Understanding motor learning to prevent ankle and knee injuries in sports: a novel approach

In 2013, 970.000 knee and 680.000 ankle injuries were registered for Dutch
athletes, resulting in dramatically shortened athletic careers, work
absenteeism, and proportionally high health care costs estimated at ¤1.5
billion. Despite intense efforts put forward on prevention, the relative rate
of injuries has remained unchanged, attesting to the ineffectiveness of current
injury prevention practices. It is hypothesized that athletes who receive video
feedback, reduce ankle and knee joint loading with better retention and
transfer to the field, most likely reducing injury risk, compared to those
receiving no visual feedback. *

The primary objective of this project is to map differences in joint loading
between athletes receiving visual feedback and those who will not receive
visual feedback in both retention and transfer to field-specific situations.
From there. we will build a valid argument for implementation of this
innovative prevention method for trainers, coaches and athletes.

Randomized controlled trial (pre-post intervention design, comparing a
visual+verbal (VISVER) group, a visual (VIS) group, and a control (CTRL) group
on biomechanical outcome variables).

During the lab sessions, the VISVER group will receive positive visual feedback
from their best trial so far + positive verbal feedback concurrent with the
video. The VIS group will receiving positive visual feedback from their best
trial so far and the CTRL group will receive neutral visual feedback from their
five baseline trials.*

Nature and extent of the burden and risks associated with participation,
benefit and group relatedness: Minimal risk or discomforts, as physical injury
or harm, to the subjects as a result of each procedure is involved in this
study as this research proposal is viewed as involving little or no risk to
human subjects. The main possible risk of injury is giving way during the
performance of the task. However, this risk is considered very minimal and the
probability and magnitude of harm or discomfort anticipated in the proposed
research are not greater than those ordinarily encountered during the
performance of routine daily activities.The speed required during testing is
even lower than those on the field. The athletes will not do maximal testing,
we are not interested in the magnitude of loading but the main goal is to look
at how exactly they load there joints during landing. Also, testing will be
done on a flat and even surface. Furthermore, in order to minimize the risk of
injury, the subjects are well-trained healthy athletes and they have the
opportunity to get familiar with the movements before starting the
measurements. There have been no incidents reported in the literature involving
similar experiments as in the current study.