**1. Introduction**

Basketball is one of the most popular sports; at least 450 million people play basketball worldwide, ranging from registered elite players to amateurs [1]. Basketball skills can be categorized into o ffensive skills, including shooting, passing and dribbling and defensive skills, including blocking and stealing [2]. While shooting is the mean to score in the game, free-throws (or foul shots) are considered as one of the easiest movements, ye<sup>t</sup> they can significantly influence the outcome of a game [3,4]. Movement mechanics and coordination are key to free-throwing performance [5,6] and may be regulated by wearing compression garments [7].

Compression garmen<sup>t</sup> can enhance performance and recovery in various sports [7,8]. Specifically, compression garments improve joint awareness, reduce muscle soreness and encourage blood circulation and thus, promote recovery [9]. Conversely, some studies have argued that upper-body compression garmen<sup>t</sup> may impose negative e ffects in hot environments and the claimed benefits may only be confined to perception of comfort [10,11]. Di fferent movement tasks, selection of indicators, and the physical status of the athletes may also contribute to the variability and e ffectiveness of using compression garments during exercise, whereas garmen<sup>t</sup> design, such as type, coverage and tightness, may a ffect the functions of the garmen<sup>t</sup> [9]. The tightness of the compression garmen<sup>t</sup> has been hypothesized to change the interfacial pressure of the body [12]; however, there is a lack of studies exploring the influence of body coverage with di fferent compression garments.

The benefits of compression garments could be attributed to the enhancement of proprioception to improve movement mechanics [13]. Hooper et al. [14] demonstrated the relationship between throwing velocity and accuracy, and improved proprioceptive signals in upper-body compression garments for baseball athletes. The compression on the cutaneous receptors or muscle spindle receptors not only enhanced the sensory information, but also filtered irrelevant mechanoreceptor information [15]. Depending on the task, the nervous system integrated these signals or information at multiple levels to mediate cutaneous and muscle a fferent feedback, which is imperative for smooth coordination of movements [15–17].

There is insu fficient evidence to support the use of compression garments (upper-body or lower-body) to enhance basketball performance. Atkins et al. [7] showed that wearing lower-body compression garments overnight produced negligible e ffects on the countermovement jump, repeated sprint and agility test performances, despite improvements in perceived fatigue and muscle soreness. Other evidence indicated that lower-leg compression garments were found to significantly reduce the range of abduction motion of the hip joint during a drop vertical jump, but produced minimal e ffects on the kinematics/kinetics of other lower extremity joints [13].

Furthermore, lower-body compression was shown to improve lower limb balance and stability in active females during a single-leg balance task [18]. Poor stability results in higher motion variability and may potentially weaken shooting accuracy [6,19,20]. How these findings a ffect other functional performances (e.g., basketball shooting) requires further investigation. Since compression garments produce mechanical restraints on body segments and joints, range of motion (ROM) has been one of the key parameters for the evaluation of kinematic e ffects during exercise in previous basketball studies [13,21].

Considering the relationship between compression garmen<sup>t</sup> coverage (upper-body, lower-body and combined) on the kinematics and shooting performance of basketball specific maneuvers is currently questionable, coaches and athletes are eager to understand what type of compression garmen<sup>t</sup> coverage could help them improve performance and consistency of performance. The objective of this study was to examine the e ffect of upper- and lower-body compression garmen<sup>t</sup> coverage (top, bottom and full) on the full body range of motion (ROM) and shooting accuracy of basketball free-throws. It was hypothesized that a certain compression garmen<sup>t</sup> condition would improve free-throw performance and consistency compared to the no-compression garmen<sup>t</sup> control group.

#### **2. Materials and Methods**
