Search Results (18)

Background: The relationship between the stomatognathic system and postural control has been widely investigated, suggesting that dental occlusion may influence neuromuscular coordination and athletic performance. However, evidence in figure skating remains limited. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of a customized occlusal splint on neuromuscular activity and postural balance in professional figure skaters. Methods: A prospective single-arm pre–post interventional study was conducted on 52 professional female figure skaters (mean age: 17.1 ± 1.7 years). Electromyographic (EMG) activit of the masseter, anterior temporalis, sternocleidomastoid, and trapezius muscles, along with kinesiographic parameters, were assessed at baseline and after six months of continuous occlusal splint use. Postural control was evaluated using the Flamingo Balance Test under three testing conditions. Statistical analysis included paired tests with a significance level set at p < 0.05. Results: After six months of splint therapy, a significant increase in EMG activity of the masseter and anterior temporalis muscles was observed in most participants, along with a reduction in muscular asymmetries. Improvement in sternocleidomastoid and trapezius activity was noted in a subset of subjects. All participants showed correction of mandibular retrusion. Postural performance significantly improved, with enhanced ability to maintain balance during the Flamingo Balance Test. No major adverse effects were reported. Conclusions: Within the limitations of this uncontrolled prospective single-arm study, customized occlusal splint use was associated with changes in neuromuscular activity and postural balance parameters in professional figure skaters. However, causal relationships cannot be established, and randomized controlled studies are required to confirm the efficacy of this intervention. Full article

Background: Although the difficulty level of figure skating programs has increased in the last two decades, particularly at the junior level, trends in performance have not been reported. This retrospective observational study investigated performance development trends among the top five junior figure skaters competing at international levels in both the ladies’ and men’s singles disciplines from 2005 to 2020. Data from 160 junior single ladies and 160 junior single men were analyzed. The focus was on the progression of technical elements—particularly jumps—and their potential correlation with injury risk. It was hypothesized that younger athletes are increasingly performing jumps with more revolutions, thereby enhancing overall competition standards. Materials and Methods: Using data from the Junior World Championships and Junior Grand Prix Finals, linear regression analysis and one-way ANOVA were conducted to track the frequency of double, triple, and quadruple jumps, as well as trends in age development among athletes in the singles categories from 2005 to 2020. Results: The results indicate a significant increase in the execution of higher-revolution jumps among junior athletes. Between 2005 and 2012, the frequency of double jumps declined across all events, with the most pronounced reductions observed in the Ladies’ Junior World Championships (Δ = 0.216, p = 0.004, d = 1.64) and the Men’s Junior World Championships (Δ = 0.500, p = 0.001, d = 1.82). From 2005 to 2011, the frequencies of triple and quadruple jumps increased, while double jumps remained stable or showed only slight increases. Triple jumps showed slight downward trends (e.g., R² = 0.0202 at the Men’s Junior World Championships). Although still rare, the frequency of quadruple jumps has shown a consistent upward trend across multiple competitions. Between 2000 and 2009, all four events exhibited declining age trends, with decreases ranging from −0.029 to −0.078 years of age per year. In the subsequent decade (2010–2020), when averaged across all events, the observed difference slope (Δ = 0.014) indicated a continued decline in athlete age. Conclusions: In summary, increases in more difficult jumps were found, with simultaneous decreases in less difficult jumps. As jump complexity rises, a parallel increase in sport-specific injury incidence can be anticipated, highlighting the need for proactive strategies for injury prevention and athlete well-being. Full article

This study aimed to determine the extent to which explosive and reactive strength of the lower limbs, as well as acceleration in running and skating speed, predict figure skating competition results in youth skaters. Talented figure skaters aged 8 to 16 years (n = 211) were divided into two groups: Group 1 (basic novice; age: 10.38 ± 1.10 yrs., height: 1.3889 ± 0.07.26 m, weight: 32.75 ± 4.63 kg) and Group 2 (advanced novice and junior; age: 13.02 ± 1.06 yrs., height: 1.527 ± 0.0818 m, weight: 42.73 ± 7.62 kg). Fifteen variables of physical fitness were measured using tests such as repeated vertical jump, standing long jump, triple jump (right/left leg), 15 m running sprint, and 15 m skating sprint. The competition results were recorded according to the International Skating Union Code of Points. The principal component analysis reduced the fifteen variables to four principal components, explaining 84–87% of the variance. Linear regression models showed that these components significantly explained the variability in the competition scores for both groups. For Group 1, R² ranged from 0.298 to 0.425, while for Group 2, it ranged from 0.086 to 0.237. Pearson’s R was higher for the mean best score of the season than for the National Championship score. The relative importance of these factors varied across age groups. These findings highlight the need for tailored on- and off-ice training that focuses on locomotion and acceleration for younger skaters and dynamic jump training for older skaters. Full article

