The effect of visual gaze location on sprint start biomechanics

• Main Author: Chan, Michael Yi Wei
• Other Authors: Teo-Koh Sock Miang
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science::General
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/76849
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The block/sprint start is an important component of sprint race performance in athletics. Improving sprint start biomechanics (SSB) and thus performance would result in faster race timings. Athletes tend to be overwhelmed when coaches do not communicate effectively and tell them to make many corrections. Simply changing an athlete’s visual gaze location (VGL) could be an alternative method to improve SSB. This study explored how changing an athlete’s VGL would affect his SSB. It was hypothesized that changing an athlete’s VGL would change his SSB. 5 male competitive sprinters were recruited to perform randomly sequenced block start (BS) trials looking at different locations in the set position. Three-dimensional (3D) motion analyses coupled with force platforms captured data modelled using the University of Western Australia (UWA) lower limb model and marker set to identify BS kinematics and kinetics of the push-off and first step. An eye-tracker quantitatively measured participants’ VGL. A change in VGL, when looking further, resulted in large effect decreases in participants’ pelvis heights from the ground in the set position, increases in pelvis horizontal velocities in the first step landing contact position and decreases in horizontal and vertical braking forces in the first step landing phase. There were also decreases in horizontal propulsion force and increases in vertical propulsion force in the first step push-off phase. The findings suggest that a change in VGL resulted in some SSB changes. Put together, changing an athlete’s VGL could be an alternative method to effecting change in BS technique.