Research Projects

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


Kid-Muscle-Bone project

200 million people worldwide suffer from osteoporosis. The opportunity to optimize bone strength is during adolescence, however, the tools that we currently have to monitor bone health during youth involve radiation and therefore are not feasible for the general healthy population. This project will investigate the use of power calculated from a maximal vertical jump to determine bone health in youth 10-14 years of age.

Open Source

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Peak power and body mass as indices of bone loading in a healthy adult population 

Exercise is good for bone strength. Body mass is a strong determinant of bone strength since as we increase body mass the loading on the skeletal system increases.  Yet a better indicator of loading on our bones may be a neuromuscular performance task such as a vertical jump. Therefore the purpose of this study is to examine whether peak vertical jump power at take-off is a more appropriate index of skeletal loading than body mass.

Open Source 

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Female Volleyball Players: A within-subject controlled model of the lower limb

High impact loading common in some sports affects bone structure that may influence bone strength across a lifetime. A within-subject controlled model for studying lower limb bone adaptation to loading is needed, especially in females. Weatherholt and Warden (2016) examined male jump athletes as a potential model reporting small side-to-side bone strength differences in the tibia. Volleyball may serve as a within-subject model of the lower limb due to the high-impact jumps that are common in the sport. 

The purpose of this study is to determine bilateral differences in bone architecture and strength of the tibia and fibula in DII female volleyball players

Open Source

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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: or


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: or


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 ( 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  

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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.