One-legged Postural Control, Difference Stability Between Expert And Young Soccer Players

Purpose: Soccer requires a monopodalic posture to perform different technical movements, therefore, footballers’ postural control should be evaluated in a unipedal stance to respect the specific conditions of soccer¹. The main purpose is to compare balance control in one-legged between the dominant and nondominant limb of soccer players and to analyze if there are different values between experts and young footballers in balance control in one-legged. METHOD S: 38 soccer players were tested. 20 Experts Players (25±2 years) 18 Young Players (16±1 years). All subjects underwent a postural balance control measurement through the Lizard® platform. Dependent variable was the surface area center-of-pressure. The measurements were taken in in monopodalic stance (dominant and nondominant limb) lasting 10 seconds. Every test with Open Eyes and with Closed Eyes. RESULTS: In monopodalic some meaningful differences were found (P<0.05) between Open Eyes and Closed Eyes conditions for all footballers; besides, in this case, no differences were registered between dominant and nondominant limb (P>0.05). Furthermore, Expert Players present Area values that are lower than those showed by Young Players, no matter if in Open or in Closed Eyes conditions (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Expert Players in comparison to Young Players are less dependent on the visual system. Due to a more developed proprioceptive system, have better control. In all footballers the results revealed no differencces between dominant and nondominant limb in balance ability in one-legged¹.(1) Paillard T. et al.,”Postural performance and strategy in the unipedal stance of soccer players at different levels of competition”