Highlights
- •Gymnasts with and without back pain performed back walkovers and back handsprings.
- •Wearable sensors detected movement of the gymnasts' spines.
- •Gymnasts with back pain had similar spinal motion to those without back pain.
Abstract
Background
Female gymnasts have a greater prevalence of back pain compared to other female athletes.
There is little evidence that female artistic gymnasts with and without back pain
demonstrate different movement patterns during gymnastics skills. The purpose of this
study was to determine if there were differences in back movements during back walkovers
and back handsprings among female artistic gymnasts.
Methods
Female artistic gymnasts (8–18 years old) with and without back pain wore inertial
sensors on their torso, arms, and legs while performing back walkovers (N = 14) and back handsprings (N = 15) on the floor and balance beam at their training gymnastics facilities.
Findings
Gymnasts with back pain had similar spine peak extension, peak flexion, and range
of motion during back walkovers and back handsprings compared to gymnasts without
back pain. Additionally, no differences in sagittal plane spine kinematics were found
between the groups at any specific time point during either the back walkover or back
handspring skills. However, a large portion of the data collected was excluded during
quality assurance, thus our final sample sizes are small.
Interpretation
These findings suggest that gymnasts with back pain have similar sagittal plane movements
to those without back pain. The relationship between back pain and gymnastics training
load/intensity is currently unclear. We suggest future studies to investigate common
artistic gymnastics skills and back pain prevalence with more participants, full-body
motion analysis with kinetic measurement capabilities, and longitudinally for those
demonstrating back pain.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: May 05, 2020
Received:
December 9,
2019
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
