An analysis of player position group, height, weight, and relative body weight and their relationship to scores on the Functional Movement Screen(TM)

Sports medicine professionals are continuously attempting to keep the incidence of injuries down. One way to accomplish this is to employ preventive methods that identify athletes who are at a greater risk of becoming injured prior to the start of the athletic season. The Functional Movement Screen™ (FMS) is a screening method that attempts to identify those individuals at risk of sustaining injuries by determining deficits in athletes' mobility and stability. This is an area of great conflict because athletic injuries result from many factors, not only in mobility and stability weaknesses. Therefore, it must first be determined whether deficient scores on the FMS are the result of the proposed weakness, or rather other potential risk factors.

Functional Movement Screen™ scores were collected from 136 collegiate Division 1-A football players from three athletic programs. The scores were separated into one of three groups based upon the position played by each subject: (1) skill group, (2) combo group, and (3) line-of-scrimmage group. Data were also collected on each subject's height, weight, and relative body weight (BMI).

The results of the ANOVA and Tukey HSD showed that there was a significant difference p < 0.05 between the line-of-scrimmage group and the skill group, as well as between the line-of-scrimmage group and the combo group. No significant difference was demonstrated between the combo group and the skill group.

The results of the Pearson Correlation demonstrated a significant negative relationship p < 0.05 between the height of an athlete and the score received on the FMS. Significant negative relationships p < 0.01 were shown between the weight of an athlete and the score received on the FMS, as well as the relative body weight (BMI) and the athletes' score on the FMS.

The results suggest that the score an athlete receives on the FMS may not reflect mobility and stability deficiencies because other factors affect the outcome of the scores. Therefore, at the present time, the FMS may not be a reliable tool by itself for identifying athletes who are at a greater risk of sustaining non-contact types of injuries.