Biomechanics at the WINTER OLYMPICS | The Future

We asked seven winter sports biomechanists what they hope they'll learn before the next winter olympics and this is what they said. In snowboarding by the next olympics I believe 3d modeling as well as aerodynamics and the forces underneath the athlete's feet will be so well understood that much like figure skating we will be able to program exactly how many turns or how many flips athletes can make based on their approach velocity and their force profiles. I think this will revolutionize some of the tricks that we see thrown at the next olympics. Training is limited to a few jumps a day and in that sense the training is very important and different type of limitation jumps but also new trainings to allow to train the flight phase I think are crucial to bring ski jumping to the next level. In figure skating before the next olympics biomechanists can learn more about the relationship between training load and overuse In the next four years we're going to be able to use wearable sensors to track the number and the type of jumps skaters perform during daily training. I think before the next olympics we're going to have a lot more data and a lot more understanding of all aspects of the sport relating to physical preparation, skill acquisition and trick progression and I also hope we're able to have an impact with injury mechanisms and return to sport protocols particularly relating to the ACL and concussions. To continue growing the sport of ice hockey biomechanists should focus on including more female and youth hockey players in their research prior to the 2026 games. Historically these groups haven't been a major priority for biomechanics researchers. This is something we're working very hard to fix at CCM hockey. I think that the amount of research that's going on at the moment will result in some really interesting findings over the next four years and hopefully we will be able to use this information to improve parasport across the board with an increased understanding for example how impairments affect sport-specific performance or a better understanding on how to design individualized equipment. I think we can really improve the fairness of the sport but also the competitiveness of the sport. In speed skating I would like to combine accurate speed information with data from the instrumented skate to enhance performance and to make this into an automated process to be able to monitor and enhance performance of speed skaters. Check out the first two videos in this series to hear what biomechanists said that we've learned since the last olympics and what they wish that we could measure at this winter olympics. For more biomechanics content make sure to subscribe to our channels using the links in the descriptions. Thanks for watching. For more biomechanics content...