Biomechanical Analysis Of Sport

The study of biomechanics has made abundant contributions to sport over many years which have been applied to improve athletes’ physical performance. The knowledge of human movement and how internal and external forces of the body influence movement has been used to enhance performance by finding methods of change to technique which can improve the overall performance of an athlete and also in finding the mechanisms that affect the occurrence of sports injury (Bartlett, 2002, p 2). The most common method for improving performance in any sport is by improving the technique, which can be achieved by first applying a biomechanical analysis giving detailed analysis of sports movements. A biomechanical analysis is important as it allows for the

A sport which gives great example of how biomechanical knowledge can be used to improve an athlete performance is competitive swimming, though the biomechanical analysis of competitive swimming can be challenging as the aquatic environment is not the natural human environment. In swimming kinematics variables such as stroke length, stroke frequency, speed fluctuation, and limbs’ kinematics and kinetics variables such as propulsive drag, lift force are drag force are analysed to improve athletes’ performance (Barbosa1, Marinho, Costa & Silva 2011. Athletes in swimming have to produce effective propulsive forces against the water, they are required to apply stroke techniques to generate enough force to accelerate through the water. For instance, a swimmers hand must move in a three dimensional curve if the hand moves in a straight line backwards, it cannot accelerate as much water to propel through it. Athletes also need to utilise effective kicking techniques to propel through the water (Barbosa1 et al,