Podcast 21: Kathrin Neuhofer, Sport Scientist at German Skiing Association

? In the twenty first episode (in English) of “Thermography: Science, Health and Sport” we introduce Kathrin Neuhofer, Sports Scientist at German Skiing Association, Germany.

⛷ Kathrin Neuhofer, Sports Scientist at German Skiing Association, applies thermography in their skiers as a tool to monitoring load and also in the rehabilitation process. Besides, she applies her own system to evaluate pre-training and post-training to ascertain which muscles are working during the practices.

? For her is all about load monitoring.

Transcription

(Ismael Fernandez): “In your opinion which will be the pros and cons?”

(Kathrin Neuhofer): “I think,overall it is great to get like a really detailed picture of an athlete without even have to test it and that you have to really get into the whole practice progress, because a lot of time we do a really testing and it is taking time away from your practice time and you have to take care about the whole week that is loaded and I really like that, because it is really easy. It is just before you start with your practice, It´d be like: “Hey, just quickly get undressed and we take the pictures”. I think it was overall maximum 5 minutes per athlete, I really like that one and, of course, at first it was kind of odd, it’s like: “Hey, you have to get undressed” but that works pretty good, pretty fast and you really had the results after taking the pictures within minutes. So I think that was really great, I was very impressed about how sensitive the technology is, and of course we really need that because if you are talking about minimal changes in your body and minimal changes before even the person itself recognizes it, the technology really has to be sensitive.”

(Ismael Fernandez): “I have another question because obviously what we suggest is normally taking pictures before the practice or the treatment, but obviously you were also applying after training and even during the day, my question is: did you experience any major changing between results done before training or after training?”

(Kathrin Neuhofer): “I mean overall the body temperature was higher after the practice of course than before. I think that really makes sense and we exercised before we had two athletes with former knee injuries and what we could that the temperature in the area which they were injured was rising more than the other areas, which is of course when you are still in the rehabilitation process which is absolutely natural to happen, but of course, that it is something we could experience. And we have even seen that you can really see what kind of area they have been training, with some strength and conditioning practices with focus for example on the trunk, you could see that. We have some athletes who had some arm injuries, it is something that is happening a lot unfortunately in ski when you have an accident, especially in the knees or you have hip problems but also the hands are breaking and arms are breaking so we could see that and even see where the injury was taken place, and really zoom in and see differences in temperature and that was really interesting”.

(Kathrin Neuhofer): “But that would be great: “To see more people using thermography, more people applying that and I would love to see that the topic is more prominent, especially in the German speaking area”, because I think not a lot of people really know about that and I think it’s a really interesting field and I really enjoyed working with that and I would really love to see more people talking about thermography and even using that”.

“I really enjoyed working with that and I would really love to see more people talking about thermography and even using that”.

Kathrin Neuhofer, Sport Scientist at German Skiing Association