A musculoskeletal full-body simulation of cross-country skiing

This paper presents a measurement-driven, musculoskeletal, full-body simulation model for biomechanical analysis of the double-poling (DP) technique in cross-country skiing. DP is a fast and powerful full-body movement; therefore, it is interesting to examine whether inverse dynamics using static optimization is working for a musculoskeletal full-body model with high accelerations, a large range of motion, and realistic loads. An experiment was carried out to measure motion and pole force of a skier on a double-poling ergometer. Using the measurement data, a simulation model was implemented in the AnyBody Modeling System (AnyBody Technology A/S, Denmark). Experimental results of motion and pole force from the DP ergometer, and also simulation results of relative muscle force profiles, are presented. These results agree with results found in literature when the kinematics and external kinetics are similar. Consequently, it should be possible to use computer simulations of this type for crosscountry skiing simulations. With a simulation model, it is possible to perform optimization studies and to ask and answer `what if` questions. Solutions to such problems are not easy to obtain by traditional testing alone.
© Copyright 2008 Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. All rights reserved.

Bibliographic Details
Subjects:
Notations:endurance sports training science technical and natural sciences
Published in:Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers
Language:English
Published: London 2008
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1243/17543371JSET10
Volume:222
Issue:1
Pages:11-22
Document types:article
Level:advanced