Novel way for FMS score calculation highlights field of sport- specific information among young competitive athletes

Abstract

Any complex movement encompasses information about a person’s abilities and disabilities. FMS™ test includes such exercise tests that have shown to reflect risk for injury in the athletic population. There are few reports where FMS™ score reflects certain sports to be more prone to injury. The inconsistency of results may arise from the way subtest scores are combined. Instead of a summation we propose to apply more justified method of geometric mean of subtest scores to tally the final composite score. We used tests on 215 young competitive athletes, 133 young female (age 17.35 ± 1,65) and 82 males (age 17,78± 2.1) from 8 fields of sport (volleyball, basketball, handball, fencing, judo, biathlon, cycling, soccer). Original FMS 21 point (FMS21) were used and for every participant’s arithmetic and geometric mean were calculated. The mean composite FMS™ score of young female athletes was 14.3±1.7 and for male’s 13.8±1.6 out of possible 21 total point. The comparison of sport-specific geometric mean values among girls showed that basketball players had significantly lower results than athletes from biathlon and handball players. Contrarily among boys the handball players had lowest values, being significantly lower from in cyclists, fencers and soccer players. Cyclists had also higher geometric mean values than volleyball players and judo athletes. Detailed analysis of the structure of differences is needed to highlight the specific causes impacting FMS_GM for assessment for seriousness and for specific exercises to potentially compensate for the sport specific detrimental effect on the kinematic chain.