Introduction: Sport injuries often occur during forward progress, jumping or cutting movements. However cutting movements are necessary for successful participation in most sports activities. Commonly, side ward cutting movement are used to evaluate kinematics and kinetics of knee joint about the risk of anterior crucial ligament injuries. Moreover, deformity in the lower extremity such as increased knee varus could be associated with an increased risk of sports injuries. The purpose of this study is to compare of loading rate and braking impulse during side ward cutting maneuver among male karate athletes with and without Genu Varum.
Methodology: Twenty male karate athletes (two groups of Genu varum and normal) participated as subjects in this semi-experimental study. The subjects are purposefully selected based on inclusion and exclusion criterion and were divided equally into two groups (each group=10) by differences in genu varum. They perform side ward cutting practice on both dominant and non-dominant limb on forces plate in 45 angle. Braking impulse was calculated as integrate of anterior-posterior GRF and loading rate was calculated as ratio of vertical GRF to time to peak of force.
Result: The result shows that the rate of loading and braking impulse in both dominant and non-dominant limb in genu varum is significantly higher than normal group. Also, interaction plays a significant role in determining the loading rate between knee varus and limb. However, there was no significant difference between dominant and non-dominant limb.
Discussion: According to results of present study, it seems that the increase of knee varus can be considered as an effective factor in loading rate and braking impulse among the karate athletes during sideward cutting.