The functional movement test 9+ is a poor screening test for lower extremity injuries in professional male football players: a 2-year prospective cohort study
One article on PainSci cites Bakken 2017: The Functional Movement Screen (FMS)
PainSci notes on Bakken 2017:
According to this study of a few hundred soccer players, the results of movement screening were not associated with lower limb injury and could not even distinguish between injured and uninjured players. As one of the authors put it, “Any way we sliced it, Functional Movement Screening was no help in predicting injured football players.”
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
BACKGROUND: The 9+ screening battery test consists of 11 tests to assess limitations in functional movement.
AIM: To examine the association of the 9+ with lower extremity injuries and to identify a cut-off point to predict injury risk.
METHODS: Professional male football players in Qatar from 14 teams completed the 9+ at the beginning of the 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 seasons. Time-loss injuries and exposure in training and matches were registered prospectively by club medical staff during these seasons. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were used to calculate HR and 95% CI. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were calculated to determine sensitivity and specificity and identify the optimal cut-off point for risk assessment.
RESULTS: 362 players completed the 9+ and had injury and exposure registration. There were 526 injuries among 203 players (56.1%) during the two seasons; injuries to the thigh were the most frequent. There was no association between 9+ total score and the risk of lower extremity injuries (HR 1.02, 95% CI 0.99 to 1.05, p=0.13), even after adjusting for other risk factors in a multivariate analysis (HR 1.01, 95% CI 0.98 to 1.04, p=0.37). ROC curve analysis revealed an area under the curve of 0.48, and there was no cut-off point that distinguished injured from non-injured players.
CONCLUSION: The 9+ was not associated with lower extremity injury, and it was no better than chance for distinguishing between injured and uninjured players. Therefore, the 9+ test cannot be recommended as an injury prediction tool in this population.
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