Objective: To quantify the efficacy of using screening tests to predict the loading elicited in soccer-specific activities, and to develop a hierarchical ordering of musculoskeletal screening tests to identify test redundancy and inform practice.
Design: Correlational. Setting: Professional soccer club academy.
Participants: 21 elite male soccer players aged 15.7 ± 0.9 years.
Intervention: Players completed a battery of five screening tests (knee to wall, hip internal rotation, adductor squeeze, single leg hop, anterior reach), and a 25min standardised soccer session with a GPS unit placed at C7 to collect multi-planar PlayerLoad data. Main Outcome Measures: Baseline data on each screening test, along with uni-axial PlayerLoad in the medio-lateral, anterio-posterior and vertical planes.
Results: Stepwise hierarchical modelling of the screening tests revealed that dominant leg knee to wall distance was the most prevalent and powerful predictor of multi-planar PlayerLoad, accounting for up to 42% of variation in uni-axial loading. The adductor squeeze test was the least powerful predictor of PlayerLoad. Of note, one player who incurred a knee injury within three weeks of testing had shown a 20% reduction in knee to wall distance compared with peers, and elicited 23% greater PlayerLoad, supporting the hierarchical model.
Conclusions: There was some evidence of redundancy in the screening battery, with implications for clinical choice. Hierarchical ordering and a concurrent case study highlight dominant leg knee to wall distance as the primary predictor of multi-axial loading in soccer. This has implications for the design and interpretation of screening data in elite youth soccer.