Analyzing Movement and Biometrics in Sports – Sports Biometrics Conference

Nix’s sweat-based sensor measures subtle changes in biomarkers present in sweat to provide real-time measurements of an athlete’s level of hydration. By measuring things such as fluid losses, electrolyte losses, current hydration status, and core body temperature, Nix’s algorithms can provide athletes information on exactly how much fluid they should be consuming to avoid cognitive impairment or physical injury.

“Whether it’s a marathoner or a football player, a soldier or a firefighter, we can tell that individual what their needs are in real-time, so that they can start to understand if they’re getting into a danger zone,” she says.

Lighting the Way

While many of the biomechanical training tools mentioned so far have been designed around the individual experience, other technologies are aiming to do this at scale for entire teams at once.

The FITLIGHT system is a wireless training tool that uses LED lights and targets that a user needs to deactivate during their session to determine reaction times and accuracy. Data collected during the session is automatically sent to a tablet for analysis. 

“I can not only train individuals but also have training protocol for an entire team,” says Matteo Masucci, director of FITLIGHT Lab. 

The system trains athletes to use an external focus of attention rather than internal, where they might be distracted with how and why they’re doing something, which can impair performance. 

“When you focus internally, you focus on your feet, you focus on your arms, you focus on the mechanics,” says Masucci. “When you do so you’re actually disrupting the motion because you’re overthinking what you have to do. There is more fluidity in the execution when a player is on an external focus of attention.”

Meanwhile, Beyond Sports is building 3D simulations of actual games using positional tracking data that many teams are using for immersive film review. It collects coordinates off objects on the field at a rate of roughly 25 frames per second. Afterward, pro teams like Dutch team AZ Alkmaar use Beyond Sports’ match analysis training suite to learn from their mistakes and understand their decisions on the pitch. 

Soccer academies feeding into some of the Netherlands’ elite clubs have benefited from reviewing AZ Alkmaar game film in a virtual reality environment.

“That has allowed them to understand how fast the professional game is and how fast the elite players are playing, and it gave them the possibility to make decisions faster after this training,” says Konstantin Dieterle, head of business development at Beyond Sports. 

The Power of Data

With more sensors attached to more athletes in the name of athletic performance, athletes should educate themselves on what is being collected and how it’s being used, according to David Foster, deputy general counsel at the NBA Players Association who sits on the NBA-NBPA Wearables Committee.

“One of the main things that we try to tell all the athletes is that if you’re going to use a device or if your team is going to use a device and capture your data, make sure you get a copy of the data,” says Foster.

“As much as you want to rely on the team, you should educate yourself on what’s being collected and how we want to be used,” he says. “I always tell them that this is like any other part of your profession, you should pay attention and you should be involved.”  

With fractions of a second in the 40-yard dash potentially determining a pro football player’s starting salary or whether a kid gets into a college program, biometric data is becoming essential. 

“For every athlete, data is a marketing tool as much as it is a self-development tool,” says Mike Weinstein founder and CEO of Zybek Sports, a laser timing system used by the NFL combine. “Athletes, whether they’re at the high school level or all the way up to the pros, can use this data to help better market themselves. You look at anybody at the NFL combine. If they get really good 40-yard dash numbers, that’s what they’re bragging about.” 

There’s also the potential for athletes to monetize their own data down the road, possibly by allowing their data to be used in sports betting or fantasy games. 

“There is definitely the potential there, but we just haven’t figured out actually how to commercialize it,” says Kristen Holmes, VP of performance at wearable company Whoop and a former Team USA field hockey player and NCAA champion coach.

“But I think there is a world there, where you have an individual athlete who decides that they want to put their data out there to be bet on and they get a cut of it,” she says. “I think there is a world where you’re seeing heart rate data or recