Effects of Knee Injury on Knee Proprioception in Soccer Players

Running head: SPORTS SCIENCE
Sports Science
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SPORTS SCIENCE
1
Proprioception is clinically defined by the ability to reposition a joint of the human
body to its primary position. In case of football the well-functioning of the knee joints is very
crucial for the footballer. Therefore among the footballers it is very common to have a knee
injury during their game. Hence it is very important to practice proprioception training for
the footballers for maintaining the effectiveness of the knee joints of the footballers (Alhajaya
2015). Hence, in order to prevent injuries the soccer players used to do such training in their
training schedule.
The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), mainly controls the operation of the knee
movements in six different directions that comprises of three translations and three rotations
and along with this, also help in the occurrence of screw-home mechanism that take place
during tibial and femoral rotation of full knee extension. Therefore, it is assumed that, the
ACL is also playing a crucial role in the knee proprioception of human body (Alhajaya 2015).
The study of Ralph et al. (2014), showed effect of injury on the knee proprioception among
injured and uninjured soccer players,. This study showed that soccer players with injured
ACL had higher mean angle of error. Whereas, the uninjured control group of this study (n=
170), had the standard mean difference of the mean angle of error was almost 0.52◦ (95% CI:
0.41 to 0.63; P < 0.001;I 2 = 63%). The study of Nagarajan (2015), conducted a comparative
analysis among the injured and uninjured soccer players in order to assess the knee
proprioception of those players. Lack of desired proprioception due to injury can alter the
steady posture and movement of the knee of the football players. In this study, a cross
sectional comparative analysis technique was used. The male football players were included
in this study and they were medically diagnosed with first and second degree bilateral and
unilateral knee injuries within the 5 months of time period . The subject population has the
age group of 20 years to 35 years. In this study , almost 108 injured and 94 uninjured knees
were studied in this whole study. In this Malaysia based study, the subjects were collected