{"title":"Markerless motion capture in sport: panacea or Pandora's box?","authors":"Paul S Glazier","doi":"10.1080/14763141.2025.2458485","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper critically appraises the utility of markerless motion capture in the context of skill development and sports performance enhancement. If markerless motion capture is to be useful in a profiling or monitoring capacity, the amount of measurement error needs to be smaller than the amount of movement variability over iterative performance trials. Current evidence suggests that it is unlikely that any existing markerless system satisfies this requirement. The resolution of this issue would, in principle, enable technical errors to be more easily pinpointed and performance variation to be better explained. However, decomposing movement variability into its functional and dysfunctional components is not only a nontrivial undertaking for most practitioners, the practical consequences of doing so are limited because synergies are self-organising entities and any attempt to micro-manage their constituent degrees of freedom will likely have deleterious effects on performance. Biomechanical measurements technologies, including markerless motion capture, may be best used to support search strategies employed by coaches and athletes.</p>","PeriodicalId":49482,"journal":{"name":"Sports Biomechanics","volume":" ","pages":"1-8"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sports Biomechanics","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14763141.2025.2458485","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ENGINEERING, BIOMEDICAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper critically appraises the utility of markerless motion capture in the context of skill development and sports performance enhancement. If markerless motion capture is to be useful in a profiling or monitoring capacity, the amount of measurement error needs to be smaller than the amount of movement variability over iterative performance trials. Current evidence suggests that it is unlikely that any existing markerless system satisfies this requirement. The resolution of this issue would, in principle, enable technical errors to be more easily pinpointed and performance variation to be better explained. However, decomposing movement variability into its functional and dysfunctional components is not only a nontrivial undertaking for most practitioners, the practical consequences of doing so are limited because synergies are self-organising entities and any attempt to micro-manage their constituent degrees of freedom will likely have deleterious effects on performance. Biomechanical measurements technologies, including markerless motion capture, may be best used to support search strategies employed by coaches and athletes.
期刊介绍:
Sports Biomechanics is the Thomson Reuters listed scientific journal of the International Society of Biomechanics in Sports (ISBS). The journal sets out to generate knowledge to improve human performance and reduce the incidence of injury, and to communicate this knowledge to scientists, coaches, clinicians, teachers, and participants. The target performance realms include not only the conventional areas of sports and exercise, but also fundamental motor skills and other highly specialized human movements such as dance (both sport and artistic).
Sports Biomechanics is unique in its emphasis on a broad biomechanical spectrum of human performance including, but not limited to, technique, skill acquisition, training, strength and conditioning, exercise, coaching, teaching, equipment, modeling and simulation, measurement, and injury prevention and rehabilitation. As well as maintaining scientific rigour, there is a strong editorial emphasis on ''reader friendliness''. By emphasising the practical implications and applications of research, the journal seeks to benefit practitioners directly.
Sports Biomechanics publishes papers in four sections: Original Research, Reviews, Teaching, and Methods and Theoretical Perspectives.