Wow! Since the kick off of the European Championships (UEFA) in France, summer 2016 seems to be extremely hot.. Every four years, the national teams of Europe come together to fight for the championships. But it’s not all about European soccer this summer, the heat is actually coming from COPA America. So half of the world is getting exhited about soccer at the moment! How does an athlete train to reach their peak performance, and remain in good condition throughout the championships?
One answer is for sure wearable technology. As you may know, this allows for improvement of performance for both individuals and teams. The story of the Champion German National Team 2 years ago is still the great inspiration for technological assistance in coaching soccer. Last year FIFA announced the creation of a standard wearable device for world Soccer. Let WT | Wearable Technologies reveal some of these new devices!
Viper Pod
Viper Pod is the world’s leading performance monitoring tool for football. It includes building sensors into clothes that players can wear on the training ground or even in matches. Moreover, Viper Pod is packed with a GPS module, a series of motion sensors and a heart rate receiver. Therefore, it is able to monitor valuable metrics such as distance, speed, acceleration, step balance and heart rate. It can also report collisions and give players a fatigue index.
Dash
Dash is a tiny sport wearable sensor that improves your skills by measuring every move. The Dash wearable sensor provides instant data regarding speed during the game, distance covered and heart rate. Besides the key performance data, Dash stands out by taking control the game through it’s connected app. The Dash app interfaces with the sensor take the data and displays it in a playful manner on leader boards and score charts. However, the Dash team reveals there is much more to come.
Qualcomm Smart Legging
Qualcomm just entered wearable sector with the announcement of smart legging for Soccer in Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2016. For this project, Qualcomm co-operated with AiQ Smart Clothing – a long time partner for WT | Wearable Technologies. The leggings are built with 5 sensors strategically positioning at knee, ankle and base of the spine of the clothing. It tracks the postures and positioning at the pitch while playing. And then, the players’ data will be sent to a Smartphone to coaches via Bluetooth. Moreover, the smart leggings enable to measure vital biometric data, for example, heart rate and respiration.
Inside Coach
InsideCoach has an idea of turning the ball into smart one which is the perfect training tool for players or coaches. The smart ball contains motion detection technology that records force of impact, spin, position, trajectory, number of ball passes, number of ball touches and play time. After that, the data will be sent directly to mobiles in real time. Thus, players can be their own coach on the field.
Sport vest
GPSports’ Vest as known as “the man bra” is an activity tracking shirt from GPSports. Yes, it is not a new idea of a smart shirt that can track activity in sport. However, this shirt shocks us all because of its mass tracking with one wearable. GPSports’ Vest can track around 150 football teams and their performance. The smart vest has a built –in slot which is designed for GPS enabled High Performance Unit. On another hand, it enables heart rate monitoring, chest strap and accelerometer. All the data (heart rate, speed, density) is instantly uploaded to GPS software.
Wearable Experiments
Last but not least, WT | Wearable Technologies has something for Soccer fans. Wearable Experiments created a fan jersey that will surely make you feel the game and enhance your experiences. Haptic technology is embedded on the shirt that connects fans with the game through touch. By doing this, the football fan shirts are physically and digitally connecting you to your favourite team in a brand new way that has never done before.
Football Fan Shirt from Wearable Experiments on Vimeo.
We are already half way through UEFA 2016! The matches are getting pretty intense and furious at the moment. Who do you think will be the European Champion this season?
Me? I go for the world champion : German National Team!
