Strategies for Balance maintenance in Different Support Surfaces: Mechanisms, Trainability and Transfer to Single-Leg Landing Performance

Abstract: Well-adapted control of posture is crucial for the human body function. Postural control relates to coordination of body segments to maintain or restore balance, making the execution of a task safer with less effort. This PhD thesis focuses on the effects of different support surfaces on postural strategies to sustain balance. It also investigates how single-leg balance training influences these strategies as well as whether the resulting adaptations are transferred to neuromuscular control and biomechanical aspects of single-leg landing from a lateral jump. In summary, the results indicate not only that postural control strategies are affected by surface stability and optimized with training, but also that the adaptations to training are transferred to movement strategies of sports gestures not involved in the training. This thesis offers a new perspective on how balance training provides protective effects for potentially risky movements as they occur in sports practice. Altogether the results add information about the applicability of wobble boards when assessing for impairments of postural control, the effectiveness of such device to improve postural control on healthy people and the adaptations of wobble board training on postural strategies and landing movement control.