Elite performance monitoring of athletes using integrated systems

Strength and conditioning training is often used as a standalone method of exercise, however it is also a fundamental aspect of elite performance development. Elite athletes use specific strength and conditioning exercises as a means of increasing their strength and flexibility specifically for their chosen sport/event. The main aims of strength and conditioning training are to increase performance capacity as well as to reduce the risk of injury.

This research used a purpose designed system for strength and conditioning monitoring developed for British Athletics in order to understand what adaptations need to be made to improve its current reliability and functionality. As well as understanding how it can be used in its current state to monitor the performance of athletes specialising in different events the system recorded, stored, analysed and displayed force data in real time, it could also synchronize accelerometer data and store these data for post processing. The system was designed to provide the strength and conditioning coaches at British Athletics with laboratory quality analysis of the performance of countermovement and drop jumps in real time, within the athlete’s own training environment. It provided useful and reliable feedback on the performance of an athlete in order to help guide their future training sessions, as well as monitoring the effect of previous training.

In order to understand how such a device could be used to monitor athletes competing in different events it is critical to understand how the needs of their event affect how the athlete performs a countermovement jump. Elite sprints, high jump and middle distance athletes performed countermovement jumps using the system. The differences in the performance of the groups of athletes as well as the differences between male and female performers were identified. This information would then be utilised by strength and conditioning coaches at British Athletics to steer their feedback on performance in the appropriate direction for the event.

A longitudinal study examined the performance of sprinters and high jumpers across an athletic season. By monitoring the countermovement jump and drop jump performance of the athletes, the effect of the training program on the groups as well as the individual athletes could be identified. By determining which parameters were a focus for development during a particular mesocycle the effectiveness of the training cycle could be monitored.

In order to add value and make the system adaptable to different sports it was important to increase the library of exercises the system could provide feedback on. However with an extensive list of strength and conditioning exercises, a system that reuses tried and tested algorithms to analyse exercises would provide the user with the means of monitoring the performance of a large battery of exercises both reliably and quickly. An experiment was designed and carried out which explored whether existing algorithms used in the analysis of less complex exercises could be reused in the analysis of more complex ones. This investigation found that it was possible; however some forward thinking in the early design of the algorithms was required to ensure they were versatile enough to be included in larger scale analysis.

The final case study explored the capabilities of the integrated accelerometer which is part of the existing system. The study investigated the effect the sampling rate of the accelerometer had on the outcome of key performance parameters. Within this chapter, conclusions were drawn as to what the minimum sampling rate of an accelerometer should be in order to provide the user with accurate feedback. Results from the testing suggested that the accelerometer currently integrated requires some modifications in order to ensure that no information regarding performance at both recreational and elite levels were being missed due to the processor sampling at too low a frequency.

The integrated system developed and installed for use within the strength and conditioning environment was used to explore the differences in how athletes perform countermovement jumps and drop jumps, not only were the different events and genders of athletes considered but also the differences in the events at different stages in the training cycle. An understanding of how the system could be developed further to make it more accessible to a wider variety of users was also explored. Finally modifications to provide a more robust, multi-component system have been identified. Continuing to add value to the system by increasing the number of exercises real time analysis is available for, as well as modifying the existing accelerometer to ensure it has the ability to monitor the performance of an athlete to the same degree of accuracy as the force platform should be a focus of future work.