{"id":134244,"date":"2018-02-14T10:10:30","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T15:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=134244"},"modified":"2018-02-19T11:27:23","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T16:27:23","slug":"wearable-technologies-help-olympians-achieve-top-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2018\/02\/wearable-technologies-help-olympians-achieve-top-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Wearable Technologies Help Olympians Achieve Top Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Fitbits and other\u00a0wearable activity monitors<\/a>\u00a0change how regular people exercise and track their activity, they\u2019re having similar effects on how Olympians train and recover between workouts.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s long been common for\u00a0coaches to use video cameras<\/a>\u00a0to show athletes what their form and movements look like, to track progress, and to fine-tune exactly the right technique for, say, taking off for a jump or landing after a particular trick. But those only show what\u2019s going on from the outside.<\/p>\n

Now, wearables, biometrics, and apps analyzing their data are becoming much more common for athletes at all levels, giving indications of what\u2019s going on inside an athlete\u2019s body. I have worked as a sport physiologist with elite athletes for two decades, including with\u00a0USA Swimming<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0U.S. Figure Skating<\/a>; there\u2019s not yet much research about the results in figure skating, but\u00a0wearables have helped coaches<\/a>, athletes, and sport scientists in other sports like swimming, cycling, soccer, and volleyball.<\/p>\n

Beating how fast?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most basic measurement of\u00a0how hard an athlete\u2019s body is working<\/a>\u00a0is how fast her heart is beating; many wearable devices track their user\u2019s heart rate in real time. Trainers can measure how fast an athlete\u2019s\u00a0heart beats during maximum exertion<\/a>\u00a0in a test on a treadmill, or skating increasingly fast across the rink.<\/p>\n

Then, during workouts, a coach can determine how hard the athlete is working by\u00a0comparing his real-time heart rate<\/a>\u00a0to his maximum. When a person\u2019s heart is beating almost as fast as it can, that\u2019s pushing nearly as hard as a person\u2019s body can. When an athlete\u2019s heart rate is\u00a0closer to half its maximum<\/a>, the body is working at an intensity that allows the skater to recover from more demanding efforts. By tuning the workout to keep the athlete\u2019s heart rate in certain ranges for certain periods, a coach or sport scientist can optimize both exertion and recovery time. That way, the body\u2019s muscles and cardiovascular system are well trained and\u00a0in top form for competition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How many landings?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Figure skaters and many snowboarders and skiers are among those whose competitive performances include jumps \u2013 which means they have to practice intensively for each one. Those leaps, and their landings, exert enormous amounts of stress on athletes\u2019 bodies \u2013 ranging from\u00a0eight to 14 times<\/a>\u00a0the person\u2019s body weight for a brief moment. A 100-pound skater who jumps 50 times in a typical daily workout for five training days is loading 160 tons of cumulative weight on her bones during that training week. The forces are absorbed by muscles and bones in the feet and legs, as well as the torso.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot of stress, and a lot of potential for injury. In figure skating, for example,\u00a070 percent of injuries are from overuse<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 primarily from the accumulated effects of those impacts. Wearable monitors can track\u00a0how many jumps a person takes<\/a>\u00a0and measure the rotational, gravitational, and other\u00a0forces involved in the jumps and landings<\/a>. These readings can help coaches ensure athletes develop strength and endurance, while warning of potential for injury.<\/p>\n

More sophisticated\u00a0biosensors embedded in clothing<\/a>\u00a0keep track of an athlete\u2019s body temperature, movement and breathing rate, and other data, also helping coaches fine-tune workouts to optimize performance.<\/p>\n

Getting enough rest?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Crucial elements of Olympians\u2019 top performance come while away from practice sessions \u2013 including when they\u2019re eating and sleeping. Athletes can use\u00a0smartphone apps to record what they eat<\/a>\u00a0and when, tracking how many calories they take in, as well as amounts of nutrients like proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.<\/p>\n

Similarly,\u00a0sleep-tracking devices<\/a>\u00a0use accelerometers to track a person\u2019s movements \u2013 and sometimes heart and breathing rates \u2013 while they\u2019re asleep. The data can reveal indicators of\u00a0how well the person rested<\/a>, such as how much a person moved around in bed at night. That can help coaches choose appropriate workouts depending on how tired an athlete is.<\/p>\n

Wearables make available all these data \u2013 about nutrition, exertion, stress forces, rest, and recovery \u2013 that coaches and athletes alike can use to improve training, boost performance, and, ideally, make it to the top of a medal podium.<\/p>\n

Originally published in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Wearables, biometrics, and apps analyzing data are becoming much more common for athletes at all levels, giving indications of what\u2019s going on inside an athlete\u2019s body, says a UConn professor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":134248,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1712,2224,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[175],"class_list":["post-134244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","category-cahnr","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 16:33:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134244"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134455,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134244\/revisions\/134455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/134248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134244"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=134244"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=134244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}