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News & Comment: Biomechanics

JUDGING GYMNASTICS WITH BIOMECHANICS

Wm A Sandsa PhD, Jeni R McNeal MS CSCS

Department of Exercise & Sport Science, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112. aCorresponding author: wmasands=AT=concentric.net

Sportscience 3(1), sportsci.org/jour/9901/was.html, 1999 (865 words)

Reviewed by Todd L Allinger, Resource Center for Sport Science, Medicine & Education, The Orthopedic Specialty Hospital, Salt Lake City, Utah 84107

In sports like gymnastics, judging competitors is notoriously political and subjective. Modern biomechanics may provide an objective way to score the movement of athletes in these sports. Recently we undertook a feasibility study of such a scoring system for USA Gymnastics.

We used video digitizing, infrared timers, and a computer algorithm to "judge" compulsory vaulting of 25 gymnasts at the 1999 American Classic Competition in Pomona, California. The International Gymnastics Federation has dropped compulsory routines, but USA Gymnastics wants to maintain the educational aspects of compulsory exercises by designing national compulsories that emphasize crucial aspects of performance.

We compiled the score from a custom program for evaluation of the run-up and a commercially available program that permitted hand digitizing of a gymnast's image. A single human judge observed the performance for form errors and applied a deduction to the score provided by computer analysis.

Coaches and officials were very pleased with the outcome of the first trial. The time required to perform the measurements was approximately 90 seconds per vault, which compares well with the time required for human judges to perform the same functions. The coaches, judges, and officials found that the scores conformed well with the scores expected for the individual vault. The second trial of the system will occur this July at the US Classic Competition in Rochester, New York.

Technical Information

The timing system (Brower Timing Systems, Draper, Utah) consisted of six infrared sensors on tripods placed in pairs along the vault runway. The telemetered timing system was interfaced to a laptop computer via custom software to provide millisecond resolution of run-up time intervals. The infrared sensors were set at 1.52-meter intervals beginning at 10.7 meters. The six sensor pairs provided five intervals from which the computer software determined if the athlete maintained acceleration from interval to interval. Points were awarded for a continuing acceleration throughout the latter part of the run-up.

We assessed the kinematics of the vault with proprietary software (NEAT Systems, Annapolis, Maryland). The software enables recording and displaying of video sequences. Distances are calibrated prior to sequence analysis. The software also permits the repeated digitization of a single point with a running displacement and speed value displayed for each digitized point.

We recorded each athlete’s performance with a computer frame grabber and stored it on the computer’s hard disk. We then displayed the video sequence and selected the field showing the moment of departure from the horse. We recorded the height of the hip joint, then digitized the hip-joint center frame-by-frame to depict the path of the trajectory of the gymnast. We assumed the hip joint represented the gymnast's center of mass. We also recorded the peak height of the flight trajectory and the distance of the peak from the horse.

Figure 1: Screen image of the analysis for a gymnast performing a Yurchenko vault.

Lines indicate digitized distances. Circles show the digitized path of the gymnast's hip in consecutive frames.

Figure 1 shows a gymnast performing a compulsory Yurchenko vault "timer" onto a mat stack. A timer is a gymnastics term for the crucial or fundamental portion of a gymnastics skill. The national coaching staff determined and prescribed the crucial aspects of each skill. The timer for the Yurchenko consisted of all parts of the vault except the final somersault and landing. The purpose of this compulsory vault was to encourage athletes to perform the early phases, from the run up to horse departure, with virtuosity.

Figure 1 shows the gymnast in the latter phase of post-flight. The vertical line from the horse indicates the height of the gymnast from hand to hip. The long horizontal line indicates the height of the hip at horse departure. The circles show the digitized path of the gymnast's hip in each frame of the post-flight. The height of the trajectory is the maximum distance above the horizontal line at horse departure. The line slightly below the digitized circles shows the distance of the post-flight. We used the lengths of these lines to calculate the gymnast’s score. We calculated relative displacements by dividing post-flight height and post-flight horizontal distance by the height of the gymnast from hands to hip. A computer algorithm then calculated weighted scores based on the height and distance of the flight, and whether the gymnast accelerated through all parts of the run-up.