Athletes like the U.S. Track and Field team are going digital in their training
With the Olympics beginning and the NFL season fast approaching, this seemed like an appropriate time to discuss the ways in which athletes are using analytics for tracking their progress and training efforts. Below are a couple examples of the emerging high-tech methods and gadgets in fitness.
Denver Broncos
The Denver Broncos new strength and conditioning coach, Luke Richesson, is tracking everything from what the players eat to how they sleep. He even has them suited with heart monitors for every work out to record their progress and monitor their recovery time. This way they can instantly see any changes and can more easily determine the cause. He goes on to note that he believes there is such a thing as overtraining and through his data he can track any “diminishing returns.”
For more, read this article from the Denver Post
Olympic Athletes
Companies developing new gadgets for recording personal fitness data are donating their products to athletes to test and provide feedback. Olympic athletes, like the track cycling team from the U.S., are participating in these trials and are using this new technology to discover patterns in their health that may aid in enhancing their performance. The companies are hoping to not only gain the athlete’s fitness data, but to learn from these athletes what new features may be needed in order to market these gadgets to the public in the future.
Read more here
The iPerformance app lets you access loads of fitness data at your finger tips
Sports Psychology Phone App
The U.S. Track and Field sports psychologist Dr. Steve Portenga, recently released a new sport and performance psychology app, called iPerformance psychology. Based on the idea of how to maximize sports performance beyond physical skills, Portenga created this app to help athletes “develop the basic psychological and performance skills necessary for consistent performance.” This app is a way for athletes to maintain a personalized method to reach peak performance. As Portenga puts it, “in your hand you can now hold years of mentoring from the best sport psychology consultants, years of work as a professor in one of the most highly regarded graduate programs, and years of experience working with some of the best athletes in the USA and the world!”
Check it out for yourself (it’s only $4.99)
