Introduction to Sports Biomechanics: Analysing Human Movement ...

INTRODUCTION TO SPORTS BIOMECHANICS
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type of movement pattern may be of most use to a movement analyst. The branch of
biomechanics that deals with the geometry of movement without reference to the forces
causing the movement is often called ‘kinematics’, although we will generally avoid this
technical term.
Much of our work as sports biomechanists involves the study and evaluation of how
sports skills are performed. To analyse the observed movement ‘technique’, we need to
identify important features of the technique. For a qualitative biomechanical analyst,
this means being able to observe those features of the movement; for the quantitative
analyst, this requires measuring those features and often, further mathematical analysis.
As I explained in Chapter 1, the increasing demand from the real world of sport and
exercise – coaches, athletes and other practitioners – outside of academia has generated
an increasing demand for good qualitative movement analysts; this is again our main
focus in this chapter.
BOX 3.1 LEARNING OUTCOMES
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
explain the various forms of movement pattern that are important for any movement analyst
be able to interpret graphical patterns of one movement variable (position, velocity or
acceleration) in terms of the other two from the shapes of the patterns
define linear, rotational and general motion
understand the physical model appropriate to each type of motion and appreciate the uses
and limitations of each model
appreciate the importance of linear and angular motion in sport and exercise
understand the basic movement patterns used to study joint coordination.
MOVEMENT PATTERNS REVISITED
In Chapter 1, we focused on video sequences as the basic representation of movement
patterns in sport. We noted, however, that these sequences are complex, because they
contain so much information. It is often beneficial for the qualitative or quantitative
movement analyst to look at simpler, if less familiar, representations of movement
patterns. In this chapter, we will explore the various patterns of movement that a
movement analyst can use, at his or her discretion, to supplement (although not to
replace), qualitative video analysis. They are all, even if this is not immediately obvious
to you at this stage because of their unfamiliarity, far simpler than video recordings
because they focus on aspects of a movement pattern that a movement analyst needs to
observe and analyse; this simplicity underpins their usefulness to movement analysts.