The Effect of Gender and Height on Hamstring Flexibility...

The Effect of Gender and Height on Hamstring Flexibility in Physiotherapy Students Background The purpose of this study is to investigate whether height influences hamstring flexibility, when comparing male and female physiotherapy students. PubMed was used to identify relevant literature. The key words used were: hamstring flexibility, gender and sex. Cornbleet et al (1996) examined the gender differences of hamstring length in school-aged children while Youdas et al (2005) examined the hamstring length of healthy adults. Both studies have found that females have better hamstring flexibility than males. There were no previous studies looking at the effect of height. Therefore, this study will investigate the effect of gender on hamstring flexibility, also to look for any effect that height has on this. There are two null hypotheses for this study: 1. There will be no difference in hamstring flexibility between male physiotherapy students and female physiotherapy students. 2. Within the same gender group, there will be no difference in hamstring flexibility between taller and shorter physiotherapy students. Method Forty-two second year physiotherapy students from King’s College London participated this study. Their hamstring flexibility was measured by the active straight leg raise (ASLR) test. Subjects lay supine on the plinth and were asked to actively lift their dominant leg with the knee fully extended until end of range. A goniometer was used to measure