Dr. Dominik Hoelbling, who is a former Austrian national team athlete with several national and international achievements in Pointfighting Kickboxing, recently graduated as PhD in sport sciences and engineering at the University of Vienna, Austria, and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Victoria, Australia. With this article, we not only want to congratulate him to this exceptional accomplishment but more importantly introduce his outstanding work. During his academic journey, he was able to publish 8 articles in top journals of his field and to present his work at 4 international conferences. Furthermore, 6 of those research papers are directly related to WAKO and its athletes. More specifically, Dr. Hoelbling analysed techniques of some of our best fighters around the globe by developing multiple novel mathematical models to analyse balance, power generation, range of motion and general performance. Thereupon, he utilized the knowledge to create a prototype of a sports device to increase the strength and flexibility of the hip joint. First tests of exercising with the device were very promising, as they showed outstanding improvements in all athletes’ static flexibility and dynamic kick performances. Based on his successful work, Dr. Hoelbling to date was nominated for two national research prizes and got a job as researcher and IT-project manager at the research group INSO (Industrial Software) at the Vienna University of Technology and RISE (Research Industrial Systems Engineering), which he focusses on, besides being the CeO of his own sports related research and development company ISTec (Innovative Sports Technologies). To the question “What’s next?”, he replied: “I think it is very important to improve our sport, otherwise we cannot keep pace with the mainstream disciplines, so I am currently planning a systematic, long-term research and development strategy. Personally, I see this as my chance to give something back, to the community, which gave so much to me during my career as athlete. And now, due to my new resources at the University of Technology and my extended network of professionals, I am able to work on complex solutions and advanced systems to improve our sport. Therefore, I am currently working on innovative solutions for different groups and applications, including a game for improving the decision accuracy and speed of our referees, an e-learning system for our coaches, a force- and speed-measuring boxing glove for our athletes, a new type of martial arts specific performance diagnostic for athlete evaluation, a video-based analysis tool to get extensive competition statistics and more. I hope I’m able to soon show some of these innovations to my WAKO family”. We, the WAKO family, wish him all the best for his endeavours and hope to see more of his work soon.

Here below you can find the links to his Kickboxing related research papers:

Here you can find the scientific abstract of his dissertation, which includes the last 5 articles as well as the related fundamentals and an extensive discussion: