Detecting functional bilateral deficits in acceleration (force) pattern in soccer players: maximal speed (Intro).

After this long series of posts where we have analyze some data related to the collective metabolic power exertion of professional and amateur soccer players in training and competitions, it's time to go to another issue.

This lasts two months I have been talking with some friends and colleagues working in different professional soccer clubs in Spain and around world, and one issue that seems to be of some interests for more or less everybody is the prevention of injuries.

Also recently I have had the opportunity to assist to the 4th MuscleTech Network Whorkshop, celebrated in Barcelona by FC Barcelona, in where there have been presented some works related with this issue, and also where some of the bests world specialists in analyzing and preventing injuries have stated that actually there exists some doubts about the injury prevention methodologies, given that after implementing different protocols in top level european soccer clubs during the lasts 10 years, it seems that the  number of muscle injuries suffered in training and competition are more or less the same than in past years ...

Here we will analyze some acceleration data measured by the triaxial accelerometer that it's integrated in the GPS unit, given the direct relationship between acceleration and force applied. It's important to check that this short of analysis has it's own limits, as for example the relative position of the GPS unit (so the triaxial accelerometer position) with respect of the body of the player (usually not so close to the center of mass), and the ground (in some movements and some accelerations its not "perfectly" perpendicular to the ground, and what that implies ...).

And if we detect any functional bilateral deficit that doesn't means that a injury is going to happen!!! It is just showing us that something happens ... 

Therefore, all this means that we have to be careful when handling this information.

So what I have done is just to prepare some data acquired (with the use of a GPS system) some years ago in professional soccer players, and recently in amateur players, in order to show you how we can detect if it could exist any functional bilateral deficit in the pattern of acceleration of the body, when training or competing.

This GPS system units incorporate a triaxial accelerometer that can measure its acceleration in the 3 axis at 100 Hz.

What is important to know is that as with any technological system of measure, it has its own limitations that have to be known (but this is another issue, not for today).

In any case, it's of vital importance to understand that this is just experimental data, so the methodology of use must be developed (this is one of the issues I'm working on), and that at the end, the main problem falls (as always in soccer!!!) in the decision taking, that is, how to act when detecting this short of info.

So here I just want to show you that it is possible to identify some functional bilateral deficits using GPS integrated systems in soccer training and competition, under some specific situations.

Stay tuned for the next video!!!