Successful sporting performance at elite levels of competition often depends heavily on the explosive leg power of the athletes involved. In many individual sports such as Track and Field events, Gymnastics and Diving the ability to use high levels of strength as quickly and as explosively as possible is essential to perform at elite levels. Many team sports also require high levels of explosiv...

Plyometric training is popular among individuals involved in dynamic sports, and plyometric exercises such as jumping, hopping, skipping and bounding are executed with the goal of increasing dynamic muscular performance, especially jumping. Much less information is available on the effectiveness of plyometric training (PT) in badminton, where jumping high (e.g. forehand overhead jump-smash) is ...

This study examined the effects of 4 weeks of intensive drop jump training in well-trained athletes on jumping performance and underlying changes in biomechanics and neuromuscular adaptations. Nine well-trained athletes at high national competition level within sprinting and jumping disciplines participated in the study. The training was supervised and augmented feedback on performance was used...

Many animals with complex life cycles can cope with environmental uncertainty by altering the timing of life history switch points through plasticity. Pond hydroperiod has important consequences for the fitness of aquatic organisms and many taxa alter the timing of life history switch points in response to habitat desiccation. For example, larval amphibians can metamorphose early to escape dryi...

INTRODUCTION The performance of maximal effort human jumping is an important aspect of many sporting skills. Some have used descriptive models to explain the segmental coordination pattern used by elite jumpers (Bobbert et al., 1988), while others have turned to forward dynamics models in which the kinematics of jumping are simulated (Pandy et al., 1991; van Soest et al., 1992). One interesting...

BACKGROUND Several recent studies have reported that serious violence towards self and others is more common in the first episode of psychosis than after treatment. AIM To estimate the proportion of survivors of suicide attempts during psychotic illness by jumping from a height who had not previously received treatment with antipsychotic medication. METHODS An audit of the medical records o...

Comparative musculoskeletal modeling represents a tool to understand better how motor system parameters are fine-tuned for specific behaviors. Frog jumping is a behavior in which the physical properties of the body and musculotendon actuators may have evolved specifically to extend the limits of performance. Little is known about how the joints of the frog contribute to and limit jumping perfor...