Background and Purpose:

Though football players are known to have a good level of unipedal balance, limited data exists on the relationship between the strength of more proximally placed hip abductor muscles with known contributions to lower extremity alignment and unipedal non-domniant leg balance among them. What is the relationship between isometric hip abductor muscle strength and unipedal non-dominant leg balance parameters among professional football players?

Relevance

It is important to look closely at the influence of the force/strength generated by proximally placed muscles on the preference of non-dominant leg for standing balance among professional football players.

Participants/Subjects

Thirty-two purposively recruited professional football players (78% right leg dominant and 22% left leg dominant) registered with the Shooting Stars Sports Club (3SC), Ibadan, a club in the Nigerian Professional League participated in this descriptive correlational study

Methods

This descriptive correlational study involved purposively recruited male professional football players who met the inclusion criteria. Participants’ unipedal non-dominant balance parameters was assessed using Wii balance-board in two test situations (eyes open (EO) and eyes closed (EC)) while Isometric Hip Abductor Muscle Strength (IHAMS) was measured using a modified sphygmomanometer and converted to muscle force.

Analysis

Data obtained were summarized using descriptive statistics and further analyzed using inferential statistics. Spearman correlation method was used to explore the correlation between IHAMS and non-dominant leg unipedal balance parameters among the participants. Alpha level was set at 0.05, and all statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 16.0 evaluation software for Windows (SPSS Inc., 1989–2007, Chicago, USA).

Results

Participants’ mean age, weight, height and isometric hip abductor muscle strength were 28.19 xx (4.10) years, 71.31 xx (7.45)kg, 1.76 xx (0.07)m and 1774.00 xx (305.40)Nm^-2kg^-1 respectively. There was a medium negative correlation between the variables, rho= -0.375, n=32, p<0.05 with high levels of isometric hip abductor muscle strength associated with low medio-lateral velocity during eyes closed unipedal non-dominant leg balance.

Conclusions

Hip abductor muscle strength only correlates significantly to medio-lateral stability among professional football player.  None of the other parameters of non-dominant leg unipedal balance examined in this study had significant association with hip abductor muscles’ strength among professional football players.

Implications

Hip abductor muscle strength is important for lateral stability during unipedal balance

Keywords

Football; Hip; Muscle strength; Skeletal; unipedal balance; lower extremity.

Funding Source Acknowledgement

The authors declared no funding was received.

Ethics approval

University of Ibadan/University College Hospital (UI/UCH) Human Research Ethics Committee (NHREC/05/01/2008a) provided approval.