How ‘wearables’ are becoming game-changers in pro sport

We are living in a world where big data is going to help change lives for the better.

There has been a remarkable advancement into ‘wearable’ technologies that measure heart rate, oxygen levels, step count, athlete energy expenditure, calories burnt, quality of sleep and mental state, and soon even blood pressure.

‘Wearables’ are fast becoming popular on a mass adoption level because with data and feedback, you can make better-calculated decisions regarding how hard you should push, when to recover and how to train smarter.

When you add the Iot – internet of things – artificial intelligence, and super computers, eventually you may hear a little voice in the morning telling you to drink two glasses of water because you were dehydrated from training yesterday and your body temperature is abnormally elevated and that you need to take it easy for the next 48 hours because you might be coming down with a cold.

Before you even get down to the clubhouse, your club sports scientist is giving you a call in the morning recommending a healthy smoothy rich in vitamins to help fight your cold.

Athletes just want to perform and don’t want to worry about the thinking process needed to run their bodies at optimal and peak performance.

Therefore professional clubs have teams of experienced staff looking after their players.

Automated future

In the future, most of this information will be automated, which will prompt the player with feedback and advice to help guide behaviour.

There is a big reason why professional athletes get advice from sports scientists rather than personal trainers.

A personal trainer does a six months to a year course, and then they are seen as the gym experts.

Sports scientists have a minimum of two degrees, and to get snapped up by a big club, you need years of experience and a successful track record of teams you worked for who have also achieved success.

The is an area where “wearable” lacks even with the new blood pressure watch technology and devices that measure markers in your blood and sweat.

This often requires expert and costly equipment, which makes access to the masses quite tricky.

A team of brilliant individuals at the University of Tokyo has found a way to measure lactate levels through a wearable device rather than traditional methods of drawing blood for measurement.

The role of oxygen

Oxygen is needed in your muscles during exercise because it plays an essential role in energy production.

As you increase the intensity of exercise, oxygen is limited and the body temporarily covers pyruvate into a substance called lactate, which allows glucose breakdown and energy production to continue.

The lactic threshold is when the amount of lactate accumulates in your bloodstream faster than it can be removed.

When your threshold is reached, your muscles’ ability to contract is hindered.

The ability for endurance athletes to sustain a balanced level is the difference between not finishing a race and winning a title.

It is physically impossible to draw blood from a cyclist while he is on a bike during the Tour de France but imagine now if your coach could guide you to say, you are pushing too hard right now, and you have about 30 seconds before your blood lactate levels reach critical concentrate.

If a cyclist knew this game-changing piece of data during a race, he could make a better decision as to when to push or fall behind and recharge by reducing lactate levels.

This feedback will also equip professional teams with the markers on when to rotate players at critical times.

Fatigue, combined with critical lactate levels means the athletes’ muscles to fire “contract” and “relax” are not functioning at optimal levels, which places the athlete at a greater risk of injury.

Measuring lactate

Dr Isao Shitanda, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo in the pure and applied chemistry department, discovered a way to measure lactate through sweat.

Your body must try to get rid of lactate, and it does so through sweating.

An ingenious method of using printable electrodes allows for a wearable chemical sensor to be applied to the skin, which can give real-time data of the intensity of exercise and the condition of muscles.

This was achieved with a microfluid sweat collection system which comprises small inlets, an outlet and space in-between for the sensor, which provided suitable to measuring lactic threshold.

Real-world trials are underway and will hopefully make their way into the market soon.

This will be the game-changer of the century for athletes, coaches, and even teams, because the more data one has, the better you are definitely able to plan for success.