Browsing by Author "Le Roux, Dominic Christine"

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    Functional tools to determine injury risk in university netball players
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2015-03) Le Roux, Dominic Christine; Venter, Ranel; Welman, Karen; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. of Sport Science
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT : Screening tools are widely used by coaches and other professionals to determine the risk for injury in athletes. This can be done either pre-season or post-injury prior to an athlete returns-to-play. The screening process aims to identify risk factors, including incorrect movement patterns, decreased flexibility and dynamic balance, amongst others. A history of previous injury remains a major risk factor, due to various neural implications involved. Specific movement patterns occur within predetermined activation patterns and sequences. Post-injury, this sequence may alter and unless corrected, compensatory patterns occur. The aim of screening tools should be to identify these compensatory patterns, so as to identify which athletes have altered movements within the kinetic chain. The kinetic chain reactions are pre-determined and when altered, could lead to injury. The Netball Movement Screening Tool consists of four different components, namely the Movement Competency Screen, the Jump component, the Active Straight Leg Raise Test and the modified Star Excursion Balance Test. The Bunkie test is an isometric modified plank position, performed bilaterally in five different positions. The main aim of this study was to determine whether two specific screening tools, namely the Netball Movement Screening Tool (NMST) and the Bunkie test can be used as tools to predict injury in university netball players. Secondary aims include the following: to determine the inter- and intra-rater reliability of two components of the NMST and to determine the relationship between the modified Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT) and the modified Bunkie test results. This was a descriptive study and all participants were members of the Stellenbosch University netball club. Results revealed no significant findings for the logistic regression results, with an odds ratio of 0.47 (95% CI 0.13 – 1.65) and 1.00 (95% CI 0.98 – 1.02) for the Netball Movement Screening Tool (NMST) and Bunkie test, respectively. A weak to moderate correlation was found between the total modified Star Excursion Balance Test and total modified Bunkie test results (r = 0.36 – 0.43, r2 = 0.13 – 0.18, p ≤ 0.05). The inter- and intra-rater reliability (ICC agreement) for untrained raters were both 0.35 for the Movement Competency Screen and 0.34 and 0.64 for the Jump Category scores within the Netball Movement Screening Tool. iii The inter- and intra-rater reliabilities for trained raters revealed ICC agreements of 0.98 and 0.93 for the Movement Competency Screen only, since the Jump components’ agreement could not be calculated, due to a lack of variance. The NMST and total Bunkie score results could not be used to predict injury in this group of university netball players. A relationship exists between the total modified SEBT and total modified Bunkie test score results.