For many athletes, the Olympics are the pinnacle of physical achievement. Reaching the Games requires tremendous sacrifice and hard work – and wearable technology is an integral part of ensuring competitors’ effort isn’t in vain.
By tracking performance, athletes can work smarter and harder to achieve their goals. Wearables fill in the gap between what athletes tell coaches, what coaches see and what actually takes place on the field of play. Leveraging this data allows coaches to build a tailored plan to go for the gold.
In this post, we’ll take a closer look at wearable technology that is helping athletes up their game.
Badminton smart eyewear
Badminton is played on a court nearly half the size of a tennis court with a small projectile moving twice as fast as a tennis ball. Olympic-level competitors in the sport possess the footwork of ballerinas, the shrewdness of chess grandmasters and the racket skills of Grand Slam champions. But one of the most important aspects of a player’s game is their visual ability – a skill that’s more challenging to train than speed, agility or strength.
Hitting an effective shot in badminton requires many different systems of the body to work in concert: the player must have their feet set correctly and legs bent to generate enough power, grip the racket at the right place with the appropriate pressure and, finally, have the torso rotated and arms angled correctly to hit the projectile.
But this is based on how the player synthesises the movement of their opposition with their picking up the shuttlecock in their line of vision to assess where it will land and how they should respond. To analyse players’ gaze, behaviour and processing, some have experimented with glasses that track line of sight combined with video to get a more complete picture of how players literally see the game. Combining these gives players and coaches an analysis of what shots players struggle with and allows them to develop a strategy for improving their eye habits.
One method for improving eyesight is a subset of vision training called sports vision, which often involves using virtual reality (VR) headsets. These VR headsets facilitate specialised drills and games designed to improve the various elements that comprise vision skills, including processing, depth perception, reaction time, hand-eye coordination, peripheral vision and visual memory. Armed with these new tools, badminton players can explore and improve new elements of their game.
Cycling, running, swimming, rowing head-up displays
‘Keep your eye on the ball’ is one of the main tenets of athletics – even in ones that don’t have a ball. Having to take attention away from the task at hand to look at a smart watch or cycling computer can cost athletes time and put them in danger, which is why many competitors have integrated smart eyewear into their training.
The manufacturers of sport goggles and glasses are beginning to integrate data-rich heads-up displays that display mission critical key metrics into eyewear. The information shown is customisable and includes options like heart rate, pace, cadence, speed, distance, calories burned and lap number.
In swimming, the technology also gives feedback on form, with insight on head pitch, peak head roll and time to neutral. Giving athletes easy and live access to metrics allows them to adjust their training on the fly to the predetermined goals set by coaches.
Typically, smart eyewear leverages an ecosystem including smartphones, heart rate monitors, smart watches and sport-specific devices such as power meters and inertial measurement units.
Fencing and Taekwondo scoring systems
Scoring in fencing and Taekwondo is simple: competitors are rewarded points for strikes that land to their opponent’s head (in 2/3 fencing disciplines) and body. But the sports are fast-paced and tough to track with the human eye, making them perfect use cases for involving technology in scoring.
In Taekwondo, punches are worth one point, kicks to the torso are worth two points, kicks to the head are worth three points, and a spin with either kick adds an additional two points. Since the sport added electronic sensors to the customary trunk, foot, hand and head protection gear, scoring the sport has become much easier. Most of the hard work for matches is done and now competitors can practice without having to rely on someone to keep score.
Although the scoring in fencing is much different, the same technological concepts apply. With sensors on the jacket, blade and headgear of competitors, it’s easy to tell which fencer has scored a hit first. Taking things a step further, headgear also lights up when a valid touch has been made. Considering that the tip of a fencing weapon is the second-fastest moving projectile (next to a bullet), this technology is instrumental to ensuring fair, accurate scoring.
Field sports GPS vests
If you watch sports like football or basketball, there’s one piece of wearable technology you’ve probably noticed already: the vests so many teams are wearing under their uniforms and training gear. It’s not a fashion statement; it’s a vital piece of equipment packed with sensors, accelerometers, gyroscopes and GPS/LPS tracking.
GPS vests have become crucial to managing teams. They measure heart rate, speed, field position, impact force and distance covered to build a 360-degree view of player exertion. It’s important to remember that games are just a small fraction of the work athletes do on the field, so players wear these vests during training, too.
All of this data builds a complete picture on how ready a team is to compete, and lets coaches dive into individual player needs to track when they need days off and when they can be pushed to greatness. Using the accompanying software enables coaches to monitor workloads to ensure that a team is peaking at the right time and avoids overwork injuries along the way.
The Olympic sports that utilise GPS vests are numerous, including field hockey, football, volleyball, cricket and basketball to name a few.
Gymnastics sensors
The ancient sport of gymnastics is captivating. It’s a competition defined by the margins – a step, trip or wrong angle can separate the winners from the losers. Moments like these where the fate of the gymnast literally hangs in midair are what makes the sport so exciting. Unfortunately, the acrobatics and skill required of its elite competitors are also what make it so dangerous.
Since it premiered at the first modern Olympics in 1896, artistic gymnastics has undergone huge changes, many aimed at increasing the safety of its competitors. Modifications to the discipline often involve utilising technology to change the equipment the athletes use. In some ways, chalk and wrist supports can be thought of as early ‘wearable technology’ to reduce injury.
One of the latest methods involves putting sensors on athletes to assess the stress and exertion their body experiences in the sport. The resulting data allows the sport’s two official testing facilities to assess new surfaces, equipment, materials and designs that create less impact to gymnasts and help them lead longer, more injury-free careers.
What’s next for wearables
Wearable technology clearly has woven its place into the fabric of the Olympics, offering unprecedented insights and advantages to athletes, coaches and sports scientists alike. Looking into the future of the Games, the integration of wearables will only deepen, driving further innovations in performance analytics, injury prevention and personalised training.
These advancements promise not only to elevate the level of competition but also to ensure the health and longevity of athletes' careers. In this era of rapid technological evolution, wearables are more than just gadgets – they are essential tools that empower athletes to achieve their Olympic dreams and set new records on the global stage.
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