Pneumatic Assist Suit to Facilitate Lower-Body Twisting for the Training of Forehand in Table Tennis

Engineering support for sports has the potential to improve training performance. Most research on sports training support has focused on support in areas that directly affect the point of force action. On the other hand, even if sports with hand-held tools, the importance of lower body motor function has been indicated. This suggests that supporting areas away from the point of force action can improve the performance of novice players. Therefore, in this study, we developed an assist suit that facilitates lower body twisting for table tennis beginners during forehand swing. U sing this assistive suit, experiments were conducted for the experimental group under the following four conditions (1) 'No wear (before),' (2) 'Without assist,' (3) 'With assist,' and (4) 'No wear (after)' to clarify the effect of wearing, assist, and training. In addition, a control group in which participants hit the ball without the assist suit was set up to examine the training effect of repetition. The results showed that both the amount of waist rotation and racket velocity increased significantly in the experimental group compared to the control group, which indicates the effect of the assist suit on training.