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A systematic review of the biomechanical studies on shoulder kinematics in overhead sporting motions: Types of analysis and approaches

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posted on 2025-03-27, 12:14 authored by Yuvaraj Ramasamy, Juliana Usman, Rizal Razman, Yeap Ming Wei, Harley Towler, Mark KingMark King
The shoulder is a unique and complex joint in the human body with three bones and four joints, which makes it the most unstable joint in the body due to the amount of motion. To improve approaches toward understanding the performance of overhead throwing movements, this systematic review summarizes the type of analysis related to shoulder biomechanics involving overhead sporting motions. A search of seven databases identified 33 eligible studies, which were subsequently scored using the Modified Coleman Methodology Score scale. A total of nine articles from badminton, seven from baseball, five from volleyball, five from tennis, three from cricket, and one from softball were reviewed. All 33 studies evaluated shoulder kinematics and 12 of them also investigated the forces and torques (kinetics). The most common methods used were 3D motion analysis (76%), digital video cameras (15%), electromagnetic tracking system (6%), and finally 3% used IMU sensors. Overall, shoulder external rotation during the back swing, internal rotation, and elbow extension during the forward acceleration phase were the strongest predictors of high velocity overhead throwing movement. The findings provide some useful insights and guidance to researchers in their future contribution to the existing body of literature on shoulder overhead throwing movement biomechanics.

Funding

Internal funding from the National Sports Institute of Malaysia.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Applied Sciences

Volume

13

Issue

16

Publisher

MDPI

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Authors

Publisher statement

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Acceptance date

2023-08-15

Publication date

2023-08-21

Copyright date

2023

eISSN

2076-3417

Language

  • en

Depositor

Prof Mark King. Deposit date: 25 October 2024

Article number

9463

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