The effect of changes in fundamental skill complexity on upper limb loading and biomechanical characteristics of performance in female gymnastics

ABSTRACT

Aims of this study were to investigate if changes in elbow and wrist joints loading and biomechanical characteristics of performance existed as a function of (a) different hand placement and (b) fundamental skills development in female gymnastics. Ten female gymnasts performed 54 successful trials of round-off skills (cartwheel [18], round-off [18], round-off to back handspring [18]), with three different hand positions (parallel, T-shape and reverse). Kinematic and kinetic data were collected for each trial. A two-way repeated measures ANOVA was used to analyse the injury risk factors. Findings of the current study showed that an increase in RO skill difficulty level significantly influences the mechanical load on the upper extremities. With the increase in mechanical load on the upper extremities during the reverse and parallel hand positions, this study suggests that that T-shape hand position should be used as the primary technique for the young female. Differences in vertical velocity from touchdown to take-off between the three hand positions for the RO and RO-BH suggested that the reverse position was less effective for young female gymnasts. The findings of the current study demonstrated no clear performance benefits between hand position selection.

KEYWORDS:

• Human movement
• injury prevention
• training process
• coaching
• gymnastics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the grant “Healthy Aging in Industrial Environment” [program 4 HAIE CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000798] and by a Students university grant of University of Ostrava (SGS) [project no. SGS06/PdF/2019-20 45050/1610/6113/021679].