The Agreement Between a Portable Contact-Mat and Force-Plates During Bilateral Vertical Jumps.

Force plates are commonly used when assessing vertical jumping performance but are not always affordable or practical tools for all testing situations. Twenty-four participants volunteered to take part in a study investigating the agreement between bilateral force plates and a new commercially available contact mat that records jump height, flight-time (FT), and FT of individual limbs during both countermovement (CMJ) and squat (SJ) jumps. Each participant performed six jumps of each type while standing on a contact mat placed upon a pair of in-ground force plates. When compared to the force plate via ordinary least products regression, the contact mat agreed with force plate CMJ and SJ jump height, individual limb FT during CMJs, and left-leg FT during SJs. The bilateral contact mat provided valid assessment of individual limb FT during CMJs, but not SJs. Practitioners can therefore use a bilateral contact mat interchangeably with bilateral force plates to measure SJ and CMJ performance.
Competing Interests: CONFLICT OF INTEREST DISCLOSURE Swift Performance provided access to both the EzeJump contact-mat and associated proprietary iPad application used in this study. They played no part in the study’s design, analysis of the data, or preparation and decision to publish this manuscript. Jason Lake provides consultancy services and is Director of Education for Hawkin Dynamics, a portable force plate manufacturer and analysis software company. Hawkin Dynamics’ products were not used in this study, nor did they play any role in its design, analysis of the data, or preparation and decision to publish this manuscript. The authors have no further interests to declare.