Training, children, and parents: Coach perspectives on wearable sensor data in sub-elite figure skating in the United States

Abstract

Motion data from wearable inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors is widely used in some sports but is not widely used in figure skating. In order to understand how coaches perceive the use of IMU data in figure skating training, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 8 figure skating coaches at the sub-elite level in the United States. Unlike other qualitative studies involving the role of data in sports training, our study involves amateur athletes who are children or adolescents and who work closely with a coach. Based on those interviews, we found that coaches see themselves as the gatekeeper for sharing and interpreting data, coaches consider the varying needs of individual athletes when determining how to share data with that athlete, and that coaches are cautious when sharing data with parents. Based on these themes, we propose a discussion around a whiteboard as a paradigm for presenting data and suggest abstraction of numerical data to support sharing data with skaters and parents.