EFFECTS OF FUNCTIONAL KNEE BRACE ON BIOMECHANICAL PARAMETERS FROM DIFFERENT HEIGHTS OF DROP LANDING

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate differences of the kinematic, and kinetic between wearing FKB and non-braced during the drop landing tasks. Subjects were required wearing FKB and non-braced to perform a single leg drop landing task from heights of 10, 30, and 50cm. Our findings indicated that wearing functional knee braces or not didn’t significantly affect biomechanical parameters during drop landing for healthy subjects. As box height increased, body position would change to a softer landing posture to buffer the impacts. This mechanism did not affect by wearing FKB. Therefore, no matter wearing FKB or not, poor landing mechanism, such as stiff landing, was the main reason to increase the possibility of ACL injuries.