Anthropometry of Figure Skating

Introduction

Anthropometry is the study of body shape and sizes. As you watch the Olympics you may notice skaters of all sorts of body builds competing; however, there are certainly some builds which are more suited for skating than others. Additionally, due to difference in body size, strength,, and power, there are a few differences in the ladies' programs as compared to he men's programs. With the advances in off-ice training methods; though, these differences appear to be narrowing.

Objectives

This unit on anthropometry and figure skating is to provided you with additional information which you may share with your class which may provided either a better appreciation of the sport of figure skating, or some interesting scientific facts to enhance your science classes.

Body Shape

Generally speaking, one would expect, smaller athletes with slightly shorter than average limbs to excel at figure skating, since this would allow them to obtain a smaller moment of inertia while spinning and jumping, and thus spin faster. Obviously not all figure skaters fall into this category, many other components go into making a champion skater. Strength and power are very important for jumping and for holding tight body positions against large g-forces during spins. Many skaters are concerned with developing sufficient strength without developing muscle bulk. Muscle bulk would tend to make the skater larger, which would mean his or her moment of inertia would increase. However, with proper weight training skates can develop strength and power without increasing muscle bulk and this problem can be eliminated.

Gender Many of the gender differences observed in skating are actually due to body size. On average, women tend to be smaller than men, so they usually can spin faster. As you watch the Olympics, you may notice some ladies completing jumps which have very low jump heights. They are often able to do this because they can rotate so fast in the air that they don't need much height. Usually, though, the ladies who win the competitions not only rotate fast, but actually do have fairly high powerful jumps. Since women tend to be smaller, they are also usually, on average, not as strong as men. Thus there a few ladies who have completed triple Axels, the hardest triple jumps, and none have yet to branch into quadruple jumps. For these more complicated jumps, many of the ladies do not have the power or strength necessary to jump high enough to get 3.5 to 4 revolutions completed before landing, despite their fast rotation speeds. However, with improvements and more emphasis on off ice strength training both the ladies and men are rapidly improving and completing more and more complicated jumps.

© April, 1998, Montana State University-Bozeman