LAUSR

CONTEXT Training exposure has been associated with injury epidemiology in elite youth soccer, where lower-limb musculoskeletal screening is commonly used to highlight injury risk. However, there has been little consideration of the relationship between lower-limb screening and the loading response to soccer activities. OBJECTIVE To quantify the efficacy of using screening tests to predict the loading elicited in soccer-specific activities and to develop a hierarchical ordering of musculoskeletal screening tests to identify test redundancy and inform practice. DESIGN Correlational. SETTING Professional soccer club academy. PARTICIPANTS A total of 21 elite male soccer players aged 15.7 (0.9) years. INTERVENTION Players completed a battery of 5 screening tests (knee to wall, hip internal rotation, adductor squeeze, single-leg hop, and anterior reach) and a 25-minute standardized soccer session with a Global Positioning System unit placed at C7 to collect multiplanar PlayerLoad data. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Baseline data on each screening test, along with uniaxial PlayerLoad in the mediolateral, anteroposterior, and vertical planes. RESULTS Stepwise hierarchical modeling of the screening tests revealed that dominant leg knee-to-wall distance was the most prevalent and powerful predictor of multiplanar PlayerLoad, accounting for up to 42% of variation in uniaxial loading. The adductor squeeze test was the least powerful predictor of PlayerLoad. Of note, one player who incurred a knee injury within 3 weeks of testing had shown a 20% reduction in knee-to-wall distance compared with peers, and elicited 23% greater PlayerLoad, supporting the hierarchical model. CONCLUSIONS There was some evidence of redundancy in the screening battery, with implications for clinical choice. Hierarchical ordering and a concurrent case study highlight dominant leg knee-to-wall distance as the primary predictor of multiaxial loading in soccer. This has implications for the design and interpretation of screening data in elite youth soccer.