Comparison of Power Output Estimates in Treadmill Roller-Skiing

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare various power output estimates and estimate anaerobic energy supply during treadmill roller-skiing. Roller-skiing sprint time-trial performance on a treadmill was compared to numerical simulations of three different power output estimates; non-inertial power estimate (NIP), inertial power estimate (IP), and optimization power estimate (OP). The OP was in best agreement with the measured speed of the skier. However, the IP was in better agreement with the measured finishing time of the real time trial, which may suggest that the IP better approximated the mean power than the other two estimates. Moreover, the NIP and IP are more simplistic than the OP and thereby more practical from a scientific standpoint. Based on this we recommend the use of the IP estimate.

Keywords

• power output estimate
• roller skiing
• cross-country skiing
• anaerobic component
• motion equation
• power balance