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The influence of touchdown conditions and contact phase technique on post-flight height in the straight handspring somersault vault

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posted on 2014-12-02, 15:04 authored by Fred YeadonFred Yeadon, Monique I. Jackson, Michael HileyMichael Hiley
In vaulting the gymnast must generate sufficient linear and angular momentum during the approach and table contact in order to complete the rotational requirements in the post-flight phase. This study investigated the effects of touchdown conditions and contact technique on peak post-flight height of a straight handspring somersault vault. A planar seven-segment torque-driven computer simulation model of the contact phase in vaulting was evaluated by varying joint torque activation time histories to match three performances of a straight handspring somersault vault by an elite gymnast. The closest matching simulation was used as a starting point to optimise peak post-flight height of the mass centre for a straight handspring somersault. It was found that optimising either the touchdown conditions or the contact technique increased post-flight height by 0.1 m whereas optimising both together increased post-flight height by 0.4 m above that of a simulation matching the recorded performance. Thus touchdown technique and contact technique make similar contributions to post-flight height in the straight handspring somersault vault. Increasing touchdown velocity and angular momentum lead to additional post-flight height although there was a critical value of vertical touchdown velocity beyond which post-flight height decreased.

Funding

The support of British Gymnastics is gratefully acknowledged.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Journal of Biomechanics

Volume

47

Issue

12

Pages

3143 - 3148 (6)

Citation

YEADON, M.R., JACKSON, M.I. and HILEY, M.J., 2014. The influence of touchdown conditions and contact phase technique on post-flight height in the straight handspring somersault vault. Journal of Biomechanics, 47 (12), pp. 3143 - 3148.

Publisher

© Elsevier Ltd.

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 International (CC BY 3.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Acceptance date

2014-06-14

Publication date

2014-06-21

Copyright date

2014

Notes

NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Biomechanics. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Biomechanics, vol 47 (12), 2014 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2014.06.020

ISSN

0021-9290

Language

  • en