Coaching perspectives on the latest sports technology

It’s no secret that technology is well on the way to revolutionising the world of sports coaching. That is, of course, if you don’t believe that it has already started the revolution. Indeed, leading coaches from the worlds of football, skiing and snowboarding are already using technology to change the way they work in their chosen fields.

Coaching perspectives on the latest sports technology

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Skiing and Snowboarding

Using wireless networking technology, the United States snowboarding and freeskiing coaching team have developed a portable video system that fits inside a small backpack. Individual athletes can use this system to review their own performances, and compare with others, on iPhones and iPads via a closed network.

As the only team in the world currently making use of this technology, the team feel that this gives them a huge advantage in training, as well as a competitive edge on race day.
For those of us who don’t have the backing of the US national team behind us, Ubersense is a consumer focused app that is equally valuable and allows amateurs and professionals alike to share their video clips, and feedback, online.

Football

Heart rate monitors, video analysis and GPS are the top tech tools that leading football coaches recommend for improving the fortunes of a flagging squad.

Recovery monitoring is a vital part of measuring fitness and particularly recovery from long-term injury. This is an area where wearable heart-rate monitors come into their own.
Video analysis and GPS, meanwhile, really excel by providing data that simply would not otherwise be available, about every movement of every player during each and every moment of a match or training session. These technologies allow not just in-depth post-match analysis, but also facilitate better-informed live decision-making about substitutions and better monitoring of in-game incidents to keep players safe.

Applying these technologies to other sports

Whether you want to use GPS to monitor the performance of your team carrying out netball drills or Ubersense to compare your players against standards you’ve downloaded from, for example, http://www.sportplan.net/ for netball drill videos, each of these technologies is also applicable to a whole range of other sports.

More and more new and exciting sports technologies are being developed all the time, to assist players and coaches alike in raising their game, so who knows what will come along tomorrow.