Is Hamstring Muscle Flexibility Effective on the Active Position Sense of the Knee Joints of the Elite Dancers

We aimed to examine the hamstring muscle flexibility on the active position sense of the knee joints of elite dancers and to understand the proprioceptive accuracy of their knee joints compared to sedentary. Active position sense of knee joint of 20 dancers/20 sedentary were assessed at 20°-40°-60° of extension with/without visual feedback (w/woVF) to observe the mean error of matching angles (EoMA). Hamstring muscle flexibilitywas assessed with sit and reach test. We found that the flexibility of the right hamstrings was negatively related with active position sense of dancers at the target angles of 20° and 40° wVF (p u003c 0.05; p u003c 0.01). Additionally, the active position sense of the right knee joint (EoMA: 1.95 ± 2.91 degrees) was significantly better than the sedentary (EoMA: 4.2 ± 3.02 degrees) (p u003c 0.05) only at 20°wVF. Furthermore, the flexibility of left hamstrings was also negatively related with the active position sense of dancers only at the target angles of 20° wVF and woVF. Thedancers’ proprioceptive accuracy was not significantly different then the sedentary on both sides, except at 20°on left side. The flexibility of the hamstrings is negatively affecting the knee joint active position sense of the elite dancers. Therefore, assessing the flexibility of hamstrings muscles of the dancers to protect the knee joint proprioceptive accuracy is important.