Scientists are using machines like the “bod pod,” above, and oxygen gauges to study the stresses of figure skating.

By PAM BELLUCK


NEWARK, Delaware - Melissa Bulanhagui is a highly ranked figure skater, but two years ago her right ankle failed her. She sprained it twice and tore a ligament, each time during one of her favorite jumps, the triple lutz.

Other skaters have suffered similar injuries, and now science is studying why, aiming to help skaters meet the sport’s physical challenges without sacrificing their health.

For one study, Ms.Bulanhagui, 18, and other skaters tape to their shins devices called tibial accelerometers, which measure the force of the impact when skaters land a jump.

“A lot of the impacts are really high, 90 to 100 G’s,” said Kat Arbour, a skater turned graduate researcher at the University of Delaware. “If you hit your head that hard, I don’t think you’d survive.”

But she said study results suggested that the issue was not jumping itself, but how well jumps were executed. “If someone is really proficient, they seem to be able to modify their technique to decrease the impact, use muscles differently to absorb that shock,” she said.

The accelerometer study is part of a flowering of research on safety and performance. And it is no coincidence that such research is growing at a time when figure skating, a year-round pursuit for competitive skaters, emphasizes athleticism and endurance more than ever before.

Adjustments to international judging guidelines in 2003 made skating “much more physically and mentally challenging,” said Mitch Moyer, senior director of athlete high performance for United States Figure Skating. Each skill in a performance now receives specific points, requiring more focus. And skaters no longer have an incentive to perform all jumps early in a program before they tire - now, jumps done later earn extra points.



“People said, ‘Oh, it’s an art,’ but the reality is it’s a very taxing sport,” said Michelle Provost-Craig, associate professor of exercise physiology at the University of Delaware. “Many skaters end up with stress fractures, knee problems and hip problems at a fairly young age.”

Research could inspire new training recommendations concerning issues like off-ice conditioning and limiting repetitions of jumps during practice.

United States Figure Skating now has a sport sciences and medicine director, who works with scientific researchers and helps coaches monitor skaters’ health more closely and pace workouts.

“Coaches are paying a lot more attention to these things,” said Mr.Moyer, who said some concerns were set off by a “trend of hip issues” with skaters like the Olympic champion Tara Lipinski, whose hip injuries required surgery at 18. “I hear a lot more buzz out there - ‘you need to stop jumping, you’ve done enough today.’”

Scientists are looking at skating from every angle - biomechanics, physics, muscle conditioning, body fat, oxygen consumption, exerciseinduced asthma. Some research focuses on training and equipment.

Ms.Arbour, of the University of Delaware, has skaters, wearing swimsuits and nose clips, climb into the “bod pod,” an egglike capsule measuring fat and muscle composition. A “bone densitometer” analyzes bone density, which tends to increase with frequent impacts.

“If it’s low, they are at risk for stress fractures in the legs and lumbar spine,” she said. “If it’s too high, they are at risk for osteoarthritis because the cartilage is taking a lot of shock absorption.”

With Professor Provost-Craig, Ms.Arbour also outfits skaters with “a crazy dungeon thing that goes over the mouth and nose,” measuring oxygen and carbon dioxide in air skaters expel.

Science is even filtering into recreational skating, but most research concerns competitive skaters. Some researchers are interested, for example, in the sport’s effects on younger skaters, said Mr.Moyer, because “kids develop differently at different ages. If somebody’s injured at 14, was it because of what they were doing at 9 or 10, or at 14?”

Professor Provost-Craig plans to study whether certain jumps generate such physical impact that younger skaters should delay learning them.

“A lutz might put more loading on a young skeletal developing frame than a toe loop,” she said. “They may choose, especially during a growth spurt, not to teach a new jump with extensive loading characteristics.”