Optimal Number of Practice Trials for Balance and Hop Tests in Individuals with Chronic Ankle Instability.

Everyone in the study had chronic ankle instability, so the practice-trial numbers may not carry over to other injuries or to healthy athletes. The two-to-three-day gap between visits and the single warm-up trial before scoring mean the plateaus may show what happened after a fixed amount of practice rather than the true minimum number of trials needed. Six practice trials in a row may have caused fatigue that affected the later trials, though scores kept improving, which the authors read as learning outweighing fatigue. The paper says in one place that men needed more than six practice trials for the triple-crossover hop and in another that men should be allowed six, so the exact figure for that test is inconsistent. The Biodex stability indices had the weakest repeatability of any test used (ICC 0.47 to 0.57, which the authors' own scale calls poor to fair), so the practice-trial numbers for that device rest on less reliable measurement.

The authors declare no conflict of interest. No funding source is named in the article text supplied.

Do not read this as proof that men and women need different warm-ups on all these tests. The sex difference appeared only in the two hop tests; for the star excursion balance test and the Biodex balance system the authors found no difference between men and women and recommend the same number of practice trials for both.