The Comparison of Plantar Pressure and Ground Reaction Force in Male and Female Elite Karate practitioners

Karate is an activity with weight bearing nature along with very jumping movements that exert a lot of mechanical pressure on athlete’s lower extremities. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to compare plantar pressure and ground reaction force in male and female elite Karate practitioners.
Eleven male and 12 female elite Karate practitioners were non-randomly and purposefully recruited. Plantar pressure and related parameters were measured by emed platform in five Steps. After dividing the foot into 10 masks, the peak pressure, the peak force and the contact area were calculated in each anatomical mask. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to explore the normal distribution of the data, with significance level of less than 0.05. Dependent and Independent T-Tests were used to compare parameters which were normally distributed and Wilcoxon and U-Mann-Whitney tests were used for parameters which were not normally distributed. Symmetry index was used to determine the symmetry between two legs.
The results of this study showed significant difference in Peak Pressure, Contact Area and Ground Reaction Force not only between two groups but also between front and back legs. Symmetry index also showed asymmetry in most masks of Karate practitioner's feet.
Present study introduces gender as an important factor in the distribution of pressure in Karate practitioner's foot and claims that probably elite Karate practitioner most of the time use back foot as weight bearing foot and front foot to progress and strike, such different using of two feet will affect the plantar pressure distribution in elite Karate practitioner in long term.