Winning has always been important in sports, but as performance has increasingly been considered a symbol of a country’s or individual’s power, there is more pressure than ever to bring back gold. Many teams and individuals have broken moral boundaries in the pursuit for victory, including drug use, opposition sabotage and even faking handicaps. As sporting bodies crack down on this type of rule-abuse however, many are turning to technology to improve their chances. Lets take a look a few ways in which technology can help sporting performance.
Training Facilities. Sports performers of old were sometimes quite limited in their training facility options. This might be in your back garden on the school sports hall if you were lucky. Modern sporting stars have it a little better however as they can now utilise special variable-environment chambers when training. In these rooms the trainers can vary temperature, air pressure, humidity, oxygen levels and whole host of other things using special equipment. This allows the replication of any environment, from altitude training to exercising in a very hot and humid country, and if you train in these conditions the body will adapt quite quickly.
Improved Equipment. Sporting equipment has been the focus of much development over the years and has come on a long way. Depending on the sport, equipment can play an incredibly important role in performance.Consider how space-age running shoes look these days compared to the simple plimsolls people used to wear, or the super-light golf clubs that the professionals now use. Advances in technology and materials are arguable as important as the athlete training, and provide us with such amazing things as carbon fibre mountain bikes and hydrogen filled running shoes.
Monitoring Devices. Coaches and trainers have always strived for better performance analysis, and now they have a whole arsenal of top gadgets and techniques to choose from. This might be the study of ones metabolic rate during performance for example, or the videoing and replaying of performances at incredibly high frame rate and definition. A company in Australia have even developed pressure pads in surfboards that can relay information about a surfer’s board positions and balance. If you can isolate even the smallest problems in performance and correct them, you get an edge over your competition.
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