Exploring Amateur Performance in Athletic Tests Using Wearable Sensors

Abstract

The growing market for sports analytics has spurred more interest than ever in quantifying athletic performance. This trend, alongside the proliferation of new wearable technologies, has expanded the possibilities for both professional and amateur athletes to instrument themselves and collect meaningful data. The reactive strength index (RSI) can be used to communicate this kind of data by presenting a person’s ability for rapid movement. A user study was conducted in which young adults of amateur athletic status performed a jumping exercise to assess the feasibility of using a commercial off-the-shelf inertial measurement unit (IMU) to measure this metric compared to the usual method of using a force plate. Results suggest that the measurement of meaningful RSI improvements is possible using inexpensive IMUs with comparable results to costly force plates.