The effect of landing surface on landing error scoring system grades

Abstract

Different landing surfaces may affect lower extremity biomechanical performance during athletic tasks. The magnitude of this effect on clinical screening measures such as jump-landings is unknown. This study determined the effect of court (CS), grass (GS), and tile (TS) surfaces on Landing Error Scoring System (LESS) grades. A repeated-measures design was used. Forty (21F, 19M; mean age = 23.8 ± 2.4 yr) recreational athletes performed a jump-landing task on three different landing surfaces. 2D videography recorded jump-landings in the frontal and sagittal planes. A 2 X 3 (sex by surface) mixed-model repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to examine main and interaction effects associated with surface and sex. No significant sex by landing surface interactions existed for LESS grades. No significant differences were observed on LESS grades for the main effect of surface (CS = 4.83 ± 1.31 points; GS = 5.01 ± 1.40 points; TS = 5.09 ± 1.86 points; all p>0.05). Correlations were found between LESS grades among different conditions (r range=0.587 to 0.611; all p <0.001). Commonly used jump-landing surfaces for clinical biomechanical evaluations do not affect LESS grades, suggesting generalisability as a screening tool for anterior cruciate ligament injury risk in different sport environments.

Movement Technique During Jump-Landing Differs Between Sex Among Athletic Playing Surfaces

“…Studies documenting a sex effect on movement technique using the LESS report worse (higher) total scores in women vs. men (4,7,21,34,42). This finding is not unanimous (3,20,22) and the sex effect on movement technique has recently been questioned with the exception of women landing with greater knee valgus (2). Those reporting a sex effect using the LESS commonly conducted the testing on flooring consisting largely of concrete material.…”

“…Although epidemiological data present conflicting results regarding injury risk and athletic surface type, differences in movement technique among athletic surfaces merit scientific inquiry. Only one study examined the effects of athletic surface type on overall LESS scores and found no differences across tennis court, grass, and tile surfaces or between sexes (20). However, this study failed to adequately control for muscle soreness and fatigue which has been shown to influence lower extremity movement technique in both men and women (4,13,14,28,44).…”

Factors influencing the Landing Error Scoring System: Systematic review with meta-analysis

“…Fourteen studies compared LESS scores between males and females (Table 1). Six studies found females to have significantly higher overall LESS scores compared to males 1,32,40,46,52,56 , six studies found no significant difference in overall scores between sexes 5,6,8,45,57,69 , and the remaining two studies did not specify if the differences were significant 14,70 . Thirty studies reported overall LESS scores separately for males (n = 3294) and females (n = 1910), with resulting weighted mean scores for males of 5.0 ± 1.8 and 5.6 ± 1.7 errors for females.…”

“…The NOS adapted for cross-sectional studies was used for 33 (64%) studies. Out of a maximum of 10 stars, 2 studies scored two stars 35,39 , 4 studies four stars [40][41][42][43] , 7 studies five stars [44][45][46][47][48][49][50] , 10 studies six stars 1,18,32,37,38,[51][52][53][54][55] , 2 studies seven stars 56,57 , 7 studies eight stars 4,5,19,33,[58][59][60] , and 1 study nine stars 6 . The RoB 2 was used for 9 (17%) studies.…”

“…Only Smith et al 5 compared overall LESS scores between different age categories and reported significantly lower overall LESS scores in older college athletes compared to younger high school athletes. Seven studies 4,6,7,14,61,62,66 tested and reported overall LESS scores for 1,997 participants 15 years or younger; 17 studies 5,15,18,31,33,36,38,45,46,49,52,56,58,63,64,67,70 for 1,613 participants aged from 15 to 20 years inclusively; and 24 studies 8,17,19,[32][33][34][35]37,[39][40][41][42][43][44]47,48,51,55,57,59,60,65,67,68 for 4,566 participants older than 20 years. The weighted mean LESS scores...…”