An analysis of sports reinforces student understand of physics concepts through real-world applications, and may be more interesting than the more traditional laboratories. This study focuses on figure skaters and the high impacts they experience on their joints during jump landings. This study investigates the amount of impact the landing leg experiences at the completion of a single Axel jump compared to a double Axel, utilizing an adolescent female skater as the subject and Dartfish Video Analysis Software. Dartfish allows for efficient data collection directly from the video footage, and can be calibrated to determine the jump height, distance, angle of takeoff, initial velocity, and air time. The results show the skater absorbed a mean impact force of 506% of her body weight on the single and a 16% greater force on her double. Ultimately, these jumps are repeated multiple times each practice. This regular impact may lead to short term as well as long term injuries on the hip, knee, and ankle joints.

Analysis of Figure-Skating Jumps