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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Biomechanics and Control of Human Movement
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2024.1419783

Individual factors determine landing impacts in rested and fatigued cheerleaders

Provisionally accepted
Andreas Müller Andreas Müller 1*Robert Rockenfeller Robert Rockenfeller 1Ameet K. Aiyangar Ameet K. Aiyangar 2
  • 1 University of Koblenz, Koblenz, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
  • 2 Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    High vertical ground reaction forces (VGRF) during landings following acrobatic elements in artistic gymnastics is associated with trunk and lower extremity injury risk. As similar data regarding injury risk factors in cheerleading are scarce, the purpose of this study was to assess VGRF in pop-off dismounts of rested and fatigued flyers in cheerleaders. Fifteen German cheerleaders were recruited for this study, including seven female flyers and eight male bases. It was expected that performance would change in fatiguing athletes, potentially increasing the risk for injuries. However, neither the mean VGRF (rested: $6.0\pm1.9$\,BW, fatigued: $6.2\pm 1.3$\,BW, overall range: 2.1--14.9\,BW) nor the individual VGRF-time courses of the flyers changed significantly after the workout. Instead, we show that the flyers' ability to land -- but not the bases' ability to catch -- significantly influences the maximum and time-resolved impacts.

    Keywords: Cheerleading, short recovery stress scale, Borg scale, statistical parametric mapping, anova, Force plate

    Received: 18 Apr 2024; Accepted: 25 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Müller, Rockenfeller and Aiyangar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Andreas Müller, University of Koblenz, Koblenz, 56070, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

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