Using a tri-axial accelerometer to detect technique breakdown due to fatigue in distance runners: A preliminary perspective

Accelerometer technology is becoming increasingly smaller and cheaper to develop. As a direct result, such devices can potentially be easily integrated into footwear to capture data that provides information about the quality of a person´s running technique in the later stages of a fatiguing run. The purpose of this study is to determine if it is possible to detect technique breakdown due to fatigue in a distance runner using shoe mounted accelerometers. We present an algorithm that uses computationally light data from tri-axial foot mounted accelerometers and compares outputs from them to kinematic changes in the runner as the runner fatigues. These preliminary findings show that kinematic changes due to fatigue can be reasonably estimated using outputs from a shoe mounted tri-axial accelerometer.