On-Field Biomechanical Assessment of High and Low Dive in Competitive 16-Year-Old Goalkeepers through Wearable Sensors and Principal Component Analysis

Abstract

Diving saves are the main duty of football goalkeepers. Few biomechanical investigations of dive techniques have been conducted, none in a sport-specific environment. The present study investigated the characteristics of goalkeepers’ dive in preferred (PS) and non-preferred (nPS) side through an innovative wearables-plus-principal-component analysis (PCA) approach. Nineteen competitive academy goalkeepers (16.5 ± 3.0 years) performed a series of high and low dives on their PS and nPS. Dives were performed in a regular football goal on the pitch. Full-body kinematics were collected through 17 wearable inertial sensors (MTw Awinda, Xsens). PCA was conducted to reduce data dimensionality (input matrix 310,878 datapoints). PCA scores were extracted for each kinematic variable and compared between PS and nPS if their explained variability was >5%. In high dive, participants exhibited greater hip internal rotation and less trunk lateral tilt (p < 0.047, ES > 0.39) in PS than nPS. In low dives, players exhibited greater ipsilateral hip abduction dominance and lower trunk rotation (p < 0.037, ES > 0.40) in PS than nPS. When diving on their nPS, goalkeepers adopted sub-optimal patterns with less trunk coordination and limited explosiveness. An ecological testing through wearables and PCA might help coaches to inspect relevant diving characteristics and improve training effectiveness.

Definition of High-Risk Motion Patterns for Female ACL Injury Based on Football-Specific Field Data: A Wearable Sensors Plus Data Mining Approach

“…For example, recent studies are adopting vector coding technique to identify intra- and inter-joint coordination for trunk, hip, knee, and ankle, and link it to the risk of sustaining an ACL injury [ 38 , 40 , 41 , 42 ]. Data mining approaches based on waveform features such as the one adopted in the present study might facilitate this process, reducing the number of informative features while continuing to account for the task complexity [ 22 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 ].…”

Bonitation assessment of intensively used football turf depending on the date and area of observation

“…In addition, these areas are particularly at risk of creating plantless spots due to goalkeeper interventions (Fig. 10 ), which result in the body falling to the ground 71 , 72 and damaging the surface (requiring overseeding, which is not always possible due to the ongoing league season). As can be seen from the obtained results, it had a lower tendency to deteriorate quality, along with turf age in areas characterized by a higher functional value (middle area, playing area) in the first evaluation periods.…”

E-Textiles for Sports and Fitness Sensing: Current State, Challenges, and Future Opportunities

“…The devices are connected with a bespoke wireless protocol that enables synchronised data capture [ 113 ]. This system has been used to analyse technique during walking [ 114 , 115 ], running [ 116 , 117 ], cycling [ 118 , 119 ], and more novel activities such as goalkeeper diving [ 120 ], cricket bowling [ 121 ], change of direction tasks [ 122 ], and jumping in handball [ 123 ]. A similar array of sensors, with the addition of EMG sensors designed to be stuck to the skin, has been developed by dorsaVi Ltd. (Victoria, Australia) [ 124 ].…”