The U.S. women’s soccer team has a new coach in their corner in the form of cutting-edge GPS tracking devices.
Thanks to these ultra-sensitive sensors—which can be tucked away into a pocket sown into the players’ sports bras—metrics like speed, lateral movement, and impact are supplied to trainers with a higher degree of accuracy, better informing athletes’ workouts and recovery programs.
The technology, developed by Catapult (an Australian-based company that has churned out sports wearables for over 12,000 athletes at over 850 teams in 57 countries), utilizes sensors that monitor motion at specific intervals. However, they pack a lot of processing power and can measure things like how hard a player gets hit or if an athlete favors one side of the body over another.
How?
The GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System)-enabled monitors are able to access Russian-developed GLONASS satellites (as well as USA-developed GPS), enhancing positional accuracy. Because the device sits in a pocket located between a player’s shoulder blades, it can pick up the stronger satellite signals, creating a fuller, more detailed picture of what each player is doing on the field.
The ability to monitor an athlete’s exertion levels in real-time means that coaches can tell an athlete if and when she should tone it back—an important biometric in a high-volume, high-stakes setting like the Olympics.
“Higher loads mean you’re more at risk for muscle fatigue, which leads to strains and pulls. But you can’t simply compare one player’s load with another’s,” team center back Becky Sauerbrunn told Popular Science.
The beauty of the system, however, lies in the fact that information is player-specific—which in turn means that all coaching and recovery will be aimed at enhancing individual performance. In the near future, developments in this technology may lead to sensors that can capture even finer metrics, such as an athlete’s sleep cycles, lactic acid levels, and core temperature.
“We’ve always developed very talented players,” Sauerbrunn added. “But at the global level, other teams are catching up. So we’re trying to raise the bar, and that’s where cutting-edge tech comes in.”