Wearable Technology Options for Athletes Continue to Expand

Exit velocity – a relatively new statistic in baseball, a sport that already has a mind-numbing number of ways to measure the abilities of players and teams, that measures how fast a ball hit flies away from the bat. Done mostly on home runs, where the distance traveled, angle of ascent and descent, and other aspects are measured, exit velocity helps to compare the strength of one home run hitter to another.

And as with any accumulated stat, then comes the average, the mean, the median and the frequency based on everything from direction to type of pitch hit to the weather conditions. Baseball is leading our society’s rapid march toward measuring everything in terms of everything else.

That accumulation of information has found its way into other athletic endeavors, including some at the high school sports level. The collection of most of that information about a particular event falls to the home team’s use of technology – timers, scorers, etc. However, there has been an increase in the number and quality of the options available in wearable technology, devices that can worn by individuals to track their personal statistics.

Runners have long used digital watches to track their lap and race times, but technological advances have now made it possible for lightweight wearable devices to not only track a wide variety of information about the wearer, but provide new information while they are engaged in their activity or exercise or simply sleeping.

The most common wearable technology is still our watches, now available in smartwatches from multiple providers. Some are standalone devices that collect, store and display their own data. However, an increasing number are those that can function independently, but can also work in concert with another device (or two or three).

Apple’s SmartWatch works with its iPhone, but if you have another brand of phone, Google, Samsung and others make watches that connect with Android, Google, Samsung or other types of phones. That combination works back and forth with the watch doing the most to track the wearer’s physical condition and the phone doing the GPS and distance work.

For example, by using the Workout app on an Apple Watch, a user can track time, distance, elevation change, heartrate, calories burned, etc. on dozens of activities including such varied ones as outdoor running, stair stepping, yoga, Pilates and Tai Chi. Other common smartwatches are made by FitBit, Garmin, Samsung, Google and Commander. A watch-phone combination can provide many of the phone features (phone, text, email, newsfeeds, podcasts) through the watch as well.

Although watches are still the most common wearable tech, other devices are also being used to track the stats athletes might need or want. These devices allow users to track their current activity, improve their performance or use for comparisons. Fitness trackers are worn on the wrist like a watch, but independently track steps, miles, heartbeat, calories, etc. The data can then be stored on an app on another device for further review.

Fitness trackers can also monitor sleep, an aspect of our lives that is receiving an increasing amount of attention and discussion. Advanced versions can use the accumulated health data on the wearer to raise concerns about a health issue that may have gone undetected and share with their physician. Doctors are now prescribing such watches for some of their patients for this purpose along with the more specific wearables that include heartbeat trackers, blood pressure monitors and smart contact lenses (to monitor eye diseases).

Other wearable tech that can track physical activities now can include jewelry such as rings, necklaces and bracelets. Most of these devices track the standard parameters (heartrate, breathing, sleep), and some will track other information including steps, elevation and even relay phone calls. Further tracking technology can be worn in forms of smart clothing (health-related parameters including temperature), smart shoes (steps, stride, fatigue), smart glasses (communication through WiFi and Bluetooth) and smart earbuds that include GPS, gyroscopes and compass to provide direction and information.

More often, student-athletes are using wearable technology, primarily smartwatches and smart jewelry to help track their current efforts, compare past efforts and improve their times, energy use and sleep patterns. State associations that regulate high school sports have, or will soon, regulations in place on what wearable tech is allowed during their sponsored competitions.