Authors:
 Michel Brunet
 The director of MBProSport company for investigating rugby kicking players
 Jonathan Wisniewski and Gilles Bosch
 The FC Grenoble kicking players
 Philippe Doussy
 The FC Grenoble kicking skills trainer
 FCG.com for the video

Parameters analyzed: Pelvis velocity, hip joint angle and knee joint angle.
 Hardware system: MVN BIOMECH link by Xsens ©
 Software system: MVN Studio by Xsens ©

The MVN BIOMECH link includes many advantages for investigating and optimizing the rugby kick within professional athletes. First of all, the high update rate of 240 Hz is ideal for analyzing high dynamic movements. Next to that, the 3D character visualization is very useful because it allows you assess the true movements of the athlete just by visual inspection of the virtual avatar because it is very close to reality. Finally, the data export is essential for us but also we can already give instant feedback on the field because we have real-time access to all 3D kinematic data through graphs. This particularity is appreciated by the kicking players and trainers.

Les buteurs du FCG ont été modélisés en 3D by FCGRugby

Those investigations gave the following comments:
 – There is an amplitude between the kicking leg back-swing phase and the kick. We must consider a correlation between this motion arc and the internal speed of the body segments. To kick the rugby ball as fast and far away as possible those two parameters must be nearly maximal.

– The quality of the downswing phase on the kicking side is related to the flexibility of the hip.  We can relate this parameter to kicking injury as well, and potentially prevent it.

– All of the very best kicking players are showing a center of mass maximal velocity on the approach. We must consider a correlation between a peak value and the end of the kick (follow throw).