INTRODUCTION: Athletic groin pain (AGP) is a common injury, typically associated with sports involving repetitive agility tasks. Given the association between repetitive loading and chronic overuse injuries such as AGP, there has been a growing interest in the functional role movement variability may have with respect to injury (1). The aim of this study was to investigate if the magnitude of variability differed between those with and without AGP across the total waveform of the analysed variables. METHODS: Twenty AGP patients and twenty recreationally active male field sports athletes were recruited to this study. Each participant attended the lab on one occasion and completed 7 trials of a 110° cutting action. Motion and force data were captured using 10 Vicon Bonita cameras and 2 AMTI force plates at a sampling frequency of 200 Hz and 1000 Hz, respectively. Data were filtered at 15 Hz and normalised to 101 data points. A modified vector coding approach was utilised to calculate the co-ordination between joints (2). Variability was calculated for both joint angles and the co-ordination between every joint of the lower limbs, trunk and pelvis using the between-trial standard deviation or the circular equivalent for the coordination data. A statistical curve analysis was performed using one-dimensional statistical non-parametric mapping (3) and rank rank-biserial correlation (RBC) was presented as a standardised measure of effect. Only phases of 3% or longer were considered as true differences (4). RESULTS: Ankle dorsi/plantar flexion (79-93%, RBC = 0.51), Thorax abd/adduction – Hip flex/extension (88-93%, RBC = 0.65) and Pelvis abd/adduction – Hip flex/extension (88-93%, RBC = 0.57) variability were all significantly less in the AGP group in comparison to the uninjured group (p <0.01). In contrast Pelvis flex/extension variability (36-63%,70-84%, RBC =0.49) was significantly greater in the uninjured group in comparison to the AGP group (p <0.01). CONCLUSION: The results from this study indicate that AGP patients are characterised by reduced movement variability in comparison to uninjured controls for three out of the four significantly different variables identified. While causality cannot be determined from the current study, it is possible that reduced variability represents a risk factor for AGP due to repetitive loading on the pubic symphysis region. AGP rehabilitation may, therefore, benefit from ’over-loading’ variability by emphasising the use of a large number of degrees of freedom to encourage the exploration of new movement strategies by the neuromuscular system. While this rehabilitation should be conducted utilising whole-body movements, future research should investigate which rehabilitation exercises best target the variability at the joints affected by AGP.