Facial expression recognition (FER) utilizes artificial intelligence for the detection and analysis of human faces, with significant applications across various scenarios. Our objective is to deploy the facial emotion recognition network on mobile devices and extend its application to diverse areas, including classroom effect monitoring, human–computer interaction, specialized training for athletes (such as in figure skating and rhythmic gymnastics), and actor emotion training. Recent studies have employed advanced deep learning models to address this task, though these models often encounter challenges like subpar performance and an excessive number of parameters that do not align with the requirements of FER for embedded devices. To tackle this issue, we have devised a lightweight network structure named RS-Xception, which is straightforward yet highly effective. Drawing on the strengths of ResNet and SENet, this network integrates elements from the Xception architecture. Our models have been trained on FER2013 datasets and demonstrate superior efficiency compared to conventional network models. Furthermore, we have assessed the model’s performance on the CK+, FER2013, and Bigfer2013 datasets, achieving accuracy rates of 97.13%, 69.02%, and 72.06%, respectively. Evaluation on the complex RAF-DB dataset yielded an accuracy rate of 82.98%. The incorporation of transfer learning notably enhanced the model’s accuracy, with a performance of 75.38% on the Bigfer2013 dataset, underscoring its significance in our research. In conclusion, our proposed model proves to be a viable solution for precise sentiment detection and estimation. In the future, our lightweight model may be deployed on embedded devices for research purposes. Full article

Action quality assessment (AQA) tasks in computer vision evaluate action quality in videos, and they can be applied to sports for performance evaluation. A typical example of AQA is predicting the final score from a video that captures an entire figure skating program. However, no previous studies have predicted individual jump scores, which are of great interest to competitors because of the high weight of competition. Despite the presence of unnecessary information in figure skating videos, human specialists can focus and reduce information when they evaluate jumps. In this study, we clarified the eye movements of figure skating judges and skaters while evaluating jumps and proposed a prediction model for jump performance that utilized specialists’ gaze location to reduce information. Kinematic features obtained from the tracking system were input into the model in addition to videos to improve accuracy. The results showed that skaters focused more on the face, whereas judges focused on the lower extremities. These gaze locations were applied to the model, which demonstrated the highest accuracy when utilizing both specialists’ gaze locations. The model outperformed human predictions and the baseline model (RMSE:0.775), suggesting a combination of human specialist knowledge and machine capabilities could yield higher accuracy. Full article

Eating disorders, especially restrictive eating, are common among female athletes. There are two main types of winter sports: those that are practiced outdoors on snow (−25 to +5 °C and 2500 m), such as alpine skiing and snowboarding, and those that are practiced indoors on ice (5–10 °C at low altitude), such as figure skating and ice hockey. The aim of this research was to identify the nutritional status and potential risk of female athletes practicing winter sports, considering the altitude of training. The sample was composed of 58 women (aged 19.81 years (SD: 12.61)) who were competitors in some winter sports. Anthropometrics and nutritional variables were taken. Statistically significant differences were found between HA and LA groups for all the characteristics except thigh skinfold, and neither group had an energy intake (EI) that matched their total energy expenditure (TEE). Both groups met at least two-thirds of the RDI for all minerals and vitamins except iodine, fluorine, vitamin D, vitamin E, and retinol. This study suggests that female winter sports athletes have insufficient energy, vitamin, and mineral intake, which can be worsened with altitude. Full article

