ABSTRACT
The number of female soccer players in the world has gradually increased. In women’s football (soccer), the technique of heading the ball is one of the most basic and important techniques. Ordinarily, the body weight and muscle strength of a female are lower than that of a male. However, the ball weight used in women’s football is the same as that of men’s football. Some investigators have reported studies of ball heading (Burslem and Lees, 1988; Schneider and Zernicke, 1988; Reed et al., 2002), but the stress distribution at ball impact and the influence of low body weight on women and young players are still not clear. The purposes of this study are to discuss the gender (sex) difference based on physical properties and biomechanical characteristics, and to analyze the risk of the ball heading technique in women’s soccer using a biomechanical approach.
