THE EFFECT OF HIP LINEAR MOTION ON LOWER LEG ANGULAR VELOCITY DURING SOCCER INSTEP KICKING

Abstract

The influence of the hip linear motion on the lower leg kinetics was examined for soccer instep kicking. Five highly skilled club players volunteered and their kicking motion was three-dimensionally captured at 200 Hz. According to the procedure of Putnam (1991), the interactive moment due to the hip linear acceleration (MHLA) acting on the lower leg was extracted. The MHLA exhibited a large positive moment to increase the lower leg angular velocity during the final phase of kicking. This effective action of the MHLA was mostly caused by the upward acceleration of the hip. As the hip motion is exclusively due to the motion of the support leg, it can be assumed that the effective action of the MHLA is most likely due to the support leg motions such as the knee extension motion during kicking.