|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Giving Athletes the Edge
| Article
# : |
14915 |
|
|
Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
|
| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1988 |
3,324 Words |
| Author
: |
Joann T. Dennett and Nancy Keogel
Joan T. Dennett teaches science writing at the University of
Colorado. Nancy Keogel is a free-lance science writer and a
member of the American Medical Writers Association |
Technology offers athletes an edge, and that edge need only be small for elite competitors. Peter Van Handel, a physiologist at the U.S. Olympic Committee Headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado, stresses that even a 1 percent improvement is very significant at high level competitions. A 1 percent increase in speed for a marathon runner, for example, can mean the difference between finishing fifth or first.
Such seemingly small increases are not easily achieved, but sports scientists--physiologist, biomechanicists, and psychologists--are combining their efforts to offer athletes and their coaches a means to design ideal training programs, evaluate progress, and hone individual performance to a highly competitive edge. Karl Foster, M.D., a physiologist in Milwaukee, describes himself as an "assistant coach" whose job is to provide "X-ray goggles" to the head coach. The "goggles" can be as simple as a videotape of a practice session or as complex as a digitized image of rapid foot motion.
Biomechanics
Sports biomechanics combines anatomy, physics and engineering. Using knowledge from these fields, athletes and their coaches work to improve training methods and performance techniques. Biomechanical analysis is also an invaluable tool for preventing injury.
Depending on the specific need of the athlete, biomechanical information can be provided at varying levels of detail. The least detailed are high-speed videotapes and split-image views of the athlete in performance. Videotapes can record as many as 200 images a second.
For more detail, the videotapes can be broken down into motion or time characteristics to present what happens at each instant in terms of the velocity and relative position or angles of different parts of the body. Timing lights gather data for horizontal speed calculations, and light-emitting markers called selspots, placed at various points on the athlete, provide a timed camera trace of position and velocity.
Even more detail is available with a force diagram showing both the forces on the athlete's body and those on the ground, track, or equipment being used. Force platforms are used to collect horizontal and vertical reaction forces. A process called electrodynography monitors pressure at selected sites--usually between foot and shoe--to show how pressure varies with
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
