ABSTRACT
The worldwide popularity of soccer has stimulated an extensive interest in the scientific analysis of the skills of the game. The soccer kick is the defining skill of soccer and although there are many variants of this skill, it is the maximal soccer instep kick of a stationary ball that has received most attention in the biomechanical literature (e.g. Lees and Nolan, 1998). The soccer kick is three dimensional (3D) in nature but it is only recently that studies involving 3D analysis have been undertaken. A kinematic description of the kicking leg for the maximal instep and side-foot kicks has been reported by Levanon and Dapena (1998) and a kinetic analysis by Nunome et al. (2002). This latter group also investigated the effects of foot-ball impact (Nunome et al., 2006a) and kicking foot preference on selected kinematics and kinetics of the instep kick (Nunome et al., 2006b). Kellis et al. (2004) investigated the influence of approach angle on the 3D kinematics and kinetics of the support leg.
