Ahlbeck, F., Glørsen, Ø., & Eriksrud, O. (2021)
26th Annual Congress of the European College of Sport Science
Introduction: Change of direction (CoD) is fundamental to many sport performances and is defined as the skills and abilities needed to change movement direction, velocity, or modes. Overall time of CoD tests has been considered a valid representation of this ability. However, recently this has been challenged as such measures favor linear sprint capacity and do not quantify the different phases of a CoD test such as the initial acceleration, deceleration and re-acceleration. In fact, measures of the center of mass (COM) during CoD tests has been called for to better understand this important athletic quality. The purpose of this study was to determine if a robotic resistance device could provide valid measurements of athlete COM velocity during CoD tests. Conclusion: The robotic resistance device provide valid measurements of athlete velocity during a m505 test allowing for valid continuous or phase specific outcome measurements to be obtained in laboratory and field conditions. The observed lower correlations and greater biases for the motorized resistance device vs centre of mass comparison may be due to the moving arms and legs as the point of attachment from the device is at the pelvis.
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