Hans Kim SUIRP
Weekly Journal
Week 1
Arriving in Madrid I was introduced to the team. I met with my PI Dr. Francisco García-Muro, as well as the lab assistants Carlos and Gabriella. They gave me a tour of the CEU campus and provided instructions on the procedure for recording the athletes. I helped set the cameras up and apply the stickers for the data collection throughout the week. Carlos and I talked a lot about differences in college athletics and how there are no real programs like the D1, D2, and D3 system we have in the States. Instead, there are pro teams through fútball clubs, recreational teams in the area as well as more competitive university teams similar to the club system we have here in the states.
Week 2
Week 3
This week was hectic as it was finals week for the Summer students and Dr. García-Muro had to proctor various exams. Carlos gave me the rundown on how to use Kinovea and I continued working on the literature review we had for our project. I was introduced to Daniel who is a researcher and representative for Xsens, a leading innovator in motion tracking devices. We collaborated on understanding various technologies involved in analyzing kinematic data and how our project could help serve to improve the accessibility of biomechanical research.
I continued to work on completing the kinematic and FV data from the videos we recorded. We had been able to recruit nearly 200 players with three videos to analyze per player. In the meantime, I got recommendations from the research team and got to explore Madrid with my roommate Nick. We got to try out menu de días, various tapas places, played padel, and visited landmarks like Parque Municipal Juan Carlos Plaza Mayor and the Temple of Debod.
Arriving in Spain
Playing padel, a popular sport in Spain with my friend Leti
Week 4
This week was after undergraduate graduation and walking into CEU was kinda eerie. All the students had left and it was only professors and PHD students finishing up their 'tribunal'/defense of their thesis. I got to meet with Dr. Luis Fernandez, the director and founder of the physical therapy program at CEU and former medical director of Atlético Madrid. We had made significant progress in processing the data and I got to shadow Dr. García-Muro in one of his clinical cases. While there are a lot of shared similarities between American and Spain health research, I also noted that research and healthcare in general is a lot more relaxed in Spain. Having worked in research labs in UF Shands or the Mayo Clinic, there is a lot more pressure on efficiency in our culture that is not as prominent in Spain academia. Dr. García-Muro also highlighted differences in how PT is practiced in Spain vs the States. In the US, PT is more clinical with specific treatments and movement exercises. PT in Spain is more holistic and has a focus on physical therapy with the therapists hands.
Graduation celebration at CEU
Week 5
We finalized our analysis in Kinovea and were able to record the movement patterns of all of our athletes. Gabriela helped complete the FV data and we began processing our statistical analysis through SPSS. I spoke with the local statistics professor and discussed ways we should approach our analysis. We decided to use ANOVA post hoc Bonferroni and used a cluster analysis as outlined by projects like Khair et al. (2021) and Romero et al. (2022),
Ideal running mechanic diagram per Lahti et al 2020
Week 6
Initially, we ran into major trouble analyzing our data. Although there were clear trends regarding dorsiflexion in our kinematic data, when comparing force-velocity profiles to our kinematic data there was no correlation at all. After freaking out for a little bit, I started going through the data and found a mistake in labeling while using the inverse dynamic approach proposed by Samozino et al. After rechecking our figures to make sure this was the only mistake in our data collection, we reanalyzed the data and found that there was a correlation between dorsiflexion with velocities and the trends between age groups started making a lot more sense.
Checked out this cool surf place with some friends which was recommended to me by Carlos
Week 7
This was election week in Madrid and I soon became aware of the snap election that was set forth by Pedro Sánchez. It was the main conversation point by all the professors with main concerns regarding the Vox party and general uneasiness about the candidates. As for our research, in addition to the aforementioned dorsiflexion, we found significant differences in trunk inclination and kinematic trends in the F-V clusters that we created. This helps demonstrate a possible avenue to help improve training in young athletes and injury prevention due to prior research demonstrating correlation with poor sprint mechanics and injuries in young fútbol players.
Week 8
For my final week in Madrid, Dr. García-Muro and Dr. Angel-Luis took me to an Asturias steak house. We celebrated our time together and made plans on how to continue wrapping up our projects. We planned to submit information to a local biomechanical conference using the women's data and a manuscript with the rest. I am thankful to CUR and Dr. García-Muro for allowing me to go to Madrid to learn more about spanish culture and to be able to combine my love of research with my passion for fútbol.
Bistec empanizado from the Asturian resturaunt
