The Use Of Inertial Measurement Units To Perform Kinetic Analyses Of Sprint Acceleration And Change Of Direction Tasks

Inertial measurement units (IMUs) are becoming more popular for field-based human movement analysis. However, their ability to track kinetic (i.e., 3-dimensional ground reaction force, F) and kinematic parameters used to evaluate sprint performance has not been assessed. Thus, the purpose of this thesis was three-fold. First was to assess the criterion validity of IMU estimates of the magnitude and direction of F during accelerative running tasks by comparison to a force plate. The second was to determine the concurrent validity of a novel IMU-based sprint velocity estimation algorithm. The third was to determine the concurrent validity of IMU estimates of kinetic determinates of sprint acceleration performance. For the first study, IMU estimates of continuous, step-average, and peak F while subjects performed linear sprint start and change of direction tasks were compared to the same measured by a force plate. For the second and third studies, a recently validated position-time method was used as the reference to which IMU estimates of continuous, average interval, and peak velocity as well as other performance variables (e.g., power, ratio of force, etc.) were compared. The results of these studies suggest the potential use of IMUs to assess sprint performance in the field.