Proprioception is not associated with lower extremity injuries in U21 high-level football players

Abstract

Football is a contact sport with a significant risk of injury. Although proprioception is well studied in rehabilitation, little is known about the association between proprioception and the occurrence of sport injuries. The purpose of this study was to look into the association between ankle and knee proprioception and lower extremity injuries in young football players. Seventy-three football players from the highest U-21 league in Iran volunteered to participate in this study. Before the start of the 2017–2018 competitive season, joint position sense was measured at 30°, 60° and 90° knee flexion and at 10° and 15° ankle dorsiflexion, and inversion using the Biodex Isokinetic pro 4 system. The teams’ medical staff recorded football-related lower extremity injuries. We used mixed effects Cox regression models to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% CIs, acknowledging the clustered data structure. Twenty-two players (30.1%) suffered one or more lower extremity injuries during the season. None of the proprioception measures examined was significantly associated with the risk of lower extremity injuries. Based on these results of our sample, joint position sense does not seem to be associated with lower extremity injuries in young male football players.

Keywords:

• Lower extremity injury
• soccer
• injury prevention
• proprioception
• knee
• ankle
• joint angle

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Shahid Beheshti University for their support which allowed the realization of this project. We would like to thank all clubs, coaches, and players for their participation and our study assistants for their valuable support during data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Shahid Beheshti University.