Association Between Individual Functional Movement Screen™ Tasks and Sports Injury Occurrence in University...

Area of Science:

• Sports Medicine
• Biomechanics
• Injury Prevention

Background:

• The Functional Movement Screen™ (FMS™) is a common tool for assessing movement quality and identifying athletes at risk of injury.
• However, the predictive accuracy of the total FMS™ score for injury incidence is inconsistent.
• The contribution of individual FMS™ tasks to injury risk remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To prospectively examine the association between individual FMS™ task scores and sports injury incidence in collegiate basketball players.
• To assess the validity of the standard total FMS™ score threshold (≤14) for predicting injuries.
• To compare the injury screening utility of individual FMS™ tasks versus the total score.

Main Methods:

• A prospective cohort study involving 85 collegiate basketball players (men and women).
• All seven FMS™ tasks were administered during pre-season.
• Injuries were tracked for 12 months, with logistic regression analyzing the relationship between FMS™ scores (total and individual tasks) and injury risk.

Main Results:

• The total FMS™ score (≤14) did not significantly predict injury (AUC = 0.52).
• Low scores (≤2) on the Deep Squat (DS) task were significantly associated with increased injury risk (OR = 3.47).
• Low scores on the Hurdle Step (HS) task showed a trend towards increased risk (OR = 2.26).
• A weighted model incorporating all FMS™ tasks demonstrated improved predictive ability (AUC = 0.75).

Conclusions:

• Individual FMS™ task scores, particularly the Deep Squat and Hurdle Step, are more predictive of sports injuries than the composite FMS™ total score.
• Weighting individual FMS™ tasks may enhance the clinical utility of pre-season injury screening.
• Further research with larger cohorts is needed to validate these findings.