What gets measured gets managed: biomechanical and on-field measurement in athletic groin pain.
Buchheit M, Heiderscheit B, Kotsifaki R. What gets measured gets managed: biomechanical and on-field measurement in athletic groin pain. Aspetar Sports Med J [Internet]. 2026;15(Targeted Topic 40):430-7.
Full Text here
Full Aspetar Journal Issue: https://journal.aspetar.com/journals/volume-15-targeted-topic-decoding-groin-pain
🦵⛑️ “If we only measure strength and pain, we can only manage strength and pain.”
That is the premise of our new paper in the Aspetar سبيتار Sports Medicine Journal (Decoding Groin Pain issue). The tasks that cause groin pain in football are dynamic and multidirectional, and they are the ones we measure least.
What we found across the literature:
– Athletes with groin pain move differently, but the differences are subtle, spread across trunk, pelvis, hip and ankle, and not predicted by the diagnosis. Two players with the same diagnosis can cut in very different ways.
– Output can look normal while the problem is still there: no strength or jump deficit, yet worse pain and sport scores.
– Pain-free is not the same as recovered. Some altered cutting patterns outlast the symptoms.
– On the pitch, a 90° cut left and a 90° cut right look identical on a GPS totals dashboard, yet they load opposite plant limbs. Directional reprocessing of the same GPS data (i.e., GPS3.0) shows which way the player actually turned and braked, and boot sensors cover kicking (29% of acute adductor injuries).
The pathway tells you when to progress. Measuring movement tells you whether the athlete has earned it.
🙏 Thanks to the legend Roula Kotsifaki and Bryan Heiderscheit, who brought the biomechanics depth I did not have.
And a bigger thanks to Enda King PhD, who asked me to lead this article while my understanding of biomechanics was (very) limited. At the start I thought it was a pain (no pun intended). Today I am grateful: it made me learn, and it made me better. Obviously, this is what Enda does all the time 🙂
