Kinematic difference of arm motion between novice and expert table tennis players

Abstract

Table tennis is one of the highest participation sports with over 300 million registered players worldwide. The objective of this project is to identify the motion differences between novice and expert table tennis players from the ages of 17 to 30. The primary motion analysed was the forehand striking technique. Arm motion activities were recorded and analysed through the use of a motion capture system (Motion Analysis Eagle System, Santa Rosa, CA, USA) together with Cortex 2.5 software. Matlab was used to plot the graphs of angular displacement and angular velocity versus the aligned normalised phase. Student T-tests were performed to validate the statistical differences between the novice and expert players across all arm joints for angular displacements and angular velocities under at different aligned normalised phases. Several significant differences (P < 0.05) in angular displacements were discovered when the racket centre begins to have negative velocity, the expert players showed significantly higher angular displacement between elbow joint pronation/supination. When the racket centre reached maximum forward displacement, it was found that the expert players had significantly higher angular displacement. The expert players were found to have higher statistical significant difference (P < 0.05) in angular velocities especially between shoulder joint internal/external rotation at two different instances, where the racket centre started to have negative velocities and positive velocities.