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Quantifying Head Impacts in Elite Muay Thai: A Case Study Using Instrumented Mouthguards
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Quantifying Head Impacts in Elite Muay Thai: A Case Study Using Instrumented Mouthguards

Luke Del Vecchio, Mike Climstein and Daniel A. Brown
Sports, Vol.14(3), pp.1-16
11/03/2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/sports14030111
PMID: 41893602
Appears in  Recent Faculty of Health Publications
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Abstract

combat sports athlete monitoring head impacts sensor-equipped mouthguards
Instrumented mouthguards (iMGs) enable in vivo monitoring of head-impact exposure by reporting event-level peak linear acceleration (PLA) and peak angular acceleration (PAA) in contact sports. This case study describes head impacts in a world-class Muay Thai fighter during routine sparring sessions over a two-week period leading into a competitive bout. Seven sparring sessions were monitored using an iMG (PROTeQT, HitIQ), and only manufacturer (in-mouth)-flagged events above the device’s 8 g trigger threshold were analyzed. Event-level data were exported from the manufacturer portal; raw time-series signals and proprietary signal-processing parameters were not accessible, and no independent video verification was performed. Across the camp, 590 impacts were recorded. Mean PLA values were modest across sessions (7.6 to 19.5 g), with one event exceeding 106 g (max PLA 162.2 g). In contrast, PAA exhibited greater variability, with multiple device-flagged events exceeding 7900 rad/s2, particularly in Sessions 4, 6, and 7, where maximum PAA values reached 19,862 to 26,850 rad/s2. Overall, these data indicate that sparring was predominantly low in translational loading, while occasionally producing high recorded rotational peaks. Because outputs are device- and processing-pipeline-specific and were not independently verified, threshold-based severity banding and extreme peaks should be interpreted cautiously. This case demonstrates the potential utility of iMG monitoring to characterize session-to-session variability in sparring exposure and to inform practical sparring load management strategies aimed at reducing cumulative head-impact burden.

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