The Effects of Functional Ankle Taping on Postural Stability in Elite Judo Players

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

 

You have done interesting research and written a good paper. However, some parts of the manuscript need to be addressed for greater clarity.

 

Introduction -

Paragraph 2 / lines 43 - 57 / please use up-to-date research regarding injuries in judo. I recommend reading the following paper: https://peerj.com/articles/13074/  (Diagnostics of tissue involved injury occurrence of top-level judokas during the competition: suggestion for prevention). Here you can see that sprains, where taping is later usually applied account for more than 43% of injuries in top-level judokas. This data would strengthen the basis for your study and add to the importance of taping in elite judo.

Otherwise, the main rationale is cleary presented.

 

Methods:

Sample: How was your sample size determined (G*Power or any other method)? Report

What was the training experience of athletes, belt degrees, and weight categories? Report

What is/was their experience with ankle taping in the past?

Also what makes them Elite? Please back up what makes them elite.

How were height and weight measured? Report

Taping - what tape was used? report

Which trials were done first - in taped or untaped conditions? Were they randomly assigned ? - if not this needs to be mentioned in the limitations section. 

What was the break between tests and conditions? Report

Was there any warmup or not? Report

In what part of the day were tests done

Report the setting of markers on the body - size of markers and positions.

Statistical analysis - how was the normality of data measured?

Report spps version

 

Conclusion section is missing

 

Overall the paper is promising, however, the authors need to put in some more work. Therefore I recommend major revisions.

 

Kind regards

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Thank you so much for your comments! 

Please see the attachment.

 

Sincerely, 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This study is mostly about functional ankle taping and postural stability in judo players with linear and non-linear analysis. The article is well written and well designed but I have some minor corrections.  

 

·         The introduction is good and leaves the reader to the main point of the study. But the fourth paragraph needs to expand. Line 75-76, depending on this sentence, the authors should give the results of these studies with suitable references.

·         How the authors reached the Judo players, there was any excluded players at the beginning of the study? What are the exclusion criteria of the study? For example, why the authors were not given attention to the sports age or training/competitive schedule. 

·         Please give more detailed information about functional ankle taping. Moreover, the authors need to explain the differences than normal ankle taping.

·         Please correct the heading of 2.2.3 section

·         Please correct the reference style (Line 133)

·         The author should explain which test was used to analyze the homogeneity of data in statistical analysis. Also, the authors did not present a sample size calculation. Did you perform power analysis to find the sample?

·         The results are clear and well-presented. Only, in the first paragraph and in the abstract, please correct the p values demonstrations. The authors need to select one of them (for example 0.041 or .041)

·         In the Discussion section, please erase “There” in the first sentence and clarify some duplicated information in lines 185-187.

·         Why the author underestimated the discussion of the findings of the ApEnML? Do you have any idea why ApEnML failed for three different positions?

·         Also, the authors stated the reason of change the ApEnAP in the narrow position than other positions;  “… the ankle taping could make increased ankle stiffness and reduced the degree of freedom of the ankle joint movements”. I think it can not be true if it is why the other positions were not changed or why the ApEnMLs were not changed? Please expand the discussion in this part with possible explanations from the newest literature.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

Thank you so much for your comments! 

Please see the attachment.

 

Sincerely, 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for addressing my comments fully.

It still needs a full English Proofread as there are a lot of grammatical errors. Overall the paper's quality improved with its reproducibility.

Therefore, I recommend acceptance.

Congratulations to the authors.

Kind regards