Background: The game of water polo has become more familiar to all the athletes and coaches as the time has passed. It has been played as a sport for more than a century Although anatomical shoulder movement strength balance is a crucial factor in overhead throwers` performance, it has not been studied extensively in the previous research. Objective: This study examined shoulder movement imbalance in bilateral and dominant anterior-posterior shoulder among 42 elite water polo players in Malaysia. Method: The t-test analyses of data obtained through several tests proved that water polo players had statistically significant difference between their right hand anatomical shoulder movement strength and their left hand anatomical shoulder movement strength in all eight shoulder movements, i.e. Flexion, Extension, Abduction, Adduction, Horizontal Adduction, Horizontal Abduction, Rotation and External Rotation. Results: The results of this study showed that there are significant differences of anatomical shoulder movement strength in both bilateral and Anterior-posterior shoulder movement among water polo players. The statistics results for bilateral shoulder movement of Flexion (t= 136.09 and p<.001), Extension (t= 110.92 and p<.001), Abduction (t= 121.89 and p<.001), Adduction (t= 101.47 and p<.001), Horizontal Adduction (t= 92.3 and p<.001), Horizontal Abduction (t= 95.6 and p<.001), Internal rotations (t= 109.6 and p<.001) and External rotations (t= 102.18 and p<.001) showed the p-value to be less than 0.05 for all variables of the test. The result of paired samples t-test showed there is a statistically significant difference between the mean of bilateral anatomical shoulder movement strength among water polo players. Conclusion: These findings suggest that coaches and players should take into account the shoulder movement strength imbalance in their trainings and design specific training programs to improve overhead throwers` shoulder movement strength balance and hence their throwing performance in sports such as water polo.
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