Relationship between high-impact movements during handball games and previous ankle sprain

Abstract

Objective: To extract the frequency of high-impact movements with triaxial composite accelerations of 6 G or more during handball games and to investigate their association with repetitive ankle sprains.

Methods: The participants were 24 high school students belonging to a handball club. They were fitted with accelerometers and played a handball game. High-impact movements were extracted from the acceleration data, and their frequency (events/min) were determined. The players with two or more ipsilateral ankle sprains were defined as the “recurrence group,” and those with one or less ipsilateral ankle sprain were defined as the “non-injury/non-recurrence group”.

Results: The frequency of high-impact movements was 6.3 events/min in the recurrence group and 4.0 events/min in the non-injury/non-recurrence group, indicating that high-impact movements occurred significantly more frequently in the recurrence group (p＝0.047).

Discussion: Players with repeated ankle sprains were characterised by a higher frequency of movements with a triaxial composite acceleration of 6 G or more during handball competition.