Implementing Modern Technology for Vital Sign Monitoring to Enhance Athletic Training and Sports Performance

Abstract

(1) Background: Applying medical procedures to keep track of athletes’ metabolic health is a well-known behavior for increasing sports performance. This study’s primary goal was to examine whether implementing a health-screening routine using invasive and non-invasive methods in a mountain running training program can increase sports performance by obtaining a better rank in specific races. (2) Methods: Seven male mountain runners with good results at the international level participated in the research, which featured an initial and a final test. The initial test took place in March at the beginning of the competitive season, and the final test took place in September at the end of the annual training plan in 2021. The entire experiment used invasive tests, such as taking blood samples to perform blood biochemistry analysis, and non-invasive tests, such as mountain running races, determinations of VO2max, EKGs, urine biochemistry and NeuroTracker tests. (3) Results: Comparing the initial test with the final one from a statistical point of view, a significant improvement was found in the final test regarding the obtained results in most tests and, most importantly, the occupied position in the final general rank (p = 0.005). The main variations after effort were decreased Ca++ and increased Cl−, a low TGL level if the diet was inadequate, increased LDH and CPK strongly correlated with the skeletal muscle response, and only physiological changes were found in the EKG and urine summary. (4) Conclusions: The invasive and non-invasive tests applied in this study provided crucial information on the athletes’ health statuses, enabling the coach to adjust the training program in light of the findings in order to improve sports performance and avoid overexertion.

Digital Literacy 5.0 to Enhance Multicultural Education

“…In Digital Literacy 5.0, sports science professionals are not just users of technology but also interpreters and innovators, using digital tools to push the boundaries of what is possible in athlete training, injury prevention, and performance optimization (353). This level of literacy requires a deep understanding of both the technologies themselves and the ways in which they can be applied to sports science.…”

Contact-free motion-robust vital signs monitoring

“…By monitoring these vital signs, various applications are enabled, including analyzing a person's health status [1,2], diagnosing illnesses [3,4], and evaluating the effectiveness of medical treatments [5,6]. Consequently, there has been a growing interest in monitoring vital signs in different scenarios, such as digital healthcare [7,8], sports [9,10],…”

“…Compared with Figure 4.10(a), both ES (Figure 4.10(b)) and WT (Figure 4.10(c)) incur more stationary motion interference with WT being much more intensive, clearly affecting respiration to a greater extent and causing deterioration in both respiratory waveforms r ′ (n) and r gt (n). As the last example, Figure 4.10(d) shows that, though TO (during the time span of[5,10] s and[34,43] s) affects the signal phase significantly, IQ-VED successfully recovers respiration both when the human subject is lying quasi-statically and turning over.…”