysing athletic maneuvers under unanticipated conditions more closely mimics true game-like scenarios where the ACL can be injured from a non-contact mechanism. The purpose of this study was to perform a biomechanical comparison between pre-planned and distracted drop jump landings performed by post-pubescent female athletes while developing an extensive protocol that can be used to examine the biomechanics of the knee under different circumstances. Seven female varsity soccer players from Acadia participated in this study. Hip, knee, and ankle joint angles and moments were measured in the John MacIntyre motion Laboratory of Applied Biomechanics (mLAB) during unanticipated jump landings from a 31 cm high platform. A Fusionsport timing gate system was used to create the unanticipated movements, and a 12-camera motion capture system with one high-speed video camera and two force platforms were used to measure and calculate joint angles and moments for the lower extremities. A distraction effect was tested for using paired t-tests, at p < 0.05. Apart from a difference found in the dominant limb’s maximum extension moment during the stance phase, statistically significant differences were not found between the pre-planned and distracted landing conditions. In conclusion, in highly trained, post-pubescent female athletes, drop jump landings were not affected by the distraction method used in this study.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:1199