Research sheds light on impact of flat feet on athletic performance

Sport science research conducted by a Duke Kunshan faculty member, with colleagues in the United States, into the impact of flat feet on athletic performance has produced surprising results.

Zarko Krkeljas, director of DKU’s athletics department, worked with academics at Tampa University in Florida, to study the effects of flat feet on sports performance. They expected to find an impact, but instead discovered none, potentially because athletes were adapting their gait and movement to mitigate any issues.

“From a biomechanical perspective, foot anatomy plays a very important role in the body’s capacity to utilize forces and transform them into elastic energy stored in muscles and tendons, which is then used to generate movement,” said Krkeljas.

“Previous research tells us that in activities where we generate large forces such as jumping, the impact of foot anatomy may be quite significant on movement mechanics. Our aim was to explore this impact and significance for athletic performance.”

Zarko Krkeljas, director of Duke Kunshan’s athletics department (far left), with Nauris Tamulevicius (third from left) and J.C. Andersen (far right), both associate professors of health sciences and human performance at the University of Tampa, who helped to supervise the study, and students from Tampa

People with flat feet, when the arch on the inside of the foot is flattened, typically develop over-pronation, which is an anatomical term to describe when a foot rolls inwards as it meets the ground leading to unequal weight distribution. Studies have shown that it can lead to injuries, not just in the foot itself, but also across the body, from the ankle to the spine. Some people with flat feet have over-pronation naturally, but it can also develop as a result of an injury or from wearing the wrong shoes. It is particularly prevalent among amateur athletes, who sometimes fail to treat injuries properly, and more usual among women than men.

The aim of the study was to expand understanding of flat feet and resulting pronation beyond injuries, to look at its impact on sport performance. It focused specifically on landing and jumping, both actions that are common across most sports, among female college athletes.

Krkeljas collaborated on the research with a team from the University of Tampa, including Nauris Tamulevicius, Louis Polizzi and J. C. Andersen, professors in health sciences and human performance, and graduate students  Eliseus Chettiar and Yeshshri Patankar.

He worked initially in Florida, where he helped to devise the study, before completing his role on the DKU campus in China, analyzing research data.

In the study, female volleyball and basketball players from the University of Tampa were asked to jump onto a force plate, and then off again. A force plate is a device that measures the anterior, posterior, lateral and vertical forces of a foot as it hits and leaves the plate, giving an accurate picture of movement and performance. The researchers were able to use that data to quantify balance, gait, strength and power, and observe how those factors differed between athletes with two flat feet, one flat foot and no flat feet.

Zarko Krkeljas studied the effects of flat feet on sports performance

Contrary to their expectations, they found no significant difference in the performance of the athletes with one or two flat feet compared to their teammates. This was, they theorised, potentially due to the athletes changing their landing and jumping technique in some way to mitigate the effects, said Krkeljas,

“When they feel a weakness somewhere in their body, they compensate for the weakness by adjusting so it doesn’t affect their performance,” he said.

The research could have implications for the way trainers and strength conditioning coaches treat athletes with flat feet, according to Krkeljas. Rather than attempting to correct it with specific programs that might involve extra training, which is the norm at present, they could instead simply monitor athletes for potential injuries.

“If these athletes are able to compensate in a safe way and maintain a high level of performance then we don’t necessarily need to do anything special to moderate the flat feet,” he said.

Krkeljas will present their findings at the 2022 American College of Sports Medicine Annual Meeting and World Congresses, one of the world’s largest sports science events, in San Diego, California, this June, and they will also be published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.

The next stage of the research will be to broaden it out to a larger group of male and female athletes across more sports, in order to confirm the findings, said Krkeljas.

Deeper investigation of how athletes compensate to mitigate flat feet is also needed, he added, as these biomechanical mechanisms could have an effect on the body over time.

“Compensations might be related to the knee joint, the hip joint, the shoulder or the spine. They are significant in themselves and are certainly something for athletic trainers and coaches to address,” he said.

“In order to make recommendations and to implement any protocols to help athletes we need to have more information about how exactly athletes compensate. We need to identify the weakest link in the chain,” he added.

Author: John. Butcher

Article reposted from Duke Kunshan Research News