The influence of technology in sports is increasingly widespread at professional, amateur, and recreational levels. Technological innovations have adapted to a field as complex as sports, offering precise measurement instruments, materials that improve performance, and devices that prevent injuries or facilitate the recovery of athletes.
The applications of technology in sports and physical activity open a new chapter in competitions, training, and athlete care. New technologies are applied to the design of materials for clothing, footwear, or sports instruments. When users and fans use tech to check top NFL schedule week 15, these solutions become the best ally of coaches and experts as they allow them to monitor and enhance athletes’ performance.
Table Of Contents
Advantages Of Tech in Sports
Many advantages come with the application of advanced technology in the world of sports. Some of these advantages are as follows:
Protects Athletes’ Health
Athletes can be monitored when using modern technologies in sports to prevent overexertion that might result in injuries. It also helps create therapies that are ideal for speeding up athletes’ recoveries. For instance, even when an athlete is unable to train, specific muscle areas can be kept in condition thanks to electrostimulation.
Precise Measurement and Fairness
Super slow-motion systems closed video circuits, or VAR, minimize the referees’ margin of error by providing them with information so that they can make better and fairer decisions. This technology has been adopted in various sports, such as football, rugby, tennis, and baseball.
Collect Valuable Data
Another benefit of technology in sports is that it collects a large amount of data that allows for more accurate tracking of training and performance. Trainers can use that information to plan workloads and optimize training.
Power Performance
The use of technology in sports improves the performance of athletes and has many applications. From the creation of new materials that are more resistant to contact and speed of movement to hyperbaric chambers that simulate altitude conditions of up to 2,000 meters above sea level to improve the respiratory capacity of athletes.
Examples of Tech in Sports
Some of the most advanced technologies have already been applied to sports to make the most of what they can offer to athletes, teams, and sports organizations.
Thermography
This technology allows the evaluation of the surface temperature of athletes to identify the risk of injury in sports. This also allows the monitoring of rehabilitation treatments to help athletes return to sports practice.
Player Tracking Systems
Player positioning and tracking systems provide valuable information in team sports such as soccer or basketball, helping coaches to get to know their players better and make more informed decisions during competition, training, or rest.
Sports Apps
Technology has democratized and promoted the practice of sports. With smartphones, sports applications, and/or activity wristbands, many people can monitor indicators such as exercise intensity, distance traveled, the number of calories consumed, maximum strength or heart rate to assess their progress.
Video Systems
Video solutions are present in sports on a commercial and entertainment level to provide a more immersive experience for fans. However, they are also used for arbitration purposes, such as the hawk’s eye used in tennis, VAR, or the automatic goal detection system in soccer.
Nanotechnology
Nanometer-scale systems are increasingly being applied in sports. Thanks to nanotechnology, lighter surfboards, golf balls that stay on course, and swimming suits that repel water have been created.
Artificial Intelligence
Today, the answers to many sports questions evolve according to our ability to generate knowledge when it comes to processes from which it is possible to collect information. This faculty has become available thanks to the technology known as artificial intelligence.
Although Big Data merely refers to the large amount of existing data that we can collect and store, artificial intelligence allows us to obtain the underlying knowledge from this amount of data while making a difference in achieving a competitive advantage. This is due to its speed, memory, and objectivity.