Effectiveness and recovery action of a perturbation balance test – a comparison of single-leg and bipedal stances

Abstract

Dynamic balancing abilities can be assessed with perturbation tests. The present study examined the effectiveness of balancing (damping ratio) and the recovery action (directional ratio) in bipedal and dominant single-leg stance in the young population. Twenty-four healthy young adult participants completed unidirectional lateral perturbations successfully using a Posturomed© platform (Haider Bioswing, Germany). Single-leg stances had similar damping scores (p = 0.551) to and lower directional ratio values (p = 0.002) than bipedal recoveries. This shows that different recovery actions can achieve similar effectiveness in the two stances. A test evaluation methodology that simultaneously utilises performance and motion characteristic parameters was demonstrated.

Keywords:

• Bipedal stance
• Dynamic balancing
• Posturomed
• single-leg balancing

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Gergely Nagymáté and Kristóf Rácz for their assistance with conducting the measurements.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by the Hungarian Scientific Fund [grant number K115894.]