Introduction: Previous studies have shown that fatigue at the end of sport events is one of the risk factors of ACL injury. Few studies have been examined the effect of functional fatigue in situations similar to real conditions of sports on neuromuscular factors affecting the ACL injury. So the aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of functional fatigue on feedforward electromyographic activity of muscles which effecting in ACL injury during single-leg jump-landing task in volleyball female athletes.
Methodology: In this study, 15 volleyball female athletes participated. Electromyographic activity of the quadriceps and hamstring muscles were recorded during single leg jump-landing task. Multivariate analysis of variance with repeated measures was used at a significance level of 95% and alpha was less than or equal to 0.05.
Results: According to the results, the difference in feedforward activities of vastus lateralis (p=0.030), biceps femoris (p=0.046) and semitendinosus (p=0.007) muscles were significant before and after fatigue. But the difference in feedforward activities of rectus femoris (p=0.177) and vastus medialis (p=0.243) weren’t significant before and after fatigue.
Discussion: The results showed that fatigue can cause a reduction in feedforward activities of hamstring and vastus lateralis muscles, resulting changes in neuromuscular patterns of muscles activation in jump-landing task. This may be disposed ACL to injury. Therefore in injury prevention programs, neuromuscular training focused on these muscles to improve neuromuscular function is recommended during the fatigue.