In Vivo (In)Stability Shoulder Assessment in Healthy Active Adults Using Force Plates and a Motion Capture System: A Cross-Sectional Study

The assessment of shoulder stability is a great challenge in sports medicine. There is a lack of objective tools to assess functional shoulder stability in sports with high demands on the upper limb. This cross-sectional study recruited twenty healthy adults to analyze the use of a force platform in a push-up analysis as a valid tool for estimating glenohumeral stability. For this purpose, the subjects performed one strength task based on a maximum lateral abduction against a dynamometer. They also performed three variations of a push-up task on force plates with movements recorded by a 3D motion capture system. The results showed that healthy adults present similar movement patterns during push-ups, without differences in terms of stability between sexes, although males showed greater values in lateral abduction strength (left: 63.2 vs. 36.8; p < 0.001; right: 64.2 vs. 38.9; p < 0.001) and ground reaction force peak in the three push-up tasks (p < 0.005). Moreover, four prediction models were developed based on the use of force plate data to estimate kinematics concerning humerus acceleration (p < 0.001). In conclusion, this research demonstrated that force plates are a valid tool for upper-limb assessment with significant correlations with dynamometer and 3D motion capture measures.