Lower Limb Strength Asymmetry In Adults With Disabilities

Previous studies have highlighted that lower limb muscle strength is a relevant capacity for the mobility of individuals (Reid et al., 2008) and for performance in daily life activities (Qin et al., 2010), particularly in individuals with disabilities (Cowley et al., 2010). However, despite those activities involve unipodal actions, the majority of studies in individuals with disabilities have focused on analyzing lower limb strength in bipodal actions (Valenzuela et al., 2019). Therefore, there is a need to further advance in scientific knowledge related to unipodal lower limb strength (Eek et al., 2023) and also in limb asymmetry (LA) in people with disabilities. PURPOSE: To analyze bipodal and unipodal lower limb strength in adults with disabilities. To describe differences between the dominant and no-dominant lower limbs strength, and.to analyze possible differences in lower limb strength and LA between men and women. METHOD: 22 adults with disabilities, 11 females (53,9 ± 5,5 years; 67,7 ± 14,1 kg; 161,8 ± 6,8 cm), and 11 males (57,9 ± 11,1 years; 88,7 ± 10,2 kg; 178,8 ± 5,6 cm) participated in this study. All participants performed two different jumping tests: a) countermovement vertical jump with both legs (CMJ), b) CMJ with the dominant leg (CMJDominant) and c) CMJ with the no-dominant leg (CMJNo-dominant), in order to know the lower limb strength capacity. Moreover, Bishop's formula was used to calculate LA (Bishop et al., 2018). RESULTS: No significant differences were observed between CMJDominant (7.1 ± 4.1 cm) and CMJNo-dominant (6.8 ± 3.7 cm) for all participants (p > 0.05; ES = 0.56). However, while the male group showed no significant difference (p > 0.05; ES = 0.09) between CMJDominant (7.9 ± 4.0 cm) and CMJNo-dominant (8.2 ± 3.2 cm), the female group showed significant differences (p < 0.05; ES = 0.79) in CMJDominant (6.3 ± 4.1 cm) vs. CMJNo-dominant (5.4 ± 3.8 cm). In the comparison between the male and female group, no significant differences were observed in any of the jumping tests or LA (p > 0.05; ES = 0.24 - 0.88). CONCLUSIONS: This study didn´t observe any significant differences between jumping using both legs in the overall group and in men. There were no differences in lower limb strength between men and women with disabilities. However, the female group showed differences between CMJDominant and CMJNo-dominant.