Alignment control exercise changes lower extremity movement during stop movements in female basketball players

This study was intended to evaluate a short-term intervention designed to improve the lower extremity alignment with neutral position during stop movements of female basketball players when performing a quick-stop jump shot. In this study, 20 healthy female college basketball players (mean age 20.5 years) participated. The authors monitored two groups for 4 weeks: one which trained (n=10) and one which did not train (n=10). The exercise program emphasized the neutral position of lower extremities for dynamic alignment control; the players avoided the valgus position with their knees. Kinematics analysis with a lower extremity angle in the stop action was performed using three digital video cameras and analyzed using software. Following the intervention exercise program, each subject was re-evaluated at two and four weeks to determine changes in movement patterns during the "sink shot" task. Two-way analysis of variance models were used to determine differences at pre-intervention, at mid-term, and post-intervention. After the 2-week intervention, the trained athletes group made basketball shots with greater change of the lower extremity motion pattern during the stop action than did non-trained athletes (p<0.05). However, no significant differences were found between other data of the 2-week and 4-week intervention groups. Results of this study show that two weeks of training can improve the dynamic alignment control of the lower extremities, as measured using the alignment angle of the coronal plane and the torsion angle of horizontal plane during a stop action.