Sport scientists and strength and conditioning coaches are showing growing interest in the magnitude, orientation, and application of ground reaction force during acceleration actions in sport, as it can identify the key mechanical determinants of performance. Horizontal force-velocity profiling or sprint profiling helps practitioners understand the capacity of the mechanical force production during the acceleration phase of a sprint. This review examines the methods used in the field for determining horizontal force-velocity (sprint) profiles. It also includes recommendations for practical training methods to address individual force-velocity characteristics, mechanical effectiveness, thereby optimizing acceleration performance.

Supplemental Digital Content is Available in the Text.

Elite sprint performances typically peak during an athlete’s 20s and decline thereafter with age. The mechanisms underpinning this sprint performance decline are often reported to be strength-based in nature with reductions in strength capacities driving increases in ground contact time and decreases in stride lengths and frequency. However, an as-of-yet underexplored aspect of Masters sprint performance is that of age-related degradation in neuromuscular infrastructure, which manifests as a decline in both strength and movement coordination. Here, the authors explore reductions in sprint performance in Masters athletes in a holistic fashion, blending discussion of strength and power changes with neuromuscular alterations along with mechanical and technical age-related alterations. In doing so, the authors provide recommendations to Masters sprinters—and the aging population, in general—as to how best to support sprint ability and general function with age, identifying nutritional interventions that support performance and function and suggesting useful programming strategies and injury-reduction techniques.

Quite often, when shopping in a supermarket (e.g. Walmart), shoppers are frustrated at locating the items on the shopping list and no assistance is available. On the other hand, retailers also lose a large volume of sales as a result. In this paper, we present a feasibility study that leverages the Internet of Things (IoT) technology to make store items "smart" so that they can automatically register and update their location information in an information retrieval system, allowing shoppers to search, locate, and map them on the store floor plan using mobile devices. A free-accessible Android-based mobile app SmartMart has been developed to demonstrate the promise of this preliminary work. Continuous development of this research could lead to a complete change in our day-today shopping experience.

The purpose of this article is to provide practitioners with a system to categorize and individualize training prescription from sprint force-velocity (F-v) profiles to enhance performance in team and individual sport athletes. Despite F-v variables presenting key information about the underpinning mechanisms contributing to sprint performance, the overall data interpretation may be limited for the practitioner to implement applied training interventions compared with the researcher. Therefore, this article provides a conceptual framework for appropriate training prescriptions based on individual biomechanical and technical characteristics contributing to sprint performance.