SOME sportspeople are more prone to injury than others, despite being fully fit. A new mathematical model of the body shows that these athletes rely on a fixed combination of movements that they cannot easily modify. The discovery might help in spotting injury-prone athletes early on.
Sports injuries are extremely difficult to study because of the huge range of body movements involved; the complex shape of the bones, cartilage and muscle tissue; and the difficulty in determining how the body handles large forces. Traditional models of the body use differential equations, and tracking the motion of just one or two…
