TFC plays smart with wearable technology
GPS systems track heart rate, speed, distance of athletes and record them in real time
When Toronto FC sports science director Jim Liston started with the L.A. Galaxy in 1997, the club owned three watches with heart-rate monitors.
Back then, that was wearable sports technology.
Liston rigged the watches to beep whenever the players wearing them exceeded 90 per cent of their maximum heart rate, or dipped below 70 per cent and he would record the info in a tattered notebook with yellow pages. Back then, that was data collection. Eighteen years later Liston won’t even start practice until every player straps on two pieces of wearable technology — a heart-rate monitor and a GPS unit that tracks speed and distance — each connected to a laptop that logs all the data in real time. Together, the monitoring systems cost the club about $40,000.
Liston foresees a day in high-level sport when wearable technology is as ubiquitous as athletic tape. Most Major League Soccer teams use GPS trackers during practice, as do a growing number of NFL teams. The NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers, the NFL’s Detroit Lions and the NBA’s Orlando Magic use PUSH, a wearable system from a Toronto-based outfit that provides rep-by-rep feedback on weight training sessions.
As demand for data grows among both recreational athletes and elite teams, the market niche evolves, with advances coming in how the data itself is used. PUSH co-founder Rami Alhamad foresees apps that track multiple functions, with users free to move the data from one platform, like PUSH, to another, like Nike Plus.
“Companies are understanding the importance of the algorithm,” Alhamad says. “Form a hardware standpoint it’s pretty simple, but how can it all fit together and work well?”
Athletic shoe companies have long seen the value in outfitting hobbyist runners with GPS trackers, even if the data doesn’t translate directly into sales. Nike Plus remains the most popular among runners and in 2014 Under Armour paid $150 million (U.S.) for MapMyFitness, an online fitness community that includes MapMyRun.com.
As MLS teams adopted wearable GPS units, many used Adidas Mi-- Coach technology, tailoring a massmarket product to a pro soccer team’s specific needs.
Roughly half of NFL teams use GPS data, mostly to track exertion and prevent overuse injuries.
“It can be pretty obvious when you look at the data display,” said Rod Lindsell of GPSports in a 2014 interview with ESPN.com. “You look at it and say this is a four-week injury waiting to happen and really it is completely preventable.”
Liston says the system currently in use, made by Australia-based Cata- pult Sports, provides detailed information on the distance each player covers and how intensely they’re moving. In-stadium units provide similar data during games, with the statistics revealing details useful to both Liston and the club’s coaching staff.
In a recent win over Montreal, team captain Michael Bradley covered12.3 kilometres from his midfield spot, much of it at moderate speed but1.73 km at an all-out sprint.
While TFC’s coaches would note that the team tends to win games in which Bradley is more active, the numbers are Liston’s signal to manage Bradley’s workload in practice, balancing fitness and freshness over a long season.
“I need my players healthy, fit and athletic. In that order,” Liston says. “When you get real-time information, it’s instructive . . . Now we’re integrating (the information) and making better decisions.”
Liston says wearable tech could make old-school speed and fitness tests obsolete. Why time a player in the 60-metre dash when GPS can tell you exactly how fast he runs and a heart-rate monitor can record both the effort needed to achieve that speed and the time required to recover? But GPS systems aren’t foolproof. Before a recent TFC training session, Brian Lee, the club’s director of rehabilitation, looked alarmed when he glanced at the laptop and noticed Benoit Cheryou had already reached 12 miles per hour. Cheryou wasn’t supposed to move that quickly without warming up first.
“Did Benoit go on a run before practice?” he asked. Cheryou had not. He had simply ridden to the practice field on a golf cart with his GPS switched on.