Is there a mathematical model of how much force is applied to joints during various tae kwon do activities?

Question

Related (on a different site): How does one typically determine the energy and force in a foot stomp?

I recently got a knee injury and was trying to understand when it was safe to continue to practice. Disconcertingly enough, my doctors and physical therapist seemed to have only a vague idea of what kind of stress martial arts apply on the body or exactly how much force kicks apply to the knee.

I do realize that this is a weird thing to know, but it seems like it would be very hard to know exactly when it was safe to go back without knowing that. Indeed, the assessment to decide whether or not to discharge me from physical therapy was heavily oriented towards non-martial-arts activities.

Is there a mathematical model of some kind that shows exactly what kind of force is applied by various activities? For example, during a spinning hook kick, how much lateral force is applied to the planted foot?

How would I calculate something like this?

Note: I'm not soliciting medical advice, as I do realize that that is off-topic here. Rather, I'm asking about the mechanical force involved "in general."

Answer 1

If you want mathematical models for forces on human joints, I think the place to look is biomedical engineering. I doubt they have models specifically for tae kwon do, but they should have validated models for forces on joints, and perhaps even instrumentation on joint replacements. It should give you a place to start.

In your linked question, there is actually no modeling of forces for striking. I suspect this is because it is very hard to instrument someone's joints, so the best you can do is instrument externally on the striking surface.

I think you overestimate how much is known about recovery from knee injuries. In 2013, a new knee ligament was discovered.

Last month, knee surgeons from the University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium announced that they had found a new knee ligament, one that had not previously been specifically identified despite untold numbers of past knee dissections and scans.