A few insights from the Isokinetic Conference 2018 — Are we winning?
The Isokinetic Conference is an annual meeting of the world leaders in football medicine. As in every discipline, football (or soccer if you are an American) and medicine are changing constantly and digitalization is a big part of this change.
Data, machine learning and blockchain technology will improve the outcomes in football medicine. That is why we have spent a full day just talking about this topic. We see that data is mostly used in the performance departement of a football club. Almost every team tracks GPS data, sometimes even in their youth academy. This data will guide physicians and doctors in making decisions regarding injury prevention. But still, are they winning already?Apparently, we are not there yet. GPS data will give us an idea about the external load we apply to a player or a team. We can measure an acute and a chronic external load where we can try to find the sweet spot between them. Measuring this ratio is what almost everybody does. But what can we conclude from that? It is not a 100% fit, not even 90%, but it is as close as we can get at this stage.
There are so much more opportunities to identify the best way to measure internal loads. A highly used way to do this, is measuring the RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion). However, since this is a questionnaire, it isn’t difficult to answer the question in a way that pleases your coach, this is not a perfect instrument.
New insights came from the FC Barcelona Innovation HUB. At the moment, they are trying to measure internal load within the urine of the players. Within this urine, they measure 13 oxidative stress biomarkers by ultra-performance liquid chromatography — triple quadrupole mass spectrometry which are associated to damage DNA and proteins due to hydroxyl radical attacks, free radical peroxidative degradation of membrane lipids, anti-inflammatory response and purine metabolism. The concentration of urinary creatinine was used to adjust fluctuating urine analyte concentrations.
Is this the future? Probably not… You cannot measure urine during the game, can you? We need to find another way to measure this internal load. Maybe saliva could be the body fluid that would give us the right and live data to determine our load. But still, a lot of research needs to be done on this topic.
I believe that data management and the implementation of technology will improve the game in every way — Siebe Ceuppens
So, we talked about external load and internal load and the difficulties we are facing at the moment. But, if we measure external load with e.g. a GPS device, do we measure enough? Jos Vanrenterghem thinks we have forgotten to look at the bigger picture. At the moment, we just look at the physiological perspective of our athlete, but what about the biomechanical impact? Again, we can split this in half and make an external biomechanical load and an internal biomechanical load. But do we already have devices to measure these?
Well, there are some companies that say they can. One of them is SportScientia. A 3P smart insole, featured with an electronic control module, a rechargeable LiPo battery, Bluetooth connectivity, wireless charging coil, integrated multi-layer smart insole, 6˚ of freedom inertial measurement unit, force sensors, accelerometer and a gyroscope. A smart insole can measure GRF’s (Ground Reactions Forces) and the number of impacts, so this could be a solution for measuring our external biomechanical load. Is something like this the only thing we need? No, this will be just the start of a new chapter.
Are we winning then? I think the best answer is: we are not losing.
My name is Siebe Ceuppens and I am educated as a physical therapist. I’ve always had a passion for football and I have been working in the business for 3 years. At this moment, I have started a new chapter in my career at SoccerLab because I believe that data management and the implementation of technology will improve the game in every way.
