COORDINATION VARIABILITY AND INJURY RISK IN EXPERIENCED COLLEGIATE DANCERS

<p>Dance is a sport that places a number of physical demands upon the human body, and injuries are a common occurrence in the sport. While it has not yet been linked to dance-related injury, coordination variability (CV) is a measure of how much movement strategy changes between repetitions of a task and low levels of CV have been linked to injury in other sports. This study aimed to determine the relationship between CV and dance injury in collegiate dancers. Eight (8) undergraduate student subjects were recruited from the dance major and minor, BFA major and minor, and recreational dancers who engaged in >3 hours of dance per week. At intake dancers completed 10 trials of a sauté jump task to measure baseline CV using a modified vector coding (MVC) approach. Dancers then completed 4 months of weekly check-in forms to report any and all injuries sustained during the week and number of hours spent dancing.<strong> </strong>Analysis revealed that in general, non-injured participants tended to have more frequent fluctuations and overall higher CV values than the non-injured group, especially in couplings 1 (p = 0.052, effect size 2.31) and 3 (p = 0.31, effect size 1.59). Hours per week spent in dance and years of experience did not appear to have any effect on injury status. This study highlighted certain trends which point to a relationship between lower coordination variability and injury in dancers. This research serves as a beneficial study to examine the role of CV in sports injury.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Health and Human Performance

Year dc:date.available

2021

Author dc:creator

• Klinkman, Emily

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dr. Marguerite Moore

• dynamical systems
• landing
• vector coding
• sauté jump
• Biomechanics
• Exercise Science
• Musculoskeletal System
• Sports Sciences

Repository record dc:identifier

https://commons.nmu.edu/theses/686

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:commons.nmu.edu:theses-1727