Why is center of gravity important in sports

Next Chapter. AMA Citation Chapter The Center of Gravity and Stability. Nancy Hamilton, et al. Kinesiology: Scientific Basis of Human Motion. McGraw Hill; Accessed November 11, APA Citation Chapter McGraw Hill. MLA Citation "Chapter Download citation file: RIS Zotero.

Reference Manager. Autosuggest Results. Figure Subscribe: Institutional or Individual. Username Error: Please enter User Name. The ideal, natural focal point of balance is usually located just below the navel and halfway between the abdomen and lower back, which is midway between the mass of the upper and lower body.

For instance, if a woman is overweight or pregnant, her center of gravity will move forward and she will have trouble balancing. Similarly, if a man overdevelops his upper body and ignores his legs, his center of gravity will shift higher, and he will be less stable. Trucks are manufactured to have as low a center of gravity as possible to keep them from falling over, and many athletes structure their bodies similarly. The more your mass is concentrated in your lower body, the better your balance.

This is not to say that you need to have skinny arms and massive legs, but the stronger your legs are, the more stable you are likely to be. Squats, lunges, side lunges and calf raises are just some of the many exercises that will work your legs and improve your center of gravity. Strong, durable core muscles are another integral part of balance.

In many sports, especially those involving a level of physical contact among players like football, rugby and wrestling , a low and strong center of gravity is important for your success. Naturally, that applies to boxing because the sport is predicated, in large part, on knocking your opponent off his or her feet. Imagine bopping one of those inflatable bags when you were a kid, that kept popping up no matter how hard you knocked it down.

Think of "building" your body in the same way. The more mass you have in the lower part of your body, the stronger your center of gravity will be because you'll have better balance. As any good bodybuilder or strength athlete will tell you, it's imperative to train your lower body and your legs, as they contain the largest muscles in your body. If you want to improve your center of gravity, exercises like squats, lunges and calf raises should be a staple in your workout regimen.

Because your center of gravity is usually right around the center of your body, it would make sense for you to train the muscles near it -- meaning your core and especially your back muscles. So the usual abdominal exercises like sit ups, crunches, Russian twists and the like are applicable, but if you know your way around the weight room, you should also incorporate deadlifting into your training regimen. It's one of the best exercises to work many of the muscles in your core.

If you find that you're having trouble maintaining your balance and improving your center of gravity, you may want to see a medical professional, depending on the nature of your issues.

As counterintuitive as might seem, many of these could result from issues related to your head. The point, about which the distribution of these individual weights is symmetrical, is the center of gravity of the body. Thus, if a body has more mass distributed in its upper part, the center of gravity will be closer to the top of the body.

This applies to humans, as the center of gravity of an average person is located approximately at a height of one meter, thus being above the waist. There are two properties of the center of gravity that have a great impact on sport. First of all its location is dependent on the shape of the body. So if the same body is to take a different shape, the position of the center of gravity will shift.