Effects of 16-week functional movement screen training program on strength and flexibility of elite high school baseball players

Functional Movement Screen (FMS) is a way to pretest functional movement. This study examined the effects of the FMS training program on the strength and flexibility of 62 elite male high school baseball players (31 in the training group, 31 in the control group). All players who received less than two points on each FMS test item had to join the 16-week, three times weekly FMS training program. To analyze results among the FMS participants, measures including intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and repeated measure ANOVA were utilized. The Kappa coefficient was 0.805 when the intraclass correlation coefficient of the three participants was inspected. Strength showed a significant interaction depending on time and group (hand grip strength: P=0.011, bench press and squat both for one-repetition maximum (1RM): P=0.001 and P=0.008, respectively). Back muscle strength did not show a significant difference (P=0.660). Trunk forward flexion showed no interaction depending on time and groups (P=0.983) but trunk extension backward showed significant differences depending on groups (P=0.004) and time (P=0.001). Splits showed a significant difference depending on time and groups (P=0.004). The FMS training program improved the strength and flexibility of elite high school baseball players.