Predicting physiological parameters in fatiguing bicycling exercises using muscle activation timing

The random forests models showed very good prediction accuracy and attained the coefficient of determination R2 = 0.962 for lactate concentration level and R2 = 0.980 for oxygen uptake rate. The linear models showed lower prediction accuracy. Comparable results were obtained also when sEMG amplitude data were removed from the training sets. A feature elimination algorithm allowed to build accurate random forests (R2 > 0.9) using just six (lactate concentration level) or four (oxygen uptake rate) time-domain variables. Models created to predict blood lactate concentration rate relied on variables reflecting interaction between front and back leg muscles, while parameters computed from front muscles and interactions between two legs were the most important variables for models created to predict oxygen uptake rate.