Preseason Hamstring Muscle Weakness Associated with Hamstring Muscle Injury in Australian Footballers

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Hamstring muscle strain is the most prevalent injury in Australian Rules Football, accounting for 16% of play ing time missed as a result of injury. Thirty-seven pro fessional footballers from an Australian Football League team had preseason measurements of ham string and quadriceps muscle concentric peak torque at 60, 180, and 300 deg/sec measured on a Cybex 340 dynamometer. Players were studied prospectively throughout the 1995 season. During that time, six play ers sustained clinically diagnosed hamstring muscle injuries that caused them to miss match-playing time. The injured hamstring muscles were all weaker than in the opposite leg in absolute values and hamstring-to- quadriceps muscle ratios. According to our t-test re sults, hamstring muscle injury was significantly asso ciated with a low hamstring-to-quadriceps muscle peak torque ratio at 60 deg/sec on the injured side and a low hamstring muscle side-to-side peak torque ratio at 60 deg/sec. Flexibility (as measured by the sit-and-reach test) did not correlate with injury. Discriminant-function analysis using the two significant ratio variables re sulted in a canonical correlation with injury of 0.4594 and correctly classified legs into injury groups with 77.4% success. These results indicate that preseason isokinetic testing of professional Australian Rules foot ballers can identify players at risk of developing ham string muscle strains.