Reliability of isokinetic measurements of hip adductors and abductors

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the reliability of hip abductor and adductor isokinetic dynamometry in order to evaluate the applicability of these measurements in training and rehabilitation programs. Seven healthy and active male students, aged 22.8 ± 3.4 years, volunteered for this study after an informed consent was signed. The volunteers were submitted to three tests, performed three to seven days apart for purposes of test-retest data acquisition. Concentric torque and mean peak torque of hip abductor and adductor muscles were assessed at angular velocities of 30º/s and 90º/s. Five trials of maximum concentric contractions were performed each day. These data were obtained through a Biodex isokinetic dynamometer. An ANOVA for repeated measurements was performed and significance level was set at α ≤ 0,05. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) were then calculated to determine test-retest reliability. The reliability of intraclass correlation coefficients, considering the second and the third evaluation days, for the mean peak torque varied between 0.20 e 0.79 and for the peak torque between 0.52 e 0.79, for both velocities. These results indicate that both method and device provide reproducible measurements for the isokinetic concentric performance for hip abductor and adductor muscles.