Kinetic and kinematic determinants of shuttlecock speed in the forehand jump smash performed by elite male Malaysian badminton players

Abstract

Badminton is the fastest racket sport in the world with smash speeds reaching over 111 m/s (400 kph). This study examined the forehand jump smash in badminton using synchronised force plates and full-body motion capture to quantify contributions to shuttlecock speed through correlations. Nineteen elite male Malaysian badminton players were recorded performing forehand jump smashes with the fastest, most accurate jump smash from each player analysed. The fastest smash by each participant was on average 97 m/s with a peak of 105 m/s. A correlational analysis revealed that a faster smash speed was characterised by a more internally rotated shoulder, a less elevated shoulder, and less extended elbow at contact. The positioning of the arm at contact appears to be critical in developing greater shuttlecock smash speeds. Vertical ground reaction force and rate of force development were not correlated with shuttlecock speed, and further investigation is required as to their importance for performance of the jump smash e.g. greater jump height and shuttle angle. It is recommended that players / coaches focus on not over-extending the elbow or excessively elevating the upper arm at contact when trying to maximise smash speed.

Notational Analysis and Physiological and Metabolic Responses of Male Junior Badminton Match Play

“…Badminton is a fast racket sport characterized by the ability to perform high-intensity and explosive movements such as lunges, jumps and overhead shuttlecock smashes interspersed with brief recovery periods [ 1 ]. Competitive success in badminton also depends on technical mastery, tactical shrewdness and mental toughness [ 2 , 3 ].…”

A Systematic Review of the Biomechanical Studies on Shoulder Kinematics in Overhead Sporting Motions: Types of Analysis and Approaches

“…Thirty-five percent of the studies reviewed used inverse kinematics to obtain the force data at the joints of interest in order to investigate the indicators that lead to higher movement speed and performance [8,10,18,23,34,42,45,[49][50][51] and/or to examine the amount of forces incurred from the joints when executing the tasks from an injury risk perspective [23,41,42,45,59]. For example, [10] identified greater shoulder internal rotation moment as a strong predictor of higher racket head speed (r = 0.737); this was supported by [45] who found greater shoulder internal rotation moment in the skilled vs. novice players (p = 0.016). Ref.…”

“…Previous studies have reported peak angular velocities as high as 2594 • /s in volleyball jump spike [15], 2900 • /s in tennis serve [16], 7148 • /s in badminton jump smash [10], and 7200 • /s in baseball pitching [17,18]. These high angular velocities suggest shoulder internal rotation is important to speed development in overhead sporting motions, although methodological differences mean caution should be taken when comparing across studies on different sporting movements.…”

“…The pre-stretch of the active muscles stores elastic energy during eccentric loading and increases muscular force and power output during the final concentric phase of movement [6,7]. Consensus was met among the authors across the literature on the baseball pitch, tennis serve, volleyball spike, and badminton smash, whereby the major contribution to faster ball release/post-impact speed comes from shoulder internal/external rotation [8][9][10][11][12][13]. Another study reported that shoulder internal rotation contributes around 66% towards the development of racket head speed [14].…”

Mechanism for shoulder pain and injury in elite badminton players

“…As for badminton players, our previous studies showed that training hours of per day, decreased trunk rotation and weak balance ability were risk factors for shoulder pain [11,12] . Although previous badminton studies adopted biomechanics to examine forehand overhead stroke motion [5,13,14] , no studies on the association of forehand overhead stroke motion phases and shoulder pain and injury were found. Additionally, video analysis has high reliability to evaluate sports motor skills, including phases of overhead motion [15,16] , however, such studies of badminton were scarce.…”