Change-of-Direction Assessment in Healthy Adolescent Athletes: Task-Specific Biomechanical Responses Reveal the...

Area of Science:

• Sports Medicine
• Biomechanics
• Motor Control

Background:

• Injury risk assessments for competition readiness can be enhanced with dual-task testing.
• Incorporating decision-making or divided attention components better simulates competition environments.

Purpose of the Study:

• Identify the most biomechanically demanding cognitive load for change-of-direction tasks.
• Hypothesized that a visual motor response would elicit the greatest biomechanical risk factors.

Main Methods:

• 42 healthy adolescents (14-18 years) performed lateral shuffle, run plant, and run cut tasks.
• Dual-task conditions included verbal memory, visual memory, and visual motor response.
• Kinematic and kinetic measures were analyzed using 2-way repeated-measures ANOVA.

Main Results:

• Visual motor response altered shuffle mechanics (increased dynamic knee valgus).
• Visual condition most influenced run cut tasks (stiffer loading strategy).
• Run plant task was least affected; verbal memory caused a slightly stiffer loading strategy.

Conclusions:

• The optimal cognitive load for dual-task testing is movement-task dependent.
• Rapid visual processing is recommended for cognitive load in dual-task testing for injury risk.