Effects of Percussion Therapy on the Biomechanics of Pickleball Movement

Pickleball has rapidly increasing its playing population among people with different ages and performance levels. While pickleball is keeping people of all age active, injury prevalence of recreational pickleball players particularly for elderly populations has rapidly become a great concern in health care in recent years. It is crucial not only for individuals who play the sports but also for sports medicine professionals to prevent injuries and assure wellbeing of pickleball players. Percussion therapy with a handheld massage gun has widely utilized both in clinical or sports settings and by individuals as a self-care device, allowing the treatment popular and accessible. While previous research has examined acute effects of percussion therapy, the impacts of percussion therapy on exercise performance are not yet fully understood mainly due to diverse designs, protocols, and qualities of previous studies. Moreover, little is known how biomechanical characteristics (i.e., joint kinematics and kinetics) of sports specific movements of pickleball are altered after the percussion therapy. With Increased demand on pickleball as a recreational exercise, it is of interest in investigating the biomechanical characteristics of pickleball and determining the impacts of percussion therapy on them. The proposed project aims to examine the effects of percussion therapy on the biomechanics of pickleball movement and muscle activation patterns in recreational pickleball players. It is hypothesized that kinematics and kinetics of pickleball performance improves as well as static joint range of motion (ROM) after the percussion therapy.