Unlocking Athletic Potential: Insights from Plantar Pressure Mapping & Motion Capture

Antonio Robustelli joins Bruce Malkinson to explore the powerful integration of plantar pressure mapping and motion capture, showcasing how this combination transforms athlete movement assessment, performance optimization, and injury prevention strategies.

Key Takeaways from Listening to This Podcast:

1. Learn – Why synchronizing plantar pressure mapping and 3D motion capture data can dramatically improve the quality of athlete movement and biomechanical assessments.
2. Understand – How this combination empowers sports performance practitioners to obtain detailed insights into athletic performance.
3. Experience – Practical applications of plantar pressure mapping insoles and 3D motion capture systems, including integrating, measuring, and analyzing kinetic and kinematic data.

Speakers:
Bruce Malkinson, Chief Operating Officer
XSENSOR Technology Corporation

Antonio Robustelli, Sports Performance Scientist & Technologist
OmniAthlete Performance Science

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Welcome to the Intelligent Dynamic Sensing Podcast. My name is Bruce Malkinson, and I'm the Chief Operating Officer for Accensor Technology Corporation. In each episode, you will learn from industry experts who share their insights and strategies on how to reveal hidden surface data and optimize the performance, comfort, and safety of surfaces. We will discuss and present solutions that have worked for real-world applications across fields like product design and safety testing, consumer, clinical, and human body performance. Hello and welcome, Antonio. Hi, Bruce. Thank you for inviting me. So, Antonio, in advance of our upcoming webinar, I have a few questions put together to sort of warm us up and get a sense of the content for that time together. As we start to talk about pressure mapping and the use of that data together with other systems like MoCap, I got a few questions. I'd like to start with maybe if you can explain the significance of combining plantar pressure data with motion capture in sports science or in rehabilitation.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15

Yeah, I would like to say that just by using plantar pressure mapping with insoles together with a good observation of an athlete is moving is already providing a lot of information about the efficiency, the biomechanical efficiency of an individual, of an athlete moving. However, the significance of combining plantar pressure mapping with motion capture is that sometimes there are subtle nuances of movement that cannot be recognized with the naked eye. So with the help of mocap and 3d mocap we can amplify also the the results of the data obtained with plantar pressure mapping and having a clearer understanding of of how anatomy is moving both for performance and in a in the process of rehabilitation and return to play where movement capabilities is one of the most important points and exit criteria for clearing an athlete after rehabilitation.

SPEAKER_00: 2:45

So with that extra clarity of information, what are some of the protocols that you would use in plantar pressure and motion capture assessments? And how do they help in creating a baseline assessment for these athletes?

SPEAKER_01: 2:59

Yeah, as we will see in the part two of the webinar, we have general and specific protocols. So usually general protocols are protocols that are being used for athletes any type of sporting activities. And they are a good starting point for baseline assessment because they allow to understand the basic qualities in patterns such as walking. So the walking gait and the linear running, they help us understanding the rhythmic also gait is the most fundamental pattern that can give us a blueprint of how an individual is moving within the environment. It's a cyclical activity, so it can give us information about how the cyclic pattern is working, about the rhythm of movement, and we can use this data as a you know, benchmark for the athlete can be used as a preliminary assessment for basically any type of sport.

SPEAKER_00: 4:26

So digging into these protocols a little bit more then, how do the specific protocols differ when you're assessing different sport activities? And could you give an example of how these assessments are tailored?

SPEAKER_01: 4:38

Yeah, different sports have different type of force application. different type of neuromuscular requirements, different biomechanical requirements. So before creating specific protocols, in order to tailor the assessments, we need to to use some, let's say questions as a guidelines. So basically we need to understand if the sport is involving linear movements or multi-directional movements. If the sport is involving changes of directions and what's the average duration of a high intensity actions. And if the sport is a short distance and short duration or long distance and long duration. So based on this type of information, we can assess and create the specific protocols and understand if we want to look at acceleration capabilities, if we need a linear sprinting assessment, if we need a change of direction assessment, and also about the duration. We can also look at if we need to assess the landing and jumping capabilities or not. So these are rough guidelines on how we can organize a protocol for you know, sports where high intensity sprinting is a key aspect. I would not expect to assess the same way 200 meter track and field athletes and midfielder soccer players. So a careful analysis of the sports will help sports scientists, S&C coaches to individualize the protocol.

