Presenter: Anna Mare − Human Physiology
Faculty Mentor(s): Seth Donahue, Rachel Robinson
Session: (In-Person) Poster Presentation
Cumulative training load has been defined as the product of external loading and internal physiological loading experienced by an individual during a training session and may be an important predictor for running related injury. Traditional methods of monitoring external load for runners has been the tracking of mileage, however, with the increased availability of wearable sensors, we can develop more sophisticated paradigms for the estimation of external load. Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) and GPS watches are wearable sensors that have been used for the quantification of external load during running in a laboratory setting. The purpose of this study was to compare GPS-derived metrics and IMU metrics for the quantification of ground reaction force (GRF) peaks as an estimation of external load from participants running in a real-world environment. Twelve participants were equipped with force sensing insoles to measure GRF. Three IMUs were mounted on each participant, one on the dorsal aspect of each foot, and one attached near the sacrum on the waistband. Participants also wore a Garmin GPS watch. Participants were instructed to run an approximately 5-mile course at their own pace. The IMU-based model was a significantly better fit than the GPS model, indicating an improvement of the estimation of external load using IMU data. These findings show that IMUs provide a more accurate estimation of cumulative peak GRF as a proxy for external load than GPS-derived estimates.