the effect of sport and different sports branches on posture and balance in young adult men: sensory re-weighting and sport relations

Sensory input plays an important role in postural control. athletes from different sports can re-weight the senses to varying degrees for postural control. this study was planned to determine the importance of the sense of vision in achieving postural control in young adult males and to reveal the extent to which football and basketball training affect the dependence on vision in terms of providing postural control. the high school students were divided into three groups: football group (n=17, 17.29±0.85 years) and basketball group (n=19, 16.74±0.87 years) and control group of non-athletes (n=26, 16.08 ± 0.93 years). static balance measurement was performed with a pedobarography device with eyes open and eyes closed on a stable surface. area, distance and velocity (variance) parameters were obtained. while there was a significant difference in the sway distance parameter by the group factor between eyes open and eyes closed measurements (p=0.031), a significant difference was found only in the anteroposterior component of the sway velocity (p=0.017). there was no difference between the groups in terms of eyes open measurements. in eyes closed state, football group showed a lower sway distance and sway velocity compared to the control group (p=0.008 and p=0.018 respectively). it was observed that young adult males who received football training had better static balance performance when the vision was blocked. it can be argued that the football training group can re-weight the other sensory inputs (especially the proprioceptive sense) when vision is impaired.