The Potential of Wearable Technology in Amateur Football. A qualitative study

Text Sample:Chapter 3 Use of wearable technology in professional football:As described in Chapter 2, wearable technologies slowly made their way into football after being a success in other sports like American football, shown by the use of it by NFL teams. There are three big companies that made themselves a name in the market of wearable technology for football teams. adidas, STATSports and Catapult Sports. These three companies provide mostly every top team all over the world with their specifically developed wearable performance tracking systems. The components, functionality and which professional team uses which product will be exemplified in Chapter 3.3.1 adidas miCoach Elite Team System:The probably best known product on the market for wearable technology in football, due to the worldwide popularity of the company, is the "adidas miCoach Elite Team System". This system, developed from 2010 to 2012 (MLS Communications, 2012) by German sportswear manufacturer adidas, provides the coaching stuff in training sessions with individual real time data from their players like speed, covered distance, heart rate, performance or acceleration. With the help of this data the coaching staff is able to identify the strengths and the weaknesses of every player so that they can efficiently impove training sessions and develop individual workout plans for players in order to increase their performance on the pitch.3.1.1 Components and functionality:The system consists of five different components which are the "miCoach Elite Player_ Cell", the "Techfit Elite Shirt", the "miCoach Elite Base", the "miCoach Elite Dashboard" and the "miCoach Elite Website" (Brüggen, Hübner, & Nationalmannschaft, 2014). The "miCoach Elite Player_Cell" is a wearable sensor, which measures the real time data and transmits them via radio frequency to the "miCoach Elite Base". The sensor itself weighs only about 52 grams and fits in between the shoulder blades of the "Techfit Elite Shirt", which is a sleeveless compression shirt worn by the players. (Nosowitz, 2012) The battery of the cell lasts about 8 hours, so there should be no problem to collect a huge amount of data during long training sessions. (Vazquez, 2013) Apart from the included "miCoach Elite Player_Cell", the "Techfit Elite Shirt" measures the heart rate with inbuilt sensors while being comfortable to wear and it does not limit the movements of the players. The real time data from both the "miCoach Player_Cell" and the "Techfit Elite Shirt" will be transmitted to the "miCoach Elite Base", which is a portable, robust and water resistant receiver, placed on the side of the pitch. The "miCoach Elite Base" transfers the data to the "miCoach Elite Dashboard", a tablet for the coaching staff, with which the coaches are able to collect and analyze the individual real time data from each player. Based on the collected data, they are able to create new training schedules and training goals based on the data and to write summaries about recent training sessions. If the "miCoach Elite Base" is connected to the internet, the device automatically transfers all the data to the servers of the team to make it possible to review the data on the "miCoach Elite Website". Also the intensity of the training session, the individual level of fitness and the personal physical needs for each player will be displayed on the "miCoach Elite Website". Aside from the intention to make the training sessions more efficient for each player ind vidually and to increase the performances, the "adidas miCoach Elite System" also contributes to the early prevention of possible injuries because the system captures the individual impact that every session had on a player, thus coaches can regulate the training intensity for some of them to prevent their bodies from getting injured and let them regenerate in the best possible way (Brüggen et al., 2014). The "adidas miCoach Elite System" was successfully launched on field du