Development and reliability of a visual-cognitive medial side hop for return to sport testing

Abstract

Objectives. To develop and evaluate the reliability of a new visual-cognitive medial side hop (VCMH) test that challenges physical and cognitive performance to potentially improve return to sport testing. Design. Test-retest experimental design. Setting. Laboratory. Participants. Twenty-two healthy college students participated (11 females; 23.5 ± 3.64 years; 172.9 ± 11.58 cm; 74.1 ± 17.25 kg; Tegner Score 5.6 ± 1.1). Main outcome measures. Subjects performed a medial side hop for distance with and without a visual-cognitive task (VCMH). Maximum hop distance and cognitive errors were measured. Results. There was strong reliability for the traditional medial side hop (ICC3,1 = 0.88[0.72, 0.95]; SEM = 7.16 cm) and VCMH distances (ICC3,1 = 0.86[0.66, 0.94]; SEM = 6.82 cm). Maximum hop distance was significantly lower during the VCMH (86.9 ± 18.2 cm) compared to the traditional medial side hop (96.3 ± 20.7 cm; p < 0.05; d = 0.74), with a performance deficit of 9.69%. Conclusion. The VCMH has high test-retest reliability and resulted in a significant dual-task cost with a reduction in physical performance when compared to the traditional medial side hop.