| Background/Aims Proprioception acuity is important in sports activities and stretching
is widely used in warm-up programmes. The main objective of this study was to evaluate
if a warm-up programme with and without stretching flexors and extensors muscles
could affect knee joint position sense.
Methods The effects of different stretching regimens on joint position sense were
examined. A total of 12 semi-professional football players completed four warm-up
sessions over 4 weeks: standard warm-up programme; standard warm-up programme
with quadriceps stretching; standard warm-up programme with hamstring stretching, and
standard warm-up programme with stretching of both quadriceps and hamstrings. Open
kinetic chain knee joint position sense was estimated from the ability to reproduce the
three target angles (20°, 45° and 60° knee flexion) in the dominant limb before and after
the intervention.
Results In the absolute angular error, there was a statistically significant three-way
interaction between the warm-up programme, target angle, and time (F (6, 54)=6.88,
P=0.001). Findings of post-hoc analysis demonstrated that there was a statistically
significant difference between the pre- and post- stretching of hamstrings for the target
angles of 20° (4.70 vs 1.57, P=0.01), 45° (1.70 vs 4.50, P=0.02), and 60° (1.93 vs 4.20,
P=0.02). In the relative angular error, interaction of time by the warm-up programme was
significant, (F (3, 27)=3.41, P=0.03).
Conclusions The warm-up programme with static stretching of hamstrings had a
negative effect on open kinetic chain knee joint position sense during the flexion to
extension repositioning task, which may not only have a negative effect on performance
of athletes as a part of warm-up exercises, but may also lead to further injuries. |