Reliability of Running Stability during Treadmill and Overground Running

Dominik Fohrmann, Daniel Hamacher, Alberto Sanchez-Alvarado, Wolfgang Potthast, Patrick Mai, Steffen Willwacher, Karsten Hollander

Publication: Contribution to journalJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Running stability is the ability to withstand naturally occurring minor perturbations during running. It is susceptible to external and internal running conditions such as footwear or fatigue. However, both its reliable measurability and the extent to which laboratory measurements reflect outdoor running remain unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the intra- and inter-day reliability of the running stability as well as the comparability of different laboratory and outdoor conditions. Competitive runners completed runs on a motorized treadmill in a research laboratory and overground both indoors and outdoors. Running stability was determined as the maximum short-term divergence exponent from the raw gyroscope signals of wearable sensors mounted to four different body locations (sternum, sacrum, tibia, and foot). Sacrum sensor measurements demonstrated the highest reliabilities (good to excellent; ICC = 0.85 to 0.91), while those of the tibia measurements showed the lowest (moderate to good; ICC = 0.55 to 0.89). Treadmill measurements depicted systematically lower values than both overground conditions for all sensor locations (relative bias = -9.8% to -2.9%). The two overground conditions, however, showed high agreement (relative bias = -0.3% to 0.5%; relative limits of agreement = 9.2% to 15.4%). Our results imply moderate to excellent reliability for both overground and treadmill running, which is the foundation of further research on running stability.

Original languageEnglish
JournalSensors
Volume23
Issue number1
ISSN1424-8220
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 29.12.2022

Research areas and keywords

  • Humans
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Biomechanical Phenomena
  • Foot
  • Tibia
  • Fatigue
  • Exercise Test/methods
  • Gait

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