a practical use of force plate treadmill

[Kimitake Sato]

Hi colleagues,

we are currently building a treadmill with force plate (vertical only) under the belt. Our initial pilot work showed that foot contact time is valid, and magnitude of vertical force is also minimal error as the treadmill stays at 0% incline. What we want to build is to track force (both impact/active, if impact is present) and create a model of force output consistency. It is obvious that force output should be fairly consistent at what is considered "comfortable pace" for many distance runners. However, we have been capturing that once runners (of various levels) start to go above the lactate threshold pace, then force output starts to vary step by step.

A model we want to create is fairly simple using LabView, and we will use algorithm to detect the force output consistency first and then add a line of 10, 20, 30...% lines so we know once the force consistency starts to vary, it will be seen on the screen. This is to share the output data immediately to coaches and runners who are on the treadmill.

After all, the main aim is to know the pace threshold from the kinetic data (and hope to match it with physiological pace threshold). I am not sure if pace inconsistency would lead to running-related injury but it would along with a great magnitude of training load at the pace.

Any critiques, comments are very much welcome for this topic, I would love to hear experts opinion on this.

Thank you!

Kimi

Kimitake (Kimi) Sato, Ph.D., CSCS, USAW, PES, TPI Fitness III.
International Relation Coordinator
Dept. of Sport, Exercise, Recreation, & Kinesiology (SERK), PO Box 70671
East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN 37614-0654

Sport Biomechanist; ETSU designated Olympic Training Site
High Performance Coach; Center of Excellence for Sport Science and Coach Education

Office Location: E 233 in Mini-Dome
Office TEL: (423) 439-5138
Lab: (423) 439-4655
email: satok1@etsu.edu
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Twitter: @jpnsatok

[Ross Miller]

Re: a practical use of force plate treadmill

Hi Kimi,

Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but there's a fairly large volume of literature on step-to-step variability in kinematics and running injury:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=running+injury+variability

The "New Concepts" paper by Hamill et al. (1999) on the dynamical systems perspective is a good starting place:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10521606

I'm not sure if anyone has looked at GRF variability and injury, and I don't think there are yet any longitudinal studies on this (could be wrong there, haven't checked lately). All would be great topics for a study! I very much like the idea of looking at kinematic or GRF variability with and without pace variability.

Hope this helps,
Ross

[Kimitake Sato]

Re: a practical use of force plate treadmill

Thank you! Yes, I have been checking some work from UMass, and Spalding at Harvard, even some poster presentations (proceedings). And Prof Hamill's and Dr. Irene Davis's former students' lab as well. Many of them do similar work. I will look into it further, thank you again! Kimi,