‘In the UK an estimated 60.8 per cent of adults and 31.1 per cent of children are overweight. According to figures from 2009, almost a quarter of adults (22 per cent of men and 24 per cent of women) in England were classified as obese (BMI 30kg/m² or over).

Waist circumference is another important measure and 38 per cent of adults had a raised waist circumference in 2009 compared to 23 per cent in 1993’. [BBC HEALTH]

During competitive skiing, skiers would love to have carved turns with less lateral skidding and low frictional forces to achieve fast run time (D. Heinrich 2009). The main type of frictional forces on the skier includes air drag, gravity, ground reaction forces and ski-snow friction. Other than the ski-design and waxing, ski-snow friction is the main contributing factor for lateral skidding. Therefore, it is critical that the skier takes care in his movement across the snow that he does not incur unwanted resistance through deep penetration in the snow (Brodie 2009) while still maintaining an optimum edging angle (Figure 1) and load distribution between the inner and outer ski to resist against lateral shearing or skidding (D. Heinrich 2009).

This is a project that was done by my team: Daniel, Borja and me, Vijay. Anyone interested to take this further could give us a shout and we will be glad to discuss our thoughts/ findings or even work together (hopefully =P)!

Barefoot specific shoes are well known for its simplicity in construction – low shoe wedge profile, low torsional stiffness of sole and less support for rear-foot motion control – which has clear implications to running foot- strike kinematics.