Hamstring muscle (HM) injuries are one of the most common injuries in soccer, accounting for up to 13% of all injuries in this sport. The single leg hamstring bridge (SLHB) test has been one of the clinical tests used to assess hamstring muscle function in athletes. It has been used as a marker of progress in rehabilitation and as a criterion for returning to sport. Therefore, the SLHB is presented as a measure with an important role in the prevention and treatment of IQS injuries. The SLHB is a test proposed by Freckleton et al. (2013) for clinical evaluation of the functional capacity of the HM in a practical way, with low cost and better applicability compared to isokinetic dynamometry. The test requires only one evaluator and a 60 cm high box and can be performed in different environments within the sporting context. It also proved to be a reliable test (intra-examiner intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) = 0.77-0.89, inter-examiner ICC = 0.89-0.91). Its main outcome measure is given by the number of valid repetitions performed by the athlete until fatigue. Australian football players who performed worse on the preseason SLHB had a higher risk of injury to the HM during the season, with uninjured athletes achieving scores ≥ 26 repetitions on the test.

The main objective of this study was to establish normative data for the SLHB and to investigate the association of the results of this test with the history of hamstring injuries in professional male soccer players.

This is a cross-sectional observational study. In this study, professional male soccer players from Cruzeiro Esporte Clube (CEC) aged between 15 and 40 years were submitted to the SLHB. Mean comparison tests (T-test or Mann-Whitney) will be performed to compare the SLHB result between groups with and without a history of IQS injury.

The athletes of the under-17 category of the CEC with an average age of 15.29±0.46, average mass of 67.6±6.05 and average height of 177.73±7.12 made an average of 14 .75±3.46 repetitions in the right lower limb and 14.89±3.6 in the left in the SLHB test. No athlete had a history of HM injury in the previous season.

Based on the preliminary results, it is concluded that under-17 men's soccer players have an average of repetitions in the SLHB lower than the non-injured Australian soccer players.

Athletes will benefit from access to qualified data on hamstring muscle function. This may enable the planning of more specific preventive programs based on normative data from the SLHB test for the soccer population.