Video-based scoring using neural networks is a very important means for evaluating many sports, especially figure skating. Although many methods for evaluating action quality have been proposed, there is no uniform conclusion on the best feature extractor and clip length for the existing methods. Furthermore, during the feature aggregation stage, these methods cannot accurately locate the target information. To address these tasks, firstly, we systematically compare the effects of the figure skating model with three different feature extractors (C3D, I3D, R3D) and four different segment lengths (5, 8, 16, 32). Secondly, we propose a Multi-Scale Location Attention Module (MS-LAM) to capture the location information of athletes in different video frames. Finally, we present a novel Multi-scale Location Attentive Long Short-Term Memory (MLA-LSTM), which can efficiently learn local and global sequence information in each video. In addition, our proposed model has been validated on the Fis-V and MIT-Skate datasets. The experimental results show that I3D and 32 frames per second are the best feature extractor and clip length for video scoring tasks. In addition, our model outperforms the current state-of-the-art method hybrid dynAmic-statiC conText-aware attentION NETwork (ACTION-NET), especially on MIT-Skate (by 0.069 on Spearman’s rank correlation). In addition, it achieves average improvements of 0.059 on Fis-V compared with Multi-scale convolutional skip Self-attentive LSTM Module (MS-LSTM). It demonstrates the effectiveness of our models in learning to score figure skating videos. Full article

In pair skating and ice dance, performance seems to have increased at international competitions, which is potentially associated with changes in athlete age. We hypothesized increasing age, numbers of total points and more complex jumps of the best elite couples at international championships in recent years. Corresponding data were assessed via the results databases of the European and World Championships, as well as the Winter Olympics since 2005. Linear regression statistics were conducted, and significance was assessed via one-way ANOVAs. There were no significant changes in age. Increases in total points were found in both disciplines (World and European Championships both p < 0.001 for both disciplines, Olympics pair skating p = 0.003, ice dance n/a). Significant increases were found in the number of double and triple twist jumps at the European Championships (Double p = 0.046, triple p = 0.041), but not at the World Championships or the Olympics. At the World Championships, single solo jumps decreased (p = 0.031) in favor of triple jumps, which increased (p = 0.020), without a similar effect at the European Championships or Olympics. In conclusion, increases in total points and more complex jumps were observed at international championships without associated changes in age. Attention should be given to possible changes in the incidence of acute and overuse injuries following this development. Full article

Creative strategies allow students to feel ownership of their learning, fostering interest and motivation towards sports and educational contexts. This study aimed to compare different psychological variables after applying creative and traditional sessions of recreational figure roller-skating. Twelve school-age female skaters (9.00 ± 1.09 years old) participated in this pilot study. They performed two sessions: (1) a creative session (where participants created their own choreography) and (2) a traditional session (where participants followed the choreography created by the sports professional). In the creative session, participants created their choreographies without instructions. The basic psychological needs scale, the measure of intentionality to be physically active (sports adherence) and the games and emotions scale were administered after each session. The creative intervention led to a higher satisfaction of the needs of perceived competence (p-value = 0.04; effect size = 0.59), social relationships (p-value = 0.03; effect size = 0.62) and adherence to figure roller-skating (p-value = 0.02; effect size = 0.69), compared to the traditional intervention in female skaters. Participants showed significantly more humor and less surprise in the creative session than in the traditional session. This greater satisfaction with perceived competence and social relationships could translate into greater adherence to sports. Full article

In sports, there has been a recent and active movement to promote mixed-gender competitions for achieving gender equality in the field. However, the current debate regarding its effects limitedly focuses on balancing the number of opportunities for females and neglects its effect on athlete performance. To address this gap, this study investigated whether and how mixed-gender competitions mitigate gender-specific disadvantages of interim leaders in dynamic tournaments from the perspective of choking under pressure. Using data from 127 international segregated-gender single and mixed-gender pair figure skating competitions organized by the International Staking Union from 1 July 2006 to 30 June 2018, this study showed that female interim leaders in segregated-gender competitions are more likely to make mistakes in task executions under pressure-inducing circumstances than male interim leaders. However, in mixed-gender competitions, all of these gender-specific influences disappear. The findings contribute to the literature on mixed-gender competitions by providing new evidence on the positive impact of them, as well as expanding the literature on the impact of gender on competitive pressure. Full article

