DEFINING LOWER EXTREMITY DOMINANCE: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PREFERRED LOWER EXTREMITY AND TWO FUNCTIONAL TASKS

Area of Science:

• Biomechanics
• Sports Medicine
• Kinesiology

Background:

• Operational definitions of lower extremity (LE) dominance often assume the kicking limb is the same as the preferred limb for unilateral landing.
• This assumption is commonly used in research, particularly when studying anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury mechanisms.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between the preferred lower extremity (LE) for a unilateral landing task and a kicking task.
• To determine if the LE chosen for kicking correlates with the LE chosen for landing.

Main Methods:

• A repeated measures study design was employed.
• Fifty healthy, recreationally active college students (21.9 ± 0.9 years) performed a ball-kicking task and a unilateral drop jump landing task in a counterbalanced order.
• Lower extremity preference for each task was recorded.

Main Results:

• A Phi Coefficient of 0.18 (p = 0.18) indicated a low to negligible relationship between preferred kicking and landing LEs.
• Chi-squared analysis (χ2 = 1.76, p = 0.23) also showed no significant differences between observed and expected limb preferences.
• Thirty-three participants used the same LE for both tasks, while 17 used different LEs.

Conclusions:

• There is no significant relationship between the preferred lower extremity (LE) for kicking a ball and performing a unilateral landing in healthy college students.
• The findings suggest that defining LE dominance based on kicking preference may be inaccurate for tasks like unilateral landing.
• This has implications for laboratory studies examining LE biomechanics and injury mechanisms, as the landing limb, not the kicking limb, is often implicated in injuries.