Estimating energy expenditure during front crawl swimming using accelerometers

Nikolai Baastrup Nordsborg, Hugo G. Espinosa, David H Van Thiel

11 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The determination of energy expenditure is of major interest in training load and performance assessment. Small, wireless accelerometer units have the potential to characterise energy expenditure during swimming. The correlation between absorbed oxygen versus flume swimming speed and absorbed oxygen versus the three axis acceleration recorded on the sacrum, wrist and ankle for swimmers of varying abilities was calculated using Bland-Altman analysis of variance through parallel regression lines fitted for 60 participants, who swam at three different speeds for 6 min duration with 2 min rest times. Swimmers showed a strong positive relationship between VO2 and RMS acceleration on the wrist (r = 0.77) and ankle (r = 0.73) sensors but not on the sacrum (r = 0.46). The sacrum data was split into elite and novice swimmers, resulting in a strong correlation for elite swimmers and a poor correlation for novice swimmers. A robust biomechanical technique for the determination of the energy expenditure of swimmers of different categories and genders from acceleration data has been developed.

Original languageEnglish
JournalProcedia Engineering
Volume72
Pages (from-to)132-137
Number of pages6
ISSN1877-7058
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014

Keywords

  • Accelerometer
  • ANOVA
  • Energy expenditure
  • Flume
  • Swimming
  • Velocity

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