Sport-related back injury prevention with a wearable device

Jenkins, Lewis; Weerasekera, Roshan

Abstract

There has been a high incidence rates (∼41%) of back injury from undertaking weightlifting exercises as a result of improper lifting posture, where the spine should remain straight during a lifting movement which is often not adopted correctly by adolescent or beginner athletes. In this work we report a wearable device prototype consisting of independent sensor nodes using inertial measurement units to provide the user with real-time postural feedback on a companion application. From the data collected from four subjects, for several weight-lifting attempts, a strong correlation was found in the relative pitch angle between the upper cervical sensor and lower-lumbar sensor, which proved that the straightness of the user's back could be inferred using only two sensor nodes.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 9, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Jul 21, 2022
• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2022
• Deposit Date: Apr 7, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 22, 2024
• Journal: Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X
• Electronic ISSN: 2155-6210
• Publisher: OMICS International
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 11
• Article Number: 100202
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosx.2022.100202
• Keywords: Back Injury; Low-power Sensors; Wearable; Weight-lifting
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9303964