2025/03/12 by Fadaei, Hamed, Mimar, Raghad, Raheleh Tajik +1
#Medicine and Health Sciences #Physical Sciences and Mathematics #Rehabilitation and Therapy
paper · doi:10.17605/osf.io/z4nh9
Description This study will investigate the neuromuscular control strategies employed during the badminton forehand overhead smash (BFOS) through a comprehensive analysis of muscle synergies. The BFOS represents one of the most explosive strokes in racquet sports, with elite players generating shuttlecock velocities exceeding 118 m/s. This remarkable velocity requires exceptional neuromuscular coordination through a kinetic chain from the lower extremity to racquet-shuttlecock impact. The central nervous system (CNS) faces considerable computational challenges in controlling the redundant musculoskeletal system during complex movements like the BFOS. The muscle synergy hypothesis provides a theoretical framework suggesting that the CNS simplifies this control problem by activating functional groups of muscles (synergies) rather than individual muscles independently. This modular organization potentially reduces the dimensionality of motor control and facilitates efficient movement execution. The study will implement a cross-sectional, observational design with twenty elite badminton players performing multiple BFOS repetitions while fifteen shoulder muscles' electromyographic (EMG) activity and three-dimensional kinematics are recorded. Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) will be applied to extract underlying muscle synergies from both experimental EMG data and musculoskeletal model simulations. By integrating experimental measurements with computational modeling, this research will provide novel insights into the neuromuscular control strategies underlying the BFOS. The comparison between EMG-derived and model-predicted synergies will validate the musculoskeletal models for analyzing high-velocity overhead movements. These findings will advance our understanding of muscle coordination patterns during explosive sports movements and potentially inform targeted training interventions, technique optimization strategies, and injury prevention approaches for badminton players and other overhead athletes. The research will address three primary objectives: (1) quantifying shoulder muscle synergies during the BFOS via NMF, (2) validating musculoskeletal models for high-speed movements by comparing EMG-derived synergies with simulation results, and (3) exploring the potential of NMF-based musculoskeletal models in advancing sports science applications such as performance enhancement and injury risk reduction.