ABSTRACT
There was currently no good agreement for the pattern of forehand drive since soft-tennis contestants had a big variety of objects to imitate or learn. The goals of this study were (1) to esiablish a three-dimensional kinematic model in upper extremity to compute the angular movement of the trunk shoulder, elbow and wrist joints, and (2) to compare the difference of athletes between the national representatives and college team so as to evaluate the training effect of soft-tennis forehand drive. The results showed that the national athletes and college athletes had similar angular movement patterns. The average ranges of motion of the national athletes shoulder joint were 56 degrees for flexion/extension, 53 degrees for adduction/abduction, and 45 degrees for axial rotation. For college tennis players, shoulder joints performed 70 degrees flexion/extension, 72 degrees adduction/abduction, and 65 degrees axial rotation. The range of motion for shoulder was smaller for national representatives, compared to college representatives (p=0.003). For the elbow, two groups had the almost same range of motion. To the contrast, national tennis players performed larger wrist flexion/extension movement (56 vs. 50 degrees).
