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Effects of 4-week slackline training on lower limb joint motion and muscle activation
Jürgen Pfusterschmied1, Thomas Stöggl, Michael Buchecker
1Department of Sport Science and Kinesiology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria; Christian Doppler Laboratory 'Biomechanics in Skiing', Salzburg, Austria.
Objectives:
To investigate the effects of four weeks of slacklining on lower limb kinematics and muscle activity following a slip of the upright stance.
Design:
A randomized, gender matched study.
Methods:
Twenty-four young healthy adults participated in the study and were assigned to either a training or a control group. The training group completed a 4-week training program on slacklines, while the control group received no slackline training. Before and after training, participants performed single leg standing tasks on a moveable platform. During medio-lateral platform perturbation, platform displacement, lower limb joint motion (ankle, knee and hip) and surface electromyography (EMG) measurements from six lower limb muscles were recorded.
Results:
In the training group, a decrease in platform mean and maximum velocity (all p<0.05) was detected, but no changes were observed for the release time and maximum deflection (all p>0.05) of the platform. Regarding lower limb kinematics, a reduced corrective action was detected in the knee joint (p<0.05), whereas only a trend towards a decrease could be observed in the ankle joint (p<0.1). EMG data revealed an enhanced activation of the rectus femoris (p<0.05), as well as a trend to increased rectus femoris to biceps femoris co-activation (p=0.06) in the preparatory phase for training group.
Conclusions:
The data strongly support that slacklining can improve postural control and enhance functional knee joint stability, which seems to be induced by enhanced preparatory muscle activation of the rectus femoris.
