A movement classification for the investigation of agility demands and injury risk in sport

The purpose of the current paper is to propose a movement classification scheme to be used when investigating injury risk from movement and agility demands of sporting activities. The method was tested and found to be operated with acceptable reliability by the authors. However, the method can be used more reliably for the analysis of soccer than it can for sports like tennis and netball where more direction changes and braking movements occur. The validity of the method was explored by applying it to 8 different cases from 7 different sports to ensure it covered the key events associated with agility demands and injury risk from movement within those sports. The method has over the advantage the Bloomfield Movement Classification is that different path change and turn types can be entered directly by the observer rather than having to be inferred through temporal analysis of the data. This also applies to acceleration and deceleration events although there are accelerations from non-stationary situations and decelerations to non-stationary situations not covered by the method. The method allows different sports and, indeed, different conditions within the same sport to be compared in terms of injury risk from movement and agility demands.