The highlight of the past month was the return to face-to-face conferences with ISBS in Liverpool. It was amazing to meet so many people I had previously only spoken to on video calls or social media. One of the things that shocked me the most was the number of people who mentioned this newsletter to me. I see the number of subscribers, but had no idea so many people were reading and enjoying it. So, thank you! If you do find it useful, please forward this email or share this link with anyone else who might like it.
Here’s what I would like to share with you this month…
As usual, there are two sections: ‘What Have I Been Up To?’ and ‘What Have I Been Reading?’
What Have I Been Up To?
ISBS abstracts: Speaking of the ISBS (international Society of Biomechanics in Sports) conference, you can see the almost 200 four-page papers here . There’s surely something in there for everybody. On a personal level, I was involved in supervising 3 papers on the biomechanics of cricket batting and bowling. Pete Alway presented his work comparing elite female power hitting technique against fast and spin deliveries. Alan Sutherland investigated the ball release parameters accounting for pitch length variability, and the interrelationships between them. Finally, Matt Lamb presented his comparison of surface measured accelerations at different body positions and during different phases of the fast bowling action.
PhD + teaching position: We are currently advertising for a combined biomechanics PhD and salaried teaching role. The 5-year position has a salary of £25,627 - £30,497 per annum. You can find the general details here , or see my proposed topics on estimating ankle moments and Achilles forces from wearables, or quantifying energy dissipation in soft tissue during impacts. Feel free to get in touch with any queries.
Doctoral Prize Fellowship: Loughborough are also advertising these fellowships. 24 months of tailored support to recently completed doctoral students, open to outstanding early career researchers from all around the world. It would be great to get a strong biomechanics applicant for this.
What Have I Been Reading?
Now for the main part of the newsletter…
The future of biomechanics: Melissa Boswell presented at World Congress of Biomechanics on the future of movement analysis. She talks about combining biomechanics advancements with those in data science, and creating scalable solutions for collecting large data sets in various populations. I’m partly reminded of David Lloyd’s Geoffrey Dyson Award paper , where he stated “In the future… training and rehabilitation programmes will use wearable and simple imaging technologies to estimate tissue level biomechanics derived from personalised neuromusculoskeletal modelling in real-time in the real-world. The future is not that far away.” This idea of taking lab-based modelling approaches out into the field using wearable technology to estimate internal biomechanical ‘training load’ is something that a number of my current and soon-to-start projects are focusing on. It’s therefore something that has taken up a lot of my recent reading and will feature heavily in this newsletter.
Musculoskeletal forces from smartphone videos: A recent preprint launched OpenCap, a cloud-based software to quantify human movement and musculoskeletal forces from smartphone videos. The authors claim that OpenCap can accelerate the incorporation of biomechanical metrics into large-scale research studies, clinical trials, and clinical practice. This also opens up possibilities for similar work in applied sporting settings, provided that the accuracy is sufficient for the goals of the application. For more info, see the summary video below or this specific video on the pose estimation methods.
IMU-based measurement of kinematics over long durations: Staying with the Stanford group behind OpenSim and OpenCap, another open-source tool is OpenSense. The kinematic estimation and drift mitigation approaches are claimed to potentially enable long-duration measurements, bringing the field one step closer to estimating kinematics in natural environments. For info, see the paper , overview video , or tutorial video .
Optimally scaled OpenSim model from motion capture: Yet another new tool, AddBiomechanics , provides a scaled OpenSim model and inverse kinematics from motion capture files in a relatively short amount of time. Another useful tool when looking to cut processing time/steps.
Adapting to biofeedback: This paper showed that humans can adapt their muscle contraction in response to real-time biofeedback in a manner that simulations suggest will reduce knee contact forces. The lab-based study is a very positive indication of what might be possible if the same monitoring and feedback can be provided in the field.
Tendon tapping: A couple of papers from a few years ago on a non-invasive approach to assess tendon loads by tracking vibrational behavior and its application to predict Achilles tendon loading.
A wearable ultrasound imaging device: A device that apparently can be comfortably worn for 48 hours giving continuous ultrasound images during activities including running and cycling.
Bone biomarker responses to exercise: If we can’t easily measure or predict the load on bone during exercise, then what if we could instead track the bone’s response to the exercise via circulating biomarkers? This recent systematic review and meta-analysis summarised the literature on these responses.
‘Biomechanics of movement’ YouTube course: Approximately 80 short videos by Scott Delp to accompany the associated book. Either start from the beginning (oldest video) or scan the titles and watch specific videos. They cover a broad range of topics and manage to take the viewer through relatively complex topics in a short amount of time.
What are self organizing maps? The technique is becoming increasingly prevalent in the sports biomechanics literature, and I enjoyed this 1 min 30 sec video explanation. For an example application within sports biomechanics, see this rugby placekicking paper.
Attractor landscapes: Another concept that you might have come across in the literature but not had the time to fully get your head around. This interactive demonstration illustrates the attractor landscape of mountains and valleys brilliantly.
Long-term lessons learned in academia: This one is particularly timely for me, given that I’m settling into a new job and developing my research strategy for the next few years. Julie Steele won last year’s ISBS Geoffrey Dyson Award (the second of these award winners mentioned in this newsletter) and her associated paper in Sports Biomechanics discusses ten of the biggest lessons learned during her career, with examples and advice throughout.
When to ask for feedback: Should you ask for feedback as early as possible, or wait until you have a coherent full draft to share? I’m a big fan of David Perell’s tips for effective writing, and this one comes from his Write of Passage team. Whilst not aimed at academia specifically, it’s a really useful piece on how to make the most of feedback on your writing. It also refers to his CRIBS framework of asking readers to point out sentences that are confusing, repetitive, interesting, boring, or surprising.
Get in Touch
Alongside reading the papers mentioned above and related articles, I’ve spent a lot of the past month talking to various people about what might be required for us to collectively work towards an improved monitoring of structure-specific internal biomechanical load in training and/or rehabilitation exercises. I even presented at an e-textiles workshop on the ways in which we can work with wearables companies to achieve the same goal. I truly believe the best way to make progress in this (or any) area is if we work together to help bridge the gap between lab and field.
If you fancy a chat about any of this, send me an email and I’d be happy to discuss ideas.
Thank You
That’s all for this month. If you found it useful, please forward this email or share this link with friends, colleagues, or on social media.
What Have You Read Recently?
If you’ve read anything particularly interesting or useful recently, please reply to this email and let me know. I read all of the replies and I’m always looking for good reading suggestions.
Take care, and thank you for reading. I hope you have a great August!
Stu