Ares Analytics

Athletes are constantly looking for new ways to track performance and to improve training. Similar to e.g. heart rate, lactic acid is a valuable metric. Its importance is underlined by Thêta’s professional rowing coaches. It can indicate one's ability to endure exercise at certain intensities allowing to track athlete’s capabilities and to make training more tactical. We see a demand for easy and cheap continuous lactic acid measurements during training. Currently lactic acid measurement on athletes is done by blood testing. This method is expensive and infrequent. It has to happen after training by specialists instead of during, obscuring valuable information.

One method on the market applies IR technology. It is expensive and intrusive as it requires shading from daylight. This limits the use to one muscle while for Thêta coaches it would be valuable to measure multiple muscles to evaluate technique.

We aim to derive lactic acid levels from electrical signals produced by biological processes. Assuming the athlete is healthy and knowing lactic acid concentration at one point will increase exponentially our hypothesis is that this will show up in EMG signals. As EMG is an intense researched field, we found literature confirming our expectations. Wearable EMG devices exist but are bulky hindering hamstring measurements for rowers. They appear to be unavailable in a bipolar form, being more sensitive to noise. Full-body suits with electrodes exist but are costly and don’t allow the exerciser to wear their own clothing. These devices don’t aim to provide signal processing in order to derive lactic acid. We want to make an inexpensive EMG device which measures lactic acid continuously while allowing the exerciser to move freely. We want to use common ECG electrodes which are inexpensive and used in hospitals for years. We want to perform tests on athletes to confirm statements we found in literature and perform novel research to investigate whether we can generate reliable data for rowers, cyclists and runners. The aim is to develop inexpensive devices for consumers and professional athletes to inform the user about lactic acid levels and muscle load, providing more insight in training.