The reliability of wearable commercial sensors for outdoor assessment of running biomechanics: the effect of surface and running speed

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to investigate the reliability of running biomechanics assessment with a wearable commercial sensor (RunScribe^TM). Participants performed multiple 200-m runs over sand, grass and asphalt ground at the estimated 5-km tempo, with an additional trial with 21-km tempo at the asphalt. Intra-session reliability was excellent for all variables at 5-km pace (intra-class coefficient correlation (ICC) asphalt: 0.90–0.99; macadam: 0.94–1.00; grass: 0.92–1.00), except for shock (good; ICC = 0.83), and contact time and total power output (moderate; ICC = 0.68–0.71). Coefficient of variation (CV) were mostly acceptable in all conditions, except for horizontal ground reaction force (GRF) rate in asphalt 5-km pace trial (CV = 24.5 %), power (CV = 14.3 %) and foot strike type (CV = 30.9 %) in 21-km pace trial, and horizontal GRF rate grass trial (CV = 15.7 %). Inter-session reliability was high or excellent for the majority of the outcomes (ICC≥0.85). Total power output (ICC = 0.56–0.65) and shock (ICC = 0.67–0.75) showed only moderate reliability across all conditions. Power (CV = 12.5–13.8 %), foot strike type (CV = 14.9–29.4 %) and horizontal ground reaction force rate (CV = 12.4–36.4 %) showed unacceptable CV.

KEYWORDS:

• RunScribe
• runners
• kinematics
• stride
• wearable technology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Slovenian Research Agency [L5-1845].