Background: Increasing body anthropometry brings substantial spinal stress, which influences the spinal curvatures; this in turn may affect the foot plantar pressure distribution.
Objectives: This study investigated the impact of body anthropometry on static plantar pressure distribution and their relationship among handball players and non-athletes subjects.
Methods: Thirty handball players aged from 21 to 26 years, and thirty age-matched non-athletes subjects aged from 21 to 28 years participated in this study. The spinal lordosis and kyphosis angles, trunk length, pelvic tilting, and pelvic rotation were evaluated using Formetric 4-dimensions and the Pedoscan device was used to assess the plantar pressure distribution.
Results: The handball players were significantly taller, heavier, and have a long trunk length than non-athletes group (p < 0.05), and a significantly increased thoracic kyphosis, forefeet pressure distribution compared to non-athletes group (p < 0.05). The handball players had a significantly increased forefeet pressure distribution compared to the rearfeet pressure distribution (p < 0.05), a high positive correlation between body height, and both trunk length and kyphosis angle (r = 0.932, 0.665 respectively), and the body height showed a high positive correlation with the forefeet pressure distribution (r = 0.665). There was a high positive correlation between the handball players' thoracic kyphosis and forefeet pressure distribution (r = 0.751).
Conclusion: Increasing the handball players' body height was related to increased thoracic kyphosis and forefeet pressure distribution compared to non-athletes subjects. Additionally, the kyphotic posture of handball players is associated with increasing the total forefeet pressure distribution compared to the total rearfeet pressure distribution.
Keywords: Athletes; Body height; Pelvis; Plantar pressure; Spinal curvatures.
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