Procedia Engineering 112 (2015) 502 – 506 1877-7058 Crown Copyright © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, RMIT University doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2015.07.232 ScienceDirect Available online at www.sciencedirect.com 7th Asia-Pacific Congress on Sports Technology, APCST 2015 Hand Speed Measurements in Boxing Dennis Kimm a,b , David V. Thiel b, * aUniversity of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhine-Sieg, St Augustin, Germany bGriffith School of Engineering University, Nathan, Qld 4111, Austral Abstract Hand speed is particularly important in boxing both for protection against incoming blows and delivering blows. Sixteen amateur boxers (10 male, 6 female) with varying levels of experience from a boxing gym performed 20 jabs and 20 cross punches in air. The movement was recorded with a small wrist mounted accelerometer under the glove. The maximum velocity of each punch was determined from the RMS acceleration profile. The mean values of the jab maximal velocity was higher than the cross maximal velocity for 9 participants. The cross showed some dependence on reach (Spearman’s correlation coefficient r = 0.57) and the jab dependence on experience (Spearman’s correlation coefficient r = 0.56). The accelerometer technique has some promise for routine assessment of fist speed. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, RMIT University. Keywords:boxing; hand speed, accelerometer, jab, punch 1. Introduction Modified rules in boxing which reduce the risk of concussion (known as Box’tag) has resulted the sport regaining popularity (http://boxing.org.au/development/development-programs/boxtag/). Shadow, punch ball and punch bag boxing (known as boxercise) is a very common cross-training exercise for a variety of sports and exercise classes (http://www.boxercise.co.uk/). While the hand velocity is important in offensive action in boxing, the speed of retraction is particularly important for defensive protection of the scoring areas on the body. The measurement of hand speed is usually determined from a multi-camera video system and so is restricted to a finite volume of motion capture. Commonly the force of a punch is determined from an instrument that is hit and the momentum transfer is recorded [1] however, some preliminary studies have been conducted using accelerometers to determine reaction times [2]. The hand can achieve a peak velocity as high as 9 m/s depending on the type of punch - jab, cross, lead hook and reverse hook [3]. While the wrist has maximum velocity, the movement of the upper body contributes to Crown Copyright © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, RMIT University