Decoding Muscle Asymmetry: Insights into Performance and Injury Prevention in Sports

The field of sports and physical activity increasingly emphasizes the significance of muscle asymmetry in understanding movement performance and injury prevention. Muscle asymmetry, the imbalance between muscle groups or sides of the body, is crucial for various body functions and sports tasks. Such imbalances, whether agonist/antagonist or side-to-side, can affect movement and sports performance, increase injury risk, and influence daily functioning. While recent evidence sheds light on these issues, knowledge gaps remain concerning the underlying mechanisms and mitigation strategies for muscle asymmetry. Current debates continue over the implications of muscle asymmetry in both sports and daily life, necessitating more comprehensive investigations to develop effective interventions for training, injury prevention, and rehabilitation.

This Research Topic aims to advance our understanding of muscle asymmetry by integrating insights from sports science and medicine. The primary goals are to explore the multifaceted aspects of muscle asymmetry, such as strength, power, balance, flexibility, stiffness, electrical activity, range of motion, muscle mass, and kinematics. The topic seeks to elucidate the relationship between muscle asymmetry and various facets like sports performance, success, injury risk, rehabilitation, health status, and general quality of life. The overarching aim is to foster a more nuanced appreciation of muscle asymmetry's role in optimizing sports performance and mitigating injuries.

To gather further insights into the boundaries of muscle asymmetry in sports and physical activities, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

- Impact of muscle asymmetry on everyday movement, general health, and quality of life.
- Effect of muscle asymmetry on training and competition performance across sports.
- Influence of muscle asymmetry on achieving sports success.
- The repercussions of various physical and sports activities on muscle asymmetry.
- Relationship between muscle asymmetry and injury incidence.
- Importance of detecting and tracking muscle asymmetry levels in rehabilitation.
- Evaluation of different methodologies for assessing muscle asymmetry.

We invite submissions of Original Research, Review, and Perspective articles addressing these themes.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Muscle Asymmetry, Sports Science, Performance, Injury Risk, Rehabilitation, Quality of Life

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.