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COMPARISON OF REACTIVE STRENGTH INDEX MODIFIED ACROSS DIVISION I FEMALE SPORTS

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The countermovement jump (CMJ) is an exercise commonly used to monitor an individual’s neuromuscular abilities. Previous investigations have compared vertical jumping abilities across sports using the reactive strength index modified (RSImod). RSImod is the ratio of jump height and time to take off during the CMJ task. These investigations have revealed that differences in RSImod have been primarily a result of differences in jump height as time to take off were not different from each other. However, these comparisons have been conducted in sports that have different levels of exposure to the vertical jump task during the sport itself. Thus, the purpose of this investigation was to examine RSImod values across three women's sports that have limited vertical jump exposures. METHODS: 54 collegiate female athletes from three sports (soccer = 29, softball = 15, and golf = 11) participated in this investigation. Data was collected from preseason CMJ testing for each sport as part of their athlete monitoring program. Prior to completing testing, each participant completed a standardized dynamic warm up. Each participant completed three maximal effort trials. Each trial was separated by thirty seconds. All trials were performed on the same portable force platform sampling at 1000 Hz. The mean of the three trials was calculated for each variable. A one-way analysis of variance was performed for each variable of interest. RESULTS: Statistically significant differences were seen in RSImod (f(2,54) = 4.30, p = 0.02), with golf (RSImod = 0.22 ± 0.04) being significantly lower than both soccer (RSImod = 0.30 ± 0.07) and softball (RSImod = 0.32 ± 0.13). Similarly, jump height displayed statistically significant differences between groups (f(2,54) = 8.08, p < 0.001). Golf had the lowest jump height (0.20 ± 0.02 m), which was statistically different from both soccer (0.25 ± 0.04 m) and softball (0.25 ± 0.04 m). No statistical differences were seen in time to take off (f(2,54) = 0.29, p = 0.75) and countermovement depth (f(2,54) = 0.84, p = 0.44) between the groups. CONCLUSIONS: This investigation provides support for previous findings regarding differences between sports with both RSImod and jump height. As temporal variables such as time to take off show no significant differences between sports, this suggests that differences in jump performance are driven by force production capacities between sports.

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