INFLUENCE OF BALL POSITIONS IN VOLLEYBALL SPIKE JUMP ON KNEE VALGUS ANGLE AT LANDING

M. Kawai¹, N. Maeda¹, M. Komiya¹, S. Tsutsumi¹, Y. Urabe¹

¹Hiroshima University, Department of Sports Rehabilitation, Graduate School of Biomedical and Health Sciences, Hiroshima, Japan

Background: Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injuries in volleyball occur during spike jump landing in approximately 76.9% of all injury’s occurrence situation (Datao et al., 2021), and increased knee valgus angle is a risk factor for ACL injuries.In addition, according to video analysis, the ball positions during spike jump also affect the occurrence of ACL injuries in the non-dominant leg (Lobietti et al., 2010). During the game, there are situations in which the ball positions during spike shift to the dominant and non-dominant side, but the knee valgus angle of the non-dominant leg during spike jump landing in each situation has not been clarified.

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate whether knee valgus angle during a spike jump changes with ball positions, and to help prevent ACL injuries.​​​​

Methods: Six female college volleyball players (19.7±1.5 years) with at least 5 years experience were participated. The testing task is spike jump and the ball positions were set at the normal position, the dominant position, and the non-dominant position. The normal position was placed on a perpendicular line to the floor through the acromion. A three-dimensional motion analysis system (Vicon Motion Systems) was used to capture the knee valgus angle of the non-dominant leg during spike jump landing, and the sampling frequency was set at 100 Hz. The analysis intervals were landing from the initial contact (IC) to the maximum knee flexion (MKF). Ground reaction force was collected at 1,000 Hz using force plates (AMTI).We used repeated measures analysis of variance and Bonferroni correction to compareknee valgus anglebetween ball positions.The statistical significance was set at 0.05.

Results: The knee valgus angles at IC for the normal, the dominant, and the non-dominant position were 2.8±3.4°, 1.4±3.4°, and 3.7±2.8°, respectively. The non-dominant position was significantly larger than those in the dominant position by 0.9°(p<0.05). At MKF, the knee valgus angles were 12.1±5.2°, 10.2±6.1°, and 13.3±2.0°, respectively. There were not significantly different.

Conclusions: This study showed that the knee valgus angle increased with a ball in the non-dominant position at IC.In a previous study, when the hitting position is in the non-dominant hand side, players have to bend their trunk laterally to their non-dominant side as their arm comes through. This results in a single-leg landing of the non-dominant leg and increases the knee valgus angle at jump landing (Kimura et al., 2012). Therefore, we believe the ball positions also increased the knee valgus angle in the non-dominant position in this study.

Implications: The results indicate that the risk of ACL injuries may increase when the ball is in the non-dominant position during spike jump. Players and coaches need to understand the situations that increase the risk of ACL injuries in volleyball, and it is important to be aware of landing on double-leg if the ball position in the non-dominant position to prevent ACL injuries.

Funding acknowledgements: We have no funding acknowledgement in this study.

Keywords:
Volleyball spike jump
Biomechanics
Anterior cruciate ligament

Topics:
Sport & sports injuries
Musculoskeletal: lower limb
Musculoskeletal

Did this work require ethics approval? Yes

Institution: Hiroshima University

Committee: the Ethical Committee for Epidemiology of Hiroshima University

Ethics number: E-2699