Relationship between postural changes and injuries of the locomotor system in indoor soccer athletes

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, the sport practice has been initiated precociously. These precocious beginning of competitive sports may result in changes on the young athletes' posture alignment, because the child's bone and muscle systems are still developing and these systems are more susceptible to stress and injuries. The purpose of this study was to verify the indoor soccer (Futsal) injuries and the changes of posture alignment in players between 9 to 16 years old. We examined the posture of 50 volunteers young futsal male players, volunteers, from a first division club team. These athletes were divided in two different groups the group one (G1) was formed by those players who have suffered injuries related to Futsal; and group two (G2) was composed by athletes who did not have injuries related to futsal. First, the athletes or their parents answered a questionnaire about anthropometric characteristics of the subjects, player position, how long they have been practicing Futsal, how often they practiced Futsal and previous injuries related to Futsal practice. Then, we evaluated the postural alignment using an specific protocol to check the postural alterations. Both groups showed changes on the body alignment. The most common changes seen were in ankle and knee in both groups. The changes of the alignment in lumbar spine was more common in group 1. Considering injuries in group 1, the most common injury was in ankle (45.2 percent of all injuries) and the second most common injury was in knee (19 percent of all injuries). Considering the kind of injury, sprain and fracture/dislocate were the two most common (26.2 percent each one) and muscle injury comes in second with 21.4 percent of all kinds of injuries. We could discuss the relationship between the changes of posture alignment and sports injuries, once the changes of posture alignment result in stress in muscle and ligaments and it may result in injuries. We couldn't find a relationship between the cause and the consequence of these factors