Sports medicine: preventing injuries with wearable sensors

The consequences of sports injuries can be very serious and sideline athletes for a long time. Although it often seems like these injuries happen in a split second, they can also be the result of overuse and loads that usually weaken the athlete over time. This stress can be detected and reduced with wearable technology and injuries prevented before they happen.

In this MEDICA-tradefair.com interview, Reimut Hellmerichs describes how wearable devices are used for injury prevention, details the types of sports where real-time data tracking is best suited and reveals how athletes rate this option.

Mr. Hellmerichs, how can wearable devices help prevent sports injuries?

Reimut Hellmerichs: Wearables such as accelerometers or GPS trackers allow us to collect extensive data from sport performances. This enables us to measure athlete load in training or competition in the present, which we can in turn use to project the load that will affect him if training continues unchanged. The number of games, training units and intensity of stress load for athletes has an accumulative effect over time. That’s why it can be crucial for competitive athletes to predict peak training stress and load and subsequently adjust the training schedule to avoid overtraining injuries.

What data does Catapult Sports collect from athletes to this end?

Hellmerichs: We collect comprehensive and mixed data sets. The athletes wear a vest with a sensor that is embedded between the shoulder blades. We collect data such as distance covered, acceleration and deceleration, running performance, velocity and left/right change of direction intensities. For other sports, jumps and tackles (body contacts) are relevant factors.

Our aim is to put these parameters in a common context and link them. We want to enable athletes to train proactively. One emphasis is injury prevention by identifying the activities that increase different load parameters. We also want to help athletes to pinpoint the volume and intensity of training that catapults them to their best performance just in time for the competition and not before or after.

Which sports benefit from these approaches?

Hellmerichs: One can clearly distinguish between team and individual sports in this case. When it comes to individual sports, coach and athletes have a stronger, more intimate bond and focus more intensely on the athlete’s physical condition. Meanwhile, in a team sport, it is very difficult for coaches to have their sight on all athletes at the same time. However, all team members are subject to the same load levels in this setting. Needless to say, if a team member is overloaded resulting in injury, live tracking technology can ensure that certain activities are reduced for individual athletes. Of course, this also means that more people in the background have to monitor and analyze the data.

How is this data connected to support informed decisions?

Hellmerichs: Some of it is real-time data, the other portion is available as a download or via an app after the training session. Athletes can synchronize their data via the cloud, making it quickly available after a competition for example.

All data is reported and presented in our OpenField software, which users can customize by creating their own dashboards, graphs, and charts based on their needs.

What feedback do you get from athletes? Do wearable devices help prevent injuries?

Hellmerichs: The feedback is usually positive and our approach provides objective information to assist with training plans and future sports activities. Athletes find out how their bodies react to stress and training load. This also gives them a comparison of subjective and objective perception of stress and allows them to subsequently adapt the next training session or the next competition.

Athletes, who team up with us have told us that this is a significant improvement for them. This comparison helps them to understand where and why difficulties may arise if certain load parameters sound an alarm. And it helps them take action that might prevent injury. This is where we notice a greater degree of acceptance of digital training devices compared to previous years.