OBJECTIVE: The Saturn-Ring is a new device that claims to increase cervical strength and flexibility. Therefore, the objective was to assess if use of the Saturn-Ring with conventional exercise would increase cervical strength, flexibility and circumference over conventional exercise alone.

DESIGN: Subjects were randomly divided into two matched groups and a before/after design utilized. For pretest data, collection was done in a double-blind fashion. During the post-test, only the athlete knew the group in which he had participated.

SETTING: The entire study was conducted in a high school field house.

PARTICIPANTS: Fifty football players randomly chosen from a high school team served as subjects for the study. One subject was randomly selected from the pool of potential players and a matched subject was selected for the second group according to age, height and weight. This continued until both groups had 25 subjects.

INTERVENTION: In addition to normal football exercises and practice, the experimental group used the Saturn-Ring five times a week over the 8-wk exercise program.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Cervical strength and flexibility (flexion, extension, right lateral flexion and left lateral flexion) and girth size of the neck were measured before and after an 8-wk exercise program.

RESULTS: Both groups showed significant gains in strength, flexibility and neck size. Further testing determined that the post-test results for the experimental group were significantly greater than the post-test results for the control group for neck sizes and all possible strength and flexibility measurements.

CONCLUSIONS: The result of this study indicate that Saturn-Ring exercises in conjunction with conventional exercises will significantly increase cervical strength, flexibility and size over conventional exercises alone. There were several implications for further study: a) replicate the study to single out the effect of the Saturn-Ring alone, b) replicate the study with a broader spectrum of the population and include injured patients and c) research is needed to assess if the use of the Saturn-Ring can decrease the potential for cervical injury.

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