Conclusion:

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Regarding landing performance, we feel there is enough data, both objectively and subjectively, to confidently claim the RIP-IT shoes can significantly assist with decreasing the landing impact for female athletes in volleyball. For those who already land well there may not be much of a difference, however our theory posits that most athletes who land stiffly do so, in part, due to a delayed reaction to ground impact. Proprioception and kinesthesia play major roles in how athletes react to coming in contact with the ground. Proprioception refers to the body’s sense of balance and where it is in space. With landing, it plays a critical role as athletes subconsciously take into account how high they are and the body subconsciously prepares for impact. The mind is estimating, using various visual and sensory cues, how much time it will take while having the feet (typically) reach for the ground. The first contact point where our body can physically react is when the feet hit the ground, typically the toes or forefoot first. This now pertains to kinesthetic awareness, which is how we sense our body’s movement, or how well we react to the stimulus of contacting the ground. Poor proprioception can negatively impact movement through imbalance, just as poor kinesthetic awareness can lead to the body being put into precarious or dangerous positions to absorb forces. 

This can be affected by the shoes worn by athletes as too much cushion or rigidity may lead to delays in flexion through a dulling of initial ground force sensation. The more complexity placed between the estimations of the brain pertaining to any kind of reaction and reality adds inefficient and sometimes dangerous obstacles to ideal movement execution. These delays, though they may account for milliseconds, can lead to increased “jerk” on the musculo-skeletal structure. 

Individual Landing G’s: The results of this pilot study support that RIP-IT shoes may provide a statistically significant decrease in landing impact as measured by the VERT Performance IMU system. Additionally, with the initial study of individual landing G’s (acceleration) we found an 11%-48% decrease in overall landing impact. This represents the most direct evidence of the RIP-IT shoes enabling the athletes to better absorb landing forces up their kinetic chain. This leads to less “jerk” (rapid change of acceleration) and thus less impact on the musculo-skeletal structure of the athletes. 

This analysis differs from Elevated landing % in that rather than summarize the number of landings that crossed the 15G threshold, we are able to see in more detail the overarching decrease in individual impacts. For example, what may have been a 16G landing and counted towards the Elevated Landing % was registered as a 12G landing when the athlete wore the RIP-IT shoes. 

Landing is one of the hardest impact actions in the sport of Volleyball.  A middle blocker at the collegiate level can land upwards of 13,000 times in a single fall season (outside hitters average 7,000-11,000 per season), any decrease to the impact received by the knees, hips and back is critical to a longer and healthier career.