A preliminary approach for swimming performance analysis of FISDIR elite athletes with intellectual impairment using an inertial sensor

People with intellectual impairment show low performances in motor control, especially in complex movements. Performance analysis methods, based on wearable inertial sensor, are often used in typical developed swimmers but have never been used in swimmers with intellectual impairment, for whom the use of quantitative systems would be even more important. This paper presents a case study conducted on freestyle swimmers from the functional evaluation project of the Italian Sport Federation for athletes with Intellectual Impairment (FISDIR). The tests were conducted by five Italian elite swimmers with intellectual impairment using a structured experimental protocol which foresees an inertial sensor located on the wrist. Key freestyle temporal and kinematic parameters were assessed. A high-speed camera was used as a benchmark to validate the inertial-based parameters. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed inertial-based approach correlates over 90% with the performance indices obtained with the camera-based approach, and therefore it could represent a useful tool for monitoring and improving the training.