Analysis of the effects of a high-anxiety state on running mechanics and identifying relevant psychological predictors related to levels of emotions and mechanics

Achieving optimal sport performance is complex and multidimensional. Athletes need to have high levels of physical and psychological skill. It is already commonly understood that an athlete’s emotional state can affect performance. With this project, we would like to take this one step further and investigate how an athlete’s emotions affect movement patterns, more specifically by assessing how anxiety impacts running mechanics. To achieve this objective, we will induce an anxiety state during a treadmill run and evaluate runners’ movement mechanics via a markerless motion capture system called Kinetisense. This system has the advantage of being simple to transport and use and it is currently used in clinical environments to evaluate patients’ performance and give patients real-time feedback on their movement. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Amber Mosewich;Albert Vette;Sean Baynton

Student:

Aïda Valevicius

Partner:

Kinetisense Inc

Discipline:

Kinesiology

Sector:

Health care and social assistance

University:

University of Alberta