POSTURAL ASSESSMENT IN NON-PROFESSIONAL TENNIS PLAYERS BASED ON PHOTOGRAMMETRY: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Abstract

 Introduction: The repeated practice of unilateral sports activities has been associated with postural adaptations. However, the persistence of these adaptations may contribute to the appearance of lesions. Although there is abundant scientific literature on postural assessment in professional players, there are few studies conducted in non-professional players. Objectives: To describe the posture in the frontal and sagittal planes in a sample of non-professional tennis players, and to classify the players in postural morphotypes. Material and method: A descriptive study was conducted using a sample of 19 non-professional tennis players. A postural evaluation (photo-grammetry) was performed in the three anatomical planes, where 28 alignment variables of head, trunk and limb body segments were evaluated. Descriptive analyses were carried out using the statistical package SPSS (19.0). Results: The study subjects presented in almost all of the variables measured misalignments with respect to the line of the plumb line. The most frequent misalignments found were anterior greater trochanter of the non-dominant side (94.73%), anteriorly tragus on the dominant side (89.47%), T12 and T3 deviated towards the non-dominant side (78.95% and 68,42 % respectively), head inclined towards the dominant side (63.16%), shoulder and lower dominant scapular angle (63.16%) and L5 and xiphoid process diverted to the non-dominant side (63.16%). The most frequently found morphotypes were type E (57.89%) and C (21.05%). Conclusions: We observed a high frequency of postural misalignments in the study sample, as well as a predominance of the morphotype E.