Wearable technology and sports

According to a study by Forbes in 2014, 71 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds want wearable tech. From digital clothing to smart watches, wearable technology is playing a growing role in all over the world. Now in Sports also, premiership football teams are now allowed to use wearable devices during games, although the data gathered can't be applied in real-time.

Analysis of data transmitted to the cloud from increasingly sophisticated sensors is helping professional athletes keep their health at the peak of physical fitness. Southampton FC makes its players wear GPS units during training. Alek Gross, the club's head of sports science says, "Players have experienced fewer soft tissue and overuse injuries since introducing the tech."

Players wear Catapult Sport's OptimEye S5 device, which collects data relating to acceleration, direction, position and, crucially, the impact of collisions. These sensors can collect 800-900 data points per second. Players also wear Polar heart rate monitors during conditioning sessions and circuit weight training, to monitor response to the training load.

Scott Drawer, formerly Rugby Football Union's performance manager says, "It may be that they have been using the data in a much smarter way to rest, rotate and recover players appropriately. They are able to have their best players available a lot more, so there are no doubt some of their processes are helping them to do that."

Apart from Football, Rugby has also been a big convert to this type of analysis. Many clubs in UK rugby union's Aviva Premiership has adopted the tech, with players wearing GPS units between their shoulder blades to measure speed and distance covered while training and playing.

"Heavier rugby players often find that if they run over a certain distance in a week they can inflame an Achilles', so some want to spend more time off their feet to maintain fitness and minimize injury risk. Wearable technology is able to monitor that load on a day-by-day basis to ensure those players are not just injury-free but in peak condition for competition," explains Corin Palmer, head of rugby operations for Premiership Rugby.

"Providing these athletes with a clear picture of their performance at training compared with what is required in competition at the highest level can be a real eye-opener for them and helps them to gain a complete understanding of what is required to perform at their best," says Andrew Gray, physical performance manager at Australian rugby league club.

"You can see the coaches with laptops in the stands; they have a constant live feed on each player, their fatigue index, collision load, distance covered et cetera. This can allow them to make in-game decisions regarding substitutions or injuries," says Richard Byrne, a business administrator at StatSports, another tracking device manufacturer.