Abstract
The purpose of the current investigation was to test the feasibility of utilizing pedometer data collected during gamelike practices to quantify the number of impacts experienced by varsity athletes. Forty-four varsity basketball and soccer athletes wore pedometers and the total number of steps and practice time were recorded during two different practices of similar intensity. The normalized step count, calculated as the total numbers of steps divided by the practice time, was obtained from the first practice and was used to estimate the step count for the second practice. The estimated step count was then compared to the actual step count, as determined from the pedometers. The mean percent difference between actual and estimated step counts was under 25% for approximately 75% of all athletes with no significant difference between the estimated and actual number of steps. The presented results suggest that the pedometer-based method presented here is a feasible method for estimating the number of steps experienced by university varsity athletes.
Highlights
Repetitive impacts to the lower extremity during activities such as running and jumping can result in forces that exceed three times body weight (Nigg, Cole & Bruggeman, 1995)
There was no significant difference between the mean ES and AS examined (t= 0.970; p=0.34) and there were no sport by method or sex by method interaction effects discovered
To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the use of pedometers as a method of estimating the total number of steps of varsity athletes during practices
Summary
Repetitive impacts to the lower extremity during activities such as running and jumping can result in forces that exceed three times body weight (Nigg, Cole & Bruggeman, 1995). Impacts such as these have been associated with overuse injuries including cartilage degeneration (Serink, Nachemeson, & Hansson, 1977), stress fractures (Milner, Ferber, Pollard, Hamill, & Davis, 2006) and subchondral bone stiffening (Radin, Il, & Rose, 1973). While accelerometers have been proposed as a method for quantifying frequency, duration and intensity of lower extremity impacts, they can be costly to implement and require some level of signal processing
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