Landing in Ski Jumping: A Review About its Biomechanics and the Connected Injuries

Abstract

The present review deals with the current scientific knowledge related with ski jump landing. A specific focus is given on the landing biomechanics, the methods utilized for its analysis and the injuries connected to the landing phase. Despite the demonstrated importance for the safety and the performance of ski jumpers, the landing and its preparation are rarely investigated. In this paper, after having firstly described the execution of landing and its preparation and the reason why is important to analyze it, an overview of the current status of the research related to the landing biomechanics is reported (kinetics, kinematics, electromyographic activation, aerodynamics, computer simulation). The third part describes the methods and technologies utilized in literature to analyze the landing and its preparation (video cameras, inertial sensors, force insoles, wind tunnel and computer simulation). After that, an overview of the injuries related to landing is reported. The final section proposes future research in the field of biomechanics of ski jump landing in different fields, such as computer simulations, kinematic analysis, equipment development and biomechanics of female athletes.

Anterior cruciate ligament injuries in elite ski jumping reliably allow return to competition but severely affect future top performance

“…Its changes should be adapted for the best possible performance but always considering the athletes' safety requirements throughout the execution of all jump phases. Over the last seasons, ski jumpers' equipment has been optimized more for the flight phase than for the landing, for example, nondetachable ski bindings limit knee and ankle range of motion and in case of disbalance may put the ACL at risk [4,16]. Moreover, athletes' mind-set cannot be underestimated.…”

“…Every season, athletes compete for the best results by pushing their performance to the limits, which increases the injury risk. It is a very complex discipline consisting of several jump phases among which every phase requires extreme technical finesse [4]. Like all high-level sports, ski jumping has also its specific injury profile.…”

Sport‐specific differences in ACL injury, treatment and return to sports—Ski jumping

“…High ground reaction forces (GRFs), knee internal rotation and hip rotation/flexion/abduction are the main biomechanical factors contributing to the landing phase and the risk of sustaining an ACL injury [5,4,6]. GRFs correspond directly to the length of a jump and are considered to be an important factor in noncontact ACL injuries in the landing process of different sport disciplines [9].…”

Pose estimation and motion analysis of ski jumpers based on ECA-HRNet

“…Ski jumping is a Winter Olympic sport in which it is challenging to establish effective measurement and kinematic analysis, due to the complex outdoor environments, high speeds, wide range of motion, and safety 1 , 2 and health 3 considerations. The traditional manual image annotation method, in which kinematic analysis software is used to annotate each keypoint of an athlete in continuous images and the annotated data are then used to calculate kinematic elements, is time-consuming and labor-intensive.…”