Research Projects

Research groups and projects are diverse. Some are led by individual faculty, and some are team-based.

Dublin Replication: Landing Biomechanics

The purpose of this project is to collect new data based on the procedures and methods of original studies and compare the results. Specifically, the ankle dorsiflexion angle at peak vertical ground reaction force during landing. This will be accomplished using the Vicon 3D motion capturing, Noraxon wireless EMG, and AMTI force-plate systems.

This research project is a replication study that will contribute to a large-scale international replication project in sports and exercise science whose overall aim is to produce high level systematic and transparent replication trials of experimental trials published within the last five years in top tier sports and exercise science journals using a randomized, unbiased selection method.

Previous replication projects, the Reproducibility Project in Psychology and the Many Labs Project, ignited the debate on the replication crisis in social science due to their difficulty in replicating selected effects and the variability in results. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the sports science field and the overlap with the psychological sciences, there is reason to believe the sports science field faces similar replication issues (Caldwell et al., 2020). The replicability of sports science research has yet to be examined despite the identification of concerns within the field (Halperin et al., 2018; Heneghan et al., 2012; Knudson, 2017).

Project Leads: Dr. Michael Rowley and Dr. Vanessa Yingling

Contact Information: vanessa.yingling@csueastbay.edu

Dance Biomechanics

Dancers suffer from a high rate of musculoskeletal injury with many of these injuries being of a
chronic, overuse type. Injuries like these can be devastating to artist-athletes who rely on dance not only as a recreational hobby but many times as a sole source of income. To reduce the burden of injury in dance and to improve dancer health and wellness, research programs and international professional organizations devoted to investigating causes, prevention, and rehabilitation of these injuries have developed and grown over the last few decades.

Unfortunately, there has been bias and inequity in the representation of dancers and dance genres in the research community, with the vast majority of studies investigating the ballet dance genre. When researchers focus on this subset of movers, they also focus on injuries and musculoskeletal problems unique to this group. These biases lead to inequities in access to evidence-based health care for dancers of under-represented genres such as hip-hop, tap, jazz, African styles, Indigenous traditional dances, and more.

We aim to investigate under-represented dance genres to identify foundational elements present in their movement styles and traditional choreography. These efforts will allow us to create normative data sets with large numbers of subjects (dancers of different training histories and experience levels as well as movers without formal dance training). In the long-term, we hope this will reduce inequities in access to research-based information about musculoskeletal injury and rehabilitation for dancers and the healthcare workers who treat them.

Contact Information: michael.rowley@csueastbay.edu  

Silver Fox: Lower Limb Power Relationships to Bone Health, Lean Body Mass, and Cognition in Older Adults

People in the U.S, are living longer, but the extra years of life are often accompanied by physical disabilities due to the loss of muscle power and lean body mass, these losses being further compromised by loss of bone mineral density (BMD) and bone strength. Muscle power is critical to functional ability, independent living, and quality of life. Additionally, significant associations between cognitive function and handgrip strength have been reported in older adults, however no studies have assessed the relationship of muscular power and cognitive function. Handgrip strength is a commonly used assessment of overall strength, but does not reflect a functional movement associated with activities of daily living nor is it a measure of power. However, a sit-to-stand chair test (STS), representing a functional movement, has been recently validated as a safe and easily used measure of lower limb power in older adults (Sherwood et al., 2019). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to assess the relationship of lower limb power as assessed by the functional STS to BMD, bone strength, lean body mass, and cognition in the older population.

Sit-To-Stand as a Muscular Power Measure in Older Adults

Contact Information: jennifer.sherwood@csueastbay.edu or cathy.inouye@csueastbay.edu

Quality of Life Effects of an Exercise Program for Adults with Aphasia

Aphasia is a communicative disorder resulting from a brain injury or stroke. Aphasia may affect both comprehension and language. Exercise has been shown to improve stroke outcomes and benefit aphasia therapy yet people with aphasia report significant barriers to physical activity. During the COVID-19 shelter-in-place, we have been working with the Speech, Language, and Pathology Aphasia Treatment Program to develop an on-line exercise program appropriate for adults with aphasia. The purpose of this work is to assess physical activity, quality of life, and strength effects for participants with aphasia participating in this exercise program.

Contact: jennifer.sherwood@csueastbay.edu or albert.mendoza@csueastbay.edu

The Research-to-Practice Gap (R2PG) in Sport Imagery Training

Team members: Dr. Jenny O (sport psychology and motor learning), Frank Ely (CSUEB KIN alumni & PhD student @ University of Windsor, ON Canada)

We are looking for: Two (2) undergraduate students to deliver imagery training to participants and to collect sport skill execution data (video recording). Doing this work for graded Independent Study units (3 units) is possible, depending on your time commitment.

Project description: Much evidence exists supporting the significant benefits of teaching athletes how to use various psychological skills (e.g., imagery, goal setting, coping, attention control, etc.; Weinberg & Gould, 2014). Ideally, psychological skills training (PST) should be structured such that it aligns with ‘best practice’ recommendations (i.e., recommendations grounded in theoretical and research evidence; e.g., O, Munroe-Chandler, Hall, & Hall, 2013). The R2PG represents the disconnect between sport science and sport practice, and indeed, it has been recognized that a significant R2PG exists in sport psychology (e.g., O, Ely, & Magalas, 2019). On one hand, PST researchers often have limited interaction (directly or indirectly) with coaches and athletes. On the other hand, coaches and athletes often face difficulty implementing best-practice-based PST with their athletes due to time and knowledge constraints (i.e., real world feasibility; e.g., Ely, O, & Munroe-Chandler, 2020). As a result, much of the PST implemented with athletes lacks significant alignment with current best practices. Our project focuses on identifying whether it is possible to strike some reasonable balance between alignment with PST best practices and real world feasibility (i.e., time and knowledge required to teach people a psychological skill). We will be training individuals on one particular psychological skill: imagery (i.e., using deliberate and realistic ‘mental movies’ to prime or refine sport learning and/or performance). Training groups will vary in the degree of best practice alignment with sport imagery training and usage literature. It is hypothesized that at least a moderate level of best practice alignment is required to achieve significant sport skill learning effects.

Contact: Dr. Jenny O (jenny.o@csueastbay.edu or on Slack @jenny.o)

Myth Busters group

“Myth Busters” is a project that is developed to expose and strengthen students’ research skills by expanding their ability to search, evaluate, synthesize, and disseminate information on a specific “myth” in Kinesiology. There is a plethora of information available on the internet that anyone can access but sometimes this information comes from unreliable sources. These unreliable sources can then further spread false information that can become rooted in “common knowledge” in fitness and exercise.

The literature reviews for “Myth Busters” are available on the Open Science Frameworks website  

Contact: vanessa.yingling@csueastbay.edu

Exercise is Medicine on-campus group

Generate awareness of the health benefits of increased physical activity and to create a culture of wellness on campus.

Contact:  Michael Sam or Dr. Jennifer Sherwood