Sprinting, swerving and weaving is a matter of agility

© 2022 EPFL Alain Herzog, Célestin Vallat wears the sensor on his back Summer series - Master's project. Soccer, tennis, skiing and many other sports involve changes of direction. For these athletes, performance hinges on speed and agility. Anything but running straight toward the goal! EPFL student Celestin Vallat has just completed his Master's project in mechanical engineering. As part of a collaborative research project with MotionLab, a Lausanne-based sports performance center, he monitored 25 professional soccer players at FC Lausanne-Sport to analyze how they performed when changing direction. The players had to complete a test consisting of five different exercises - sprinting, running backward, swerving to the right, swerving back to the left, and crouching down - all while touching cones along the way and all as quickly as possible. "The ability to change direction is important in many sports: dribbling in soccer, reaching a ball from all corners of the court in tennis, and executing movements in disciplines such as badminton and skiing," says Vallat.