Reliability of knee biomechanics during a vertical drop jump in elite female athletes

•Reliability was estimated from a large sample of elite female athletes (n = 41).•In general, the vertical drop jump demonstrated sufficient reliability to be used in both single-session and multiple-session studies.•The knee flexion angle can vary considerably within-session in some subjects.•A new approach for calculating medial knee displacement was found to be reliable.

The purpose of the study was to assess the within-session and between-session reliability of knee kinematics and kinetics in a vertical drop jump task among elite female handball and football athletes. Specifically, we aimed to quantify the within-session waveform consistency and between-session consistency of the subject ranking for a variety of knee kinematics and kinetics.Forty-one elite female handball and football (soccer) athletes were tested in two sessions. The reliability of three-dimensional knee biomechanical measurements was quantified by the intra-class correlation, Spearman's rank correlation, and typical error. All the selected discrete variables achieved excellent within-session reliability (ICC > 0.87). The typical error of valgus angles, internal rotation angles, and internal rotation moment was constant throughout the whole stance phase. For between-session reliability, the selected discrete variables achieved good to excellent reliability (ICC > 0.69), except peak internal rotation moment (ICC = 0.40). All between-session rank correlation coefficients ranged from 0.56 to 0.90. Most of the discrete variables achieved good to excellent reliability in both within-session and between-session analysis. Moreover, moderate to strong between-session consistency of subject rankings was found, implying that the measurements assessed during the vertical drop jump demonstrate sufficient reliability to be used in both single-session and multiple-session studies.