VALIDATION OF A PORTABLE FORCE PLATE TO ASSESSING JUMPING AND LANDING PERFORMANCE

Abstract

Jumping and landing tasks are commonly used! to examine various parameters regarding performance (Arampatziz et al. 2001) and injury (Hewitt et al. 2005). Traditionally jumping tasks have been used to measure a variety of neuromuscular factors regarding performance. Landings have been studied extensively with r~$pect to factors related to injury. It is commonly accepted that the standard force platform is the most commonly used and considered the 'gold standard' for measuring ground reaction force during jumping and landing tasks. One potential aspect which limits the use of a force platform is that they are typically mounted to the ground to prevent any unrelated vibrations from affecting the force measurement. The portability of these devices is difficult and measurements are normally restricted to a laboratory setting. Another possible factor that could affect the data collected by a portable force plate is the difference in surface height between the ground and the force plate. Therefore, the dimensions of a portable force platform should be large enough to accommodate the given maneuver without changes in performance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to validate the force measurements of a new portable force platform during two jumping/landing tasks by comparing the measurements to a traditional laboratory mounted force platform. A secondary purpose was to establish the reliability of the portable force platform. If the validity and reliability of the portable force platform are confirmed, this will provide a device that can assess a variety of measurements in field (non laboratory) situations. We hypothesize that the force and temporal measurements between the two instruments would not be different.