This article presents the design and experimental evaluation of a non-invasive wearable sensor system that can be used to acquire crucial information about athletes’ performance during inline figure skating training. By combining distance and time-of-flight sensors and gyroscopes, the system is able to detect when jumps are performed and provides a live view of the data (e.g., the number and height of jumps) through a graphical user interface. The main novelty of our approach lies in the way in which the optical sensors are orientated. Typically, the sensors are orientated horizontally and positioned in pairs on the ground, where they measure the time interval between the moment the athlete leaves the ground and the moment they land. In our system, an optical sensor is placed under each foot and is vertically orientated so as to constantly measure the distance from the ground. In addition, a gyroscope sensor is placed on the athlete’s back, which provides information on the direction and angular momentum of the movement. By combining this data, the system provides the accurate detection of various jumps and technical elements without any constraints on the training ground. In this paper, the system is also compared to similar platforms in the literature, although there are no other specific systems that are available for inline figure skating. The results of the experimental evaluation, which was performed by high profile athletes, confirm its effectiveness in correctly detecting jumps, especially considering its compromise between precision and the overall cost of the equipment. Full article

Physical activity is known to be beneficial for bone; however, some athletes who train intensely are at risk of bone stress injury (BSI). Incidence in adolescent athlete populations is between 3.9 and 19% with recurrence rates as high as 21%. Participation in physical training can be highly skeletally demanding, particularly during periods of rapid growth in adolescence, and when competition and training demands are heaviest. Sports involving running and jumping are associated with a higher incidence of BSI and some athletes appear to be more susceptible than others. Maintaining a very lean physique in aesthetic sports (gymnastics, figure skating and ballet) or a prolonged negative energy balance in extreme endurance events (long distance running and triathlon) may compound the risk of BSI with repetitive mechanical loading of bone, due to the additional negative effects of hormonal disturbances. The following review presents a summary of the epidemiology of BSI in the adolescent athlete, risk factors for BSI (physical and behavioural characteristics, energy balance and hormone disruption, growth velocity, sport-specific risk, training load, etc.), prevention and management strategies. Full article

Competitive figure skaters often suffer from overuse injuries, which may be due to the high impact forces endured during jump repetitions performed in practice and competition. However, to date, forces during on-ice figure skating have not been quantified due to technological limitations. The purpose of this study was to determine the optimal calibration procedure for a previously developed instrumented figure skating blade (IceSense). Initial calibration was performed by collecting data from the blade while 11 skaters performed off-ice jumps, landing on a force plate in the lab. However, mean peak force measurements from the blade were greater than the desired error threshold of ±10%. Therefore, we designed a series of controlled experiments which included measuring forces from a load cell rigidly attached to the top of the blade concurrently with strain data from the strain gauges on the blade. Forces were applied to the blade by adding weight to a drop tower or by manually applying force in a quasi-static manner. Both methods showed similar accuracy, though using the drop tower allowed precise standardization. Therefore, calibration was performed using the weighted drop method. This calibration was applied to strain gauge data from out-of-sample drop trials, resulting in acceptable estimates of peak force (less than 10% error). Using this calibration, we collected data on one figure skater and present results from an exemplar on-ice double flip jump. Using the IceSense device to quantify on-ice forces in a research setting may help inform training, technique, and equipment design. Full article

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility of measuring and analyzing characteristics of figure skating jumps using wearable sensors. One elite figure skater, outfitted with five inertial measurement units (IMUs), performed flip jumps with single, double, and triple revolutions. Take-off event and flight phase of each trial were under analysis. Kinematic differences among jumps with variant revolutions as well as key factors for performing successfully landed triple jumps were determined by IMU signals. Compared with a video-based method, this study revealed the following characteristics that coincide with previous studies: at take-off event, the skater performed pre-rotation and took off with preferred postural positions as revolutions increased (p < 0.01); during flight, the skater struggled more to maintain the smallest inertial of moment as revolutions increased (p < 0.01); in order to perform successfully landed jumps, it was crucial that the skater improved the control of preparation for flight at take-off (p < 0.05). Full article

Jump analysis in figure skating is important. Recovering the 3D pose of a figure skater has become increasingly important. However, issues such as restrictions from an athlete’s clothing, self-occlusion, abnormal pose and so on will result in poor results. This paper proposes a multi-technology correction framework to obtain a 3D human pose. The framework consists of three key components: temporal information-based mutational point correction, multi-perspective-based reconstructed point selection and trajectory smoothness-based inaccurate point correction. Firstly, temporal information is used to correct the mutational points at the 2D level. Secondly, a multi-perspective is used to select the correct spatial points at the 3D level. Thirdly, trajectory smoothness is used to correct inaccuracies at the 3D level. This work will serve the purpose of displaying the 3D animated pose of a figure skater. The quality grade of the result rate on the test sequences is 87.25%. Full article