Sports biomechanics involves the study of sports techniques with the aim to improve performance and reduce the risk of injury. Being a relatively young field, many of the research conventions have been adopted from other, more mature, fields. Likely to our detriment, group-based experimental designs from psychology and medicine have masked individual-specific adaptations to training, equipment, learning, etc. Furthermore, simulation and modelling techniques from engineering have oversimplified the musculoskeletal system to the extent that findings have had limited relevance to performance. Importantly, human movement is inherently variable, making single optimal solutions of little practical use. Instead, a deeper understanding of skills such as adaptability, stability and creativity offers greater potential in improving performance. With the growing capability to collect large, multi-dimensional data describing sports techniques and performance, sport scientists must look to collaborative efforts between computer and data scientists, mathematicians and statisticians to create informative models of performance, workload and injury. This talk identifies some of the current challenges in sports biomechanics and highlights opportunities for theoretical advancements from computer science to contribute to advancing technique and performance analysis.
Last modified:
This page is maintained by the seminar list administrator.