EFFECT OF THE VELOCITY OF THE CENTER OF MASS IN PERFORMING THE BASKET WITH HALF TURN TO HANDSTAND ON PARALLEL BARS

Abstract

The basket with half turn to handstand on parallel bars (Fig. 1) is an important skill in men’s artistic gymnastics. Techniques of the turn in performing this skill are classified into two types: early turn and late turn. With the early turn, the gymnast can improve the difficulty value by increasing the angle of the turn. Peak forward velocity of the center of mass in the early turn has been shown to be greater than in the late turn during forward swing, but peak upward velocity differs little between the two types of turn (Yamada et al., 2009). Those results spawned two hypotheses concerning the limit to which kinetic energy can be increased during the early turn. (1) Intrinsic characteristics of the technique restrict how much kinetic energy can be incorporated into the early turn. (2) The gymnast’s muscular ability to generate shoulder flexion torque and hip extension torque limits how much kinetic energy can be produced in the early turn. To explore these hypotheses, it might be useful to compare the basket with half turn to one without a half turn in arriving at handstand. The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of velocity of the center of mass on turn technique in a basket with half turn to handstand versus a basket without turn to handstand.