There have been considerable changes in equipment design and movement patterns in the past few years both in alpine skiing and ski-jumping. These developments have been matched by methods of analysing movements in field conditions. They have yielded new insights into the skills of these specific winter sports. Analytical techniques have included electromyography, kinetic and kinematic methods and computer simulations. Our aim here is to review biomechanical research in alpine skiing and ski-jumping. We present in detail the techniques currently used in alpine skiing (carving technique) and ski-jumping (V-technique), primarily using data from the authors’ own research. Finally, we present a summary of the most important results in biomechanical research both in alpine skiing and ski-jumping. This includes an analysis of specific conditions in alpine skiing (type of turn, terrain, snow, speed, etc.) and the effects of equipment, materials and individual-specific abilities on performance, safety and joint loading in ski-jumping.

Alpine ski racing is known to be a sport with a high risk of injury and a high proportion of time-loss injuries. In recent years, substantial research efforts with regard to injury epidemiology, injury etiology, potential prevention measures, and measures’ evaluation have been undertaken. Therefore, the aims of this review of the literature were (i) to provide a comprehensive overview of what is known about the aforementioned four steps of injury prevention research in the context of alpine ski racing; and (ii) to derive potential perspectives for future research. In total, 38 injury risk factors were previously reported in literature; however, a direct relation to injury risk was proven for only five factors: insufficient core strength/core strength imbalance, sex (depending on type of injury), high skill level, unfavorable genetic predisposition, and the combination of highly shaped, short and wide skis. Moreover, only one prevention measure (i.e. the combination of less-shaped and longer skis with reduced profile width) has demonstrated a positive impact on injury risk. Thus, current knowledge deficits are mainly related to verifying the evidence of widely discussed injury risk factors and assessing the effectiveness of reasonable prevention ideas. Nevertheless, the existing knowledge should be proactively communicated and systematically implemented by sport federations and sport practitioners.

In alpine ski racing the relationships between skier kinetics and kinematics and their effect on performance and injury-related aspects are not well understood. There is currently no validated system to determine all external forces simultaneously acting on skiers, particularly under race conditions and throughout entire races. To address the problem, this study proposes and assesses a method for determining skier kinetics with a single lightweight differential global navigation satellite system (dGNSS). The dGNSS kinetic method was compared to a reference system for six skiers and two turns each. The pattern differences obtained between the measurement systems (offset ± SD) were −26 ± 152 N for the ground reaction force, 1 ± 96 N for ski friction and −6 ± 6 N for the air drag force. The differences between turn means were small. The error pattern within the dGNSS kinetic method was highly repeatable and precision was therefore good (SD within system: 63 N ground reaction force, 42 N friction force and 7 N air drag force) allowing instantaneous relative comparisons and identification of discriminative meaningful changes. The method is therefore highly valid in assessing relative differences between skiers in the same turn, as well as turn means between different turns. The system is suitable to measure large capture volumes under race conditions.

A key point in human movement analysis is measuring the trajectory of a person’s center of mass (CoM). For outdoor applications, differential Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) can be used for tracking persons since they allow measuring the trajectory and speed of the GNSS antenna with centimeter accuracy. However, the antenna cannot be placed exactly at the person’s CoM, but rather on the head or upper back. Thus, a model is needed to relate the measured antenna trajectory to the CoM trajectory. In this paper we propose to estimate the person’s posture based on measurements obtained from inertial sensors. From this estimated posture the CoM is computed relative to the antenna position and finally fused with the GNSS trajectory information to obtain the absolute CoM trajectory. In a biomechanical field experiment, the method has been applied to alpine ski racing and validated against a camera-based stereo photogrammetric system. CoM position accuracy and precision was found to be 0.08 m and 0.04 m, respectively. CoM speed accuracy and precision was 0.04 m/s and 0.14 m/s, respectively. The observed accuracy and precision might be sufficient for measuring performance- or equipment-related trajectory differences in alpine ski racing. Moreover, the CoM estimation was not based on a movement-specific model and could be used for other skiing disciplines or sports as well.

The aim of this study was to undertake a comprehensive temporal, effective, and practical training study (variable and differential learning) that would offer athletes the opportunity to increase their performance, and to analyse the effects by measuring kinematics and quality parameters. Two participants of differing standards – a player of the first Austrian League and an Olympic and World Champion – but of similar anthropometric characteristics were recruited. One of the participants (Austrian League) was tested on five different occasions (pre-test and four retests) to measure the effects of four different training phases using kinematic analysis. The results of the study indicate an increase in ball velocity within the differential training phases (first, second, and fourth phases), different proximal-to-distal sequences of the participants, and a change of movement pattern during training measured by the segment velocities and the angle–time courses.

MÜLLER, E., U. BENKO, C. RASCHNER, and H. SCHWAMEDER. Specific fitness training and testing in competitive sports. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 216–220, 2000. Improvements of athletic capacity in high-performance sport are mainly achieved through an increase of the quality of training. In physical preparation, the quality of training can be improved by developing highly specific means of training. The aim of this paper is to present three examples of how highly specific means of fitness training of world class athletes can be developed. The first example presents a test profile of specific motor abilities of top class tennis players, the second one deals with the improvement of specific strength training methods for ski jumpers, and the third deals with the development of specific training devices of Alpine ski racers.