Effect of Balance Exercises on Lower Limb Joint Proprioception

Bearing in the mind the importance of proprioception in preventing joints injury and the role of improving proprioception after joints injuries, the aim of the present study was to review the effects of different exercise methods on decreasing proprioception indexes error.
A literature search for the period between 1990-2015 was performed in the databases of GoogleScholar, ScienceDirect, Pedro, PubMed, Cochrane, and SID. Postural control, tilt board, BAPS board, stability, instability, postural sway, single leg stance, and lower limb were used as keywords in combination with proprioception, sense of position, sense of force, and kinesthesia. Irrelevant studies and studies which evaluated other indexes, instead of proprioception, were ignored.
Nine articles were selected according to the inclusion criteria. The present review showed that balance training in some cases may have positive effects on proprioception accuracy, at least on non-athletic people. But the number of studies was not sufficient and also it is necessary to evaluate the effect of training in different individual categories, such as healthy, athletes, and those with joint injury.