Application of Machine Learning Methods to Investigate Joint Load in Agility on the Football Field: Creating the Model, Part I

Laboratory studies have limitations in screening for anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury risk due to their lack of ecological validity. Machine learning (ML) methods coupled with wearable sensors are state-of-art approaches for joint load estimation outside the laboratory in athletic tasks. The aim of this study was to investigate ML approaches in predicting knee joint loading during sport-specific agility tasks. We explored the possibility of predicting high and low knee abduction moments (KAMs) from kinematic data collected in a laboratory setting through wearable sensors and of predicting the actual KAM from kinematics. Xsens MVN Analyze and Vicon motion analysis, together with Bertec force plates, were used. Talented female football (soccer) players (n = 32, age 14.8 ± 1.0 y, height 167.9 ± 5.1 cm, mass 57.5 ± 8.0 kg) performed unanticipated sidestep cutting movements (number of trials analyzed = 1105). According to the findings of this technical note, classification models that aim to identify the players exhibiting high or low KAM are preferable to the ones that aim to predict the actual peak KAM magnitude. The possibility of classifying high versus low KAMs during agility with good approximation (AUC 0.81–0.85) represents a step towards testing in an ecologically valid environment.