An Examination of the Triple Hop for Distance as a Predictor of Lower Extremity Performance in Firefighter Equipment

An abstract of a study by Rogers et al determining the extent to which the Triple Hop for Distance (THD) predicts performance on clinical measures of lower extremity (LE) power and strength while donning firefighting personal protective equipment is presented. THD was a strong predictor of LE power, explaining 64.7% of the variance (p < 0.001) in the dominant limb and 62.0% of the variance in the non-dominant limb. THD also predicted dominant limb LE strength, accounting for 25.7% of the variance in Ham60 (p = 0.006), 29.3% of the variance in Ham180 (p = 0.003), 22.6% of the variance in Ham60 (p < 0.01), and 27.5% of the variance in Quad180 (p = 0.004). The THD also predicted non-dominant limb LE strength, accounting for 45.9% of the variance in Ham60 (p < 0.001), 30.6% of the variance in Ham180 (P = 0.002), 33.8% of the variance in Quad180 (p = 0.001), but was not strong or significant in Quad60, accounting for only 1.0% of the variance (p = 0.612).