The Effect of Muscle Stretching Interventions on the Joint Position Sense of the Lower Limbs with an Injury Prevention Approach: A Review and Meta - Analysis

 The injury significantly disrupts the performance of the individual and the team and the prevention should be the priority of training programs. To design prevention programs, the first step is to identify risk factors. The joint position sense is one of these factors. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of muscle stretching interventions on the sense of the position of the lower limbs with an injury prevention approach.

 The keywords of this review were investigated on 24 September by two researchers in the electronic databases of Pub Med, Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, elmnet, Magiran, SID. The quality of the articles was checked by the Downs and Black checklist. Statistical analysis was done with the help of CMA software and Q- test was used to check the homogeneity of data and I2 was used to estimate the percentage of heterogeneity. Also, Funnel Plot and Egger - test were used to evaluate the risk of bias in the articles, and trim - and - fill method was used if the was a possibility of bias.

 Out of 7487 studies found in selected databases, 25 ones were selected after reviewing the title and abstract, and 10 articles were included in the study after reviewing the full text. The results indicated that stretching exercises do not affect the joint position sense of the knee and ankle.

 It seems that stretching does not have a significant effect on the ankle and knee joint position sense. Considering that the duration of stretching in most studies was short, duration of stretching was one of the important reasons for the non - significance of the stretching. Therefore, more studies with longer periods of time are needed.