Movement Quality Assessment of Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps Cadets: A Report of Validity and Normative Data.

This study focuses on evaluating movement quality screening methods and establishing normative jump-landing kinematics in Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps (AROTC) cadets to address musculoskeletal injury (MSKI) risk. Researchers collected simultaneous three-dimensional (3D) inertial measurement unit data and two-dimensional (2D) video during jump-landing tasks in 20 cadets, finding moderate criterion validity correlations between certain 2D measures—hip frontal plane projection angle (hFPPA), knee flexion angle (kFA), and medial knee displacement (MKD)—and corresponding 3D joint angles. Normative data revealed considerable variability in hip and knee joint kinematics among cadets, with some exhibiting potentially injurious movement patterns. The findings suggest that 2D movement quality assessments may serve as practical, lower-cost alternatives to 3D systems for screening MSKI risk in military settings, though further research is needed to confirm their predictive validity and feasibility for live screening.