The comparison of postural stability in soccer players with and without chronic ankle injury in jump and landing functional test

Postural stability is defined as body’s ability to maintain the center of gravity in the range of stability. Soccer players needs to have stable and reliable performance, therefore ankle injuries may cause an interruption in performance of professional soccer players. The aim of this study was to compare the postural stability of soccer players with and without chronic ankle instability during the jump-landing functional test. 28 soccer players include 14 people with chronic ankle instability (CAI) and 14 healthy people participated in study. Time to stabilization (TTS) and center of pressure (COP) of jump-landing functional test were measured by force plate device. Ankle injury was assessed by self reporting and also standard questionnaire. Independent sample t-test was used to analyze the collected data at significant level of p <0.05. The findings showed that there was significant difference in the COP of sagittal plane jump-landing in medial-lateral (p= 0.002) and anterior-posterior (p= 0.01) directions and it was the same for frontal plane jump-landing in media-lateral (p= 0.008) and anterior-posterior (p= 0.02) directions between players with and without chronic ankle injury. In other words, the COP in players with chronic ankle injury was significantly greater than healthy players, but TTS was very close to each other in two groups (p <0.05). In attention to the importance role of media-lateral ankle ligaments in postural stability, it seems that the injury of these ligaments could affect in COP displacement, and also postural stability factors. Soccer players with chronic ankle instability had more COP changes than healthy players. According to the role of proprioception in postural control, recommended that athletes with ankle injury contributed defects your stability and balance with practice proprioception training to increase the strength of the lower limb.