Assessment of Core Stability: Developing Practical Models

ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank GOD, without him none of this would be possible. I would like to thank Dr. Li Li for allowing me to study at LSU. I have been fortunate to have you as the chair of my dissertation committee and as my advisor. You have played an integral role in achieving my goal of becoming a sports scientist. Your dedication and professionalism has helped me and will continue to help me over the years. Next, I would like to thank the other members of my committee for their cooperation, Mores and Rebecca Christofferson of the School of Veterinary Medicine for their help creating our Core Stability Index. To my mother Rosie and my father George, thank you for your encouragement throughout the years. I would not be where I am today without their love and support. To all of my friends and co-workers, I would like to thank you for being a part of this journey. Most importantly, to my future dear wife Jenn, I have been fortunate to have found someone like you. I am truly blessed to have this opportunity to spend my life with you. You have been there unconditionally through this long and difficult time. Thank you and I look forward to spending the rest of my life with you. ABSTRACT Core stability is a concept in the health and fitness professions which became popular in the early 1990s. Professionals such as physicians, physical therapists, biomechanists, and chiropractors use the concept to educate patients on the recovery from or prevention of injuries. Despite its popularity, core stability remains a generalized term, which is poorly understood and it lacks a universal definition and gold standard assessment. This makes it difficult to identify the role of core stability in athletic injury prevention and performance. To better assess core stability, the objective for this dissertation was to construct a reliable core stability index using measurements which best define and evaluate core stability. The purpose of our first experiment was to introduce and determine the intra-rater reliability of clinical measurements which may relate to core stability. Following a literature review 35 tests were identified and evaluated. The 35 tests assess five different components of coefficients were calculated to establish intra-rater reliability. There were highly reliable tests in each of the five groups. Overall, core endurance tests were the most reliable measurements, followed by …