Accelerometer-based prediction of running injury in National Collegiate Athletic Association track athletes

Running-related injuries (RRI) may result from accumulated microtrauma caused by combinations of high load magnitudes (vertical ground reaction forces; vGRFs) and numbers (strides). Yet relationships between vGRF and RRI remain unclear - potentially because previous research has largely been constrained to collecting vGRFs in laboratory settings and ignoring relationships between RRI and stride number. In this preliminary proof-of-concept study, we addressed these constraints: Over a 60-day period, each time collegiate athletes (n = 9) ran they wore a hip-mounted activity monitor that collected accelerations throughout the entire run. Accelerations were used to estimate peak vGRF, number of strides, and weighted cumulative loading (sum of peak vGRFs weighted to the 9th power) across the entirety of each run. Runners also reported their post-training pain/fatigue and any RRI that prevented training. Across 419 runs and >2.1 million strides, injured (n = 3) and uninjured (n = 6) participants did not report significantly different pain/fatigue (p = 0.56) or mean number of strides per run (p = 0.91). Injured participants did, however, have significantly greater peak vGRFs (p = 0.01) and weighted cumulative loading per run (p < 0.01). Results from this small but extensively studied sample of elite runners demonstrate that loading profiles (load magnitude-number combinations) quantified with activity monitors can provide valuable information that may prove essential for: (1) testing hypotheses regarding overuse injury mechanisms, (2) developing injury-prediction models, and (3) designing and adjusting athlete- and loading-specific training programs and feedback.