Problem

I chose this subject because, as a competitive swimmer, I know how hard it is to distinguish between being tired and being injured. In my second year of competitive training I began feeling pain when I swam the breaststroke kick. I went to a physiotherapist and  had to do stretches for my legs over the span of 2 months. 

 

When I began researching sports injuries in general, I found out that the yearly rate of soccer injuries had increased by 111% between 1990 and 2014. Injury is on the rise, and so is the normalisation of pain in our lives from slogans like “no pain, no gain" that are put into athletes, parents and coaches' heads. For example, a weight-lifter has been bench pressing for XX minutes and is feeling tired. They think “I’m not in pain” so I must not have gained anything, and continue to press. This may result in a much higher chance that they could injure themselves. 

 

Competitive swimmers practice as much as 7 days a week from an early age. My goal for this project is to create an app for swimmers to differentiate between being injured and being tired.

 

• Injuries can cause long term:
  • Physical limitations
  • Mobility issues
  • Pain
• My Project could:
  • Help people to know that they are injured and to know that they should stop the training
  • Increase swimming injury awareness
  • Alleviate hospital wait times  

Method

My method was to first find and make a list of injuries that could happen to competitive swimmers from various trustworthy sources. I checked all the injuries on the list to make sure that at least 2 trustworthy websites or books, such as MyHealthAlberta.ca, both said that they were injuries that could be swimming induced. Then, I made another list with questions that the app would use to determine injury’s based on signs and symptoms for each injury. I found these again off of trustworthy websites. The same rule for fact-checking was used again here. 

From the lists of questions, I went on to code my app using python. I chose to code my app in python because last summer I had begun a python coding course online on the Replit website.

I made a coding framework that is repeated for each part of the human body that only requires different information from the user in the form of questions and the hard coded responses or injuries. This allowed for more efficiency in the time needed to develop the app.

 

CODE FRAMEWORK:

 

InjuryName = 0

Tired = 0

 

def note():

  print("This is not a diagnosis just a recommendation to go see a doctor.")

 

print("Swimming Injury or Fatigue")

print()

print("This will ask you a series of questions to help you determine if you have an injury or are tired")

print()

print()

 

part = input("Where do you feel pain? x or y. : ")

 

if part == "x" or part == "X":

  question1x = input("A question that helps the program decide on an injury or being tired. : ")

  if question1x == "yes" or question1x == "Yes":

    InjuryName += 1

  else:

    Tired += 1

  

 

  if Tired >= 1:

    print("It is likely that you are just tired")

    print("Note: This is not a diagnosis if you continue to feel pain there is no harm in seeing a doctor!")

  elif InjuryName >= 1:

    print("You may have Injury Name")

    note()

 

elif part == "y" or part == "Y":

  question2y = input("A question that helps the program decide on an injury or being tired. : ")

  if question2y == "yes" or question2y == "Yes":

    InjuryName += 1

  else:

    Tired += 1

  if Tired >= 1:

    print("It is likely that you are just tired")

    print("Note: This is not a diagnosis if you continue to feel pain there is no harm in seeing a doctor!")

  elif InjuryName >= 1:

    print("You may have Injury Name")

    note()

 

 

ANALYSIS

 

Findings

As I said in my method I began with creating a list of injuries that I used to find symptoms for injuries as well as for injury names throughout the project. You can see that list beneath here.

 

After coding the app I wanted some expert advice and opinion. I talked with Kenton  Williams who is a coach for my swim team that has a major in kinesiology. He said that I had the main body parts used in swimming and helped me to create the list of which part(s) of the body that are most used in each stroke respectively. He also told me his description of injury and of post-training fatigue which helped me to develop my definition of injury vs. fatigue that I used in the app.

 

SWIMMING INJURIES

• Spine (3d most common)
  • Spondylolysis or spondylolisthesis
    • Undulating motion in Butterfly and breaststroke can cause spondylolysis or spondylolisthesis
  • Degenerative spine disk changes
  • Lumbar intervertebral injury
    • Can come from having low Muscle strength, endurance and flexibility
• Knee(2nd Most common)
  • Pattelofemoral overload
    • Intrinsic (Internal) factors can influence biomechanical stress on the knee leading to Patellofemoral overload
  • Tender femoral or tibial organ
    • Strain on medial collateral ligament
  •  Increased chance for Varus or Valgus Knee
    • Varus Knee bent outward
    • Valgus Knee bent inward
  • Swimmers knee
    • Pain comes from the hip being used unnaturally such as in the breaststroke kick
• Shoulder (Most Common)
  • Pinched nerves
    • Pain arises from the tissue around the nerve getting pinched and it sends pain signals.
  • Shoulder muscle strains
    • Pulling the muscle so that it results in the muscle tearing.
  • Shoulder labrum injuries
    • Damaging the cartilage around your shoulder (labrum).
  • Shoulder impingement syndrome
    • Pain arises from pinching the rotator cuff with the shoulder blade.

 

Limitations 

Given the short timespan of my project, the initial version of my application has some limitations that I will improve in the future. Currently, the application is hard coded and therefore it will only acknowledge injuries that are already coded into it, anything else will be not acknowledged. In addition, I have not tested the application with competitive swimmers. Ideally I would be able to arrange for a swim club to try this out over the course of a year to determine the accuracy.

Implications
The next steps that I would choose to take are to test the app on real people and discover its accuracy rate. As I said in the limitations I hope to have a swim club test it out for a year. Additionally I would like to add more injuries to the app so that it does not diagnose a false injury. Future versions of the application could also leverage AI to also access a wider source of documentation in providing results and diagnoses.

CONCLUSION

 

My conclusion is that my app worked as I designed it to and delivered recommendations to the user to seek medical care . However It does not have a wide range of injuries programmed into it so it will not acknowledge many injuries.

 

If I had more time to work on my project I would try to test it with a swim club to find its accuracy. I also would program more injuries to try and boost its accuracy rate significantly. Lastly I would try to arrange to meet with a doctor to get more information and opinions.

 

 REFERENCES

MyHealth.Alberta.ca, https://myhealth.alberta.ca/.

John, Tommy. Minimize Injury, Maximize Performance A Sport Parents Survival Guide. New York, Da Capo Press, 2018.

^{Lynn, Alan. Swimming: Technique, Training, Competition Strategy. Crowood, 2006.}

^{“100 Days of Code - The Complete Python Course.” Replit, https://replit.com/learn/100-days-of-python/hub?utm_source=widget}

^{Smith, N.A, et al. “Soccer-Related Injuries Treated in Emergency Departments:1990-2014.” Pediatrics, vol. 138, no. 4, 2016.}

^{Walker, Brad. The Anatomy of Sports Injuries: Your Illustrated Guide to Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment. Lotus Publishing, 2012.} 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the following people for helping me with my project:

Kenton Williams, George Mathew, Jennifer Hodgins and Julie Girard.