In swimming, the athlete's performance is reflected by swimming speed. Unfortunately, this measurement remains difficult due to the specific constraints of testing in an aquatic environment. Either the method constrains the task that can be analysed (only one length can be swum when using speedometers; Craig, Term in & Pendergast 2006; Schnitzler et al. 2010) or the method, that offers greater flexibility, is complex, time-consuming and/or can not guarantee acquisition of all desirable data (such as bubbles around the swimmer's body and line-of-sight difficulties in the case of video based systems; Callaway, Cobb & Jones 2009; Puel et al. 2012). Technological advances however, that overcome these concerns are beginning to change the way we measure (and in turn perceive) athletic performance. The past twenty years has seen the increasing use of inertial measurement units in the study of human movements (Cuesta-Vargas, Galan-Mercant & Williams 2010) and sports biomechanics, including swimming (Ohgi 2002; Dadashi et al. 2011; Stamm et al. 2011), especially as these systems becoming more financially feasible (Mayagoitia, Nene, Neltink 2002). The aim of this study was to validate an inertial measurement unit prototype specifically designed for swimmer movement analysis (CIREN, Actris, Brest, France; Figure 1), against current gold standards for estimating rotational spees, translational accelerations and longitudinal speed of the swimmer relative to a global reference frame.
© Copyright 2014 XIIth International Symposium for Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming. Published by Australian Institute of Sport. All rights reserved.