Improvement of somatosensory information could potentially
explain the benefit observed in our study.
On the other hand, the improvement may also be related to
mechanical effects. The importance of ROM of the feet and ankle
joints with regards to balance and locomotion performance is also
known. Mecagni et al. (2000) showed a correlation between ankle
ROM and the functional reach test. In our study, changes of joint
ROM were not measured. This hypothesis needs to be explored
further in future studies.