SPEAKER_00: 6:58

And with that protocol then in place, could you discuss some key plantar pressure and motion metrics that are crucial in understanding athlete movement and their performance?

SPEAKER_01: 7:12

Plantar pressure mapping can provide with a lot of useful information, starting from pressure values and leading to the movements of the center of pressure during the stance phase. So if we are assessing a sport that is characterized by very high intensity sprinting with short duration, so we are also mostly interested in looking at peak values. So the peak pressure and also the peak load values. Whereas if the sport is involving a more, you know, distance covered longer duration and running at lower intensities, we are also mainly interested in average values. So we're interested in understanding how the athlete, the individual is managing the force transmission over longer period of time. Values such as center of pressure trails, the gate line, and the center of pressure excursion allow to understand how efficient the athlete is in directioning forces and channeling forces to the surface of the food. And When we pair this information with data such as the angular velocity of the thigh, and that is very, very helpful in understanding how the leg is preparing also to striking the ground, it is clear that all this information can allow all the you know, members of a sports staff to properly address any potential weakness and better understanding how the athlete is moving.

SPEAKER_00: 9:34

Okay, so with that understanding of the data now clear, how do we then interpret that data gathered from these technologies to make decisions on athletes training or their rehabilitation?

SPEAKER_01: 9:46

The topic of interpretation is very important because apart being able to understand technology, it's very important to have a proper knowledge of the biomechanics behind a specific sport. So what is required from a biomechanics point of view to properly generate force manage these forces and transmit these forces. So when this knowledge is in place, data interpretation is, I would say it's very, very easy because when we identify weaknesses in the kinetic chain, we can try, there is no one size fits all strategy, of course, because different type of professionals and practitioners has different training philosophy, different training methods and way of working. So it's not about the type of strategies, the type of exercise, the type of technical strategies, but it's about understanding the biomechanics. So when we know this, so it's easy to interpret the pressure values, the motion of the different joints in terms of angular velocity, in terms of degrees of flexion extension, and based on that information that make inform decision on training and rehab strategies.

SPEAKER_00: 11:48

Well, I really appreciate those insights and look forward to getting into detail on those in the webinar. But before we depart, one question looking forward, how do you see the integration of these technologies evolving in the field of sports and science rehab? I have to say that

SPEAKER_01: 12:10

the sports science, the applied sports science, so when applied sports science we refer mainly to the on-field application, so outside of the lab, it's becoming more and more congested in terms of training schedule, competitions, travels, so with less time available for staff members, medical staff, coaching staff to spend time with athletes. So most of the time the testing and evaluation period should be should be coincide with the training sessions also. So having devices that are highly wearable, that are very, very easy to set up and then can support practitioners is extremely important. With plantar pressure insoles, we are in a good situation because insoles are very, very thin, wearable, very, very fast to set up. So I'm expecting motion capture systems to be even more accessible for on-field applications in the future and trying to get the most out of the artificial intelligence that especially in speeding up the process of recognizing movement pattern and just and this is something that i would like to stress out not substituting the knowledge of practitioner but just help them being more efficient and speed up the process uh in doing better uh what they are doing with athletes

SPEAKER_00: 14:19

fantastic thanks so much antonio uh you really appreciate your insights here on how this data can augment the

SPEAKER_01: 14:27

uh

SPEAKER_00: 14:27

the professional trainers and athletes in advancing and getting better and better at what they do. And we'll look forward to getting into some details on all these things in our upcoming webinar. Thank you, Bruce. Looking forward to the webinar next week. Thank you for tuning in to the Intelligent Dynamic Sensing podcast. To learn more, go to extensor.com. or email us at sales at extensor.com with any questions you may have. We'd love to hear from you. Never miss an episode by subscribing anywhere you listen to podcasts.