A new technical method to analyse the kinematics of the human movements and sports gesture

To improve the performance of an athlete or to identify an incorrect postures that can cause injuries, it is essential to study the kinematics of the movements. Normally,are used approaches that “photograph” the execution of the gesture and look at the angular opening of the joint of interest, ignoring its dynamics. These types of analyses have major limitations. In fact, they do not allow to observe the execution of a movement on all three anatomical planes at the same time and also provide mostly qualitative information. In fact, in order to obtain three-dimensional data, it is necessary to have three cameras that record the same execution of the gesture from different points of view (one for each anatomical plane), or a single camera that at each gesture execution is positioned with respect to a different anatomical plane.Furthermore, analysing the movement without his dynamic information limits its study because all the information related to the chained execution of kinematic, kinetic and muscular activities are lost. To overcome these limits and to obtain more complete and accurate information, the aim of this study is to propose a new method for analysing the kinematics of a sports gesture, which takes into account the all range of motion of a joint. In fact, it calculates the angular excursions between identifying events of the gesture, thus evaluating the angular variation of the joint between peaks of flexion and extension. This approach is more informative, compared to the classic space-time analyses, and therefore can be considered useful in the study of the kinematics of a sports gesture.