The effects of fatigue and gender on the Star Excursion Balance Test in high school athletes
Date
2011
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Context: More than 7 million students are involved in high school sports annually in the United States. Disturbances in postures as result of fatigue have been postulated to effect male and female interscholastic athletes differently. It is important that this population be studied, and the mechanism by which these injuries are produced be determined. Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the effects gender and fatigue have on postural control in a group of healthy high school athletes as measured by modified version of the Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT). Design: Within groups, pre-test/post-test study. Setting: A climate controlled, research center. Participants: A total of 30 healthy varsity high school athletes, 15 male (age= 17.1±1yrs; height=175.8cm±9.2; mass=70.1±8.5kg) and 15 female (age= 16.4±1; height=166cm±8.2; mass=60.6±7kg) participated in this study. Interventions: The subject’s dynamic postural control was tested using the modified SEBT before and after completing a functional fatigue protocol. Main Outcome Measures: The normalized component reach directions including anterior (ANT), posteromedial (PM), and posterolateral (PL) and the composite reach distance scores for both the right and left side were used as dependant measures for analysis in this study. A univariate, repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze data in this study. There were two groups in the analyses: male and female. An alpha level of .05 was used to determine significance. Results: There was a significant group by time interaction (Pillai’s trace F1,30 = 4.339; P = .047) for the left composite reach score. Females demonstrated a significant decline in composite reach scores (88.9 ± 2.0 to 86.7 ± 2.03) compared to males (91.4 ± 2.0 to 92.5 ± 2.027). The right composite reach score also demonstrated a similar trend between males/females post fatigue Conclusions: Differences were observed between genders during the performance of the SEBT, with females demonstrating more of a decline in reach distances compared to males.