The Effects of Cheerleading Surfaces on Landing Characteristics During Vertical and Flip Landings

Abstract

Lateral ankle sprains are common injuries in cheerleading and typically occurring during tumbling. The landing surface can impact injury risk by modulating loading parameters and risky joint positions. Most surface-landing studies have used vertical landing tasks to study acrobatic populations, and few studies have compared vertical and flipping tasks. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare the effects of two cheerleading surfaces between vertical drop landing and flip landing tasks. Doing so explained surface characteristic influences on landing and the validity of using vertical landing tasks to represent acrobatic sports. Twelve collegiate cheerleaders (7 females, 5 males; age: 21.0 ± 2.5 years; mass: 64.5 ± 14.5 kg; height: 1.7 ± 0.1 m) performed flip (FLIP) and vertical (VERT) landing tasks over a harder (HARD) and matted (MAT) surface. Three-dimensional kinematics and kinetics were collected, and sagittal and frontal plane kinematic and kinetic variables were extracted during landing. Repeated measures ANOVAs (task x surface) were conducted to determine task and surface effects (p