Mastery of basic athletic skills key to great sport performance

When Olympic swimming superstar Michael Phelps rockets off the wall on the turn he's performing one of the most basic, yet crucial, of athletic skills: the jump. It's what leaves the oth

12 September 2008

When Olympic swimming superstar Michael Phelps rockets off the wall on the turn he's performing one of the most basic, yet crucial, of athletic skills: the jump.

It's what leaves the other swimmers in his wake, says Dr. Loren Chiu, a professor in biomechanics. "Elite swimmers like Michael Phelps do a bigger jump off the wall and more dolphin kicks. Phelps is strong and powerful in the legs. It's not just doing the stroke, it's being able to jump off the wall properly," he says.

Chiu, recently recruited to U of A from the University of Southern California after completing his PhD earlier this year, says mastering the basic skills of running, jumping and throwing early on is key to just about every sport. And jumping is something he's particularly interested in because of that. "Better football players are better jumpers, so are volleyball players," he says. "Looking at jumping ability is a good indicator and something we can look at across many sports such as basketball, track and field, soccer, field hockey - and even individual sports like weightlifting."

A former high-performance weightlifter himself, Chiu knows whereof he speaks: he won two Canadian national championships in the sport in 2004 and 2006 and represented Canada at the World University Championships in 2003, 2004 and 2007.

The start to his sporting career wasn't auspicious though. "As a kid I was a frustrated athlete. I was like most people: I wasn't horrible at sports, but I wasn't great," says Chiu. "The more I learned about sports through my studies the more I realized that if I had been trained differently as a kid, I could have been a better athlete. That's one of the reasons I began studying kinesiology and exercise science - and I really love sports."

The focus of Chiu's research will mostly be looking at the motor skills of high performance athletes. "I will be trying to identify the characteristics of motor skills and how to train or modify those skills," he says. But he'll focus substantially on jumping. "I think jumping is the most important skill."

In addition, he says, "I will look at how these motor skills can be developed across the lifespan."

Working in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation's biomechanics laboratory alongside fellow biomechanists Pierre Gervais and Pierre Baudin, Chiu also wants to develop a research program looking at sport injuries in female athletes. "Injuries in women, especially in the lower extremities - hip, knee and ankle injuries - tend to be greater (proportionately) than in men," he says, adding that while there's been a significant amount of research in this area, no-one has come up with a conclusive reason why. "I've developed some mechanical models that may allow us to find out why."

Chiu also hopes to develop partnerships with the sporting community and work with public groups and corporations that are interested in sport. "I'd like to approach them for funding to study sport. I think that sport is an important part of Canadian society, particularly in terms of participation because it affects health and life quality. Many corporations are recognizing this and I want to develop non-traditional sport partnerships that will benefit all Canadians."

Volunteering his knowledge to sport organizations in the community is important to Chiu as well and he currently serves on a committee on weightlifting helping them to address Sport Canada's long term athlete development initiative and how it relates to the sport.

Chiu will be teaching human gross anatomy this fall as part of the PEDS 400 course and he's excited. "This fits in well with my research interest. We'll not just be looking at muscles but how they function and apply to a sport or occupational task where we get low back injuries for example, and trying to find out why the back is susceptible to injury."

Though his career in academe is just beginning Chiu says his greatest reward as an academic will come from the classroom. "I think that my greatest contribution is to train students and develop them. Basically you're training them to take over for you when you retire.

That's the biggest legacy of a professor, because as a researcher you do some research and it gets published, and at the end of the day a handful of people read it. But in the classroom you're training future researchers; you're training coaches, pre-physical therapy or pre-medical students. They will be the ones taking your research and applying it. It's this that gives our work value and our efforts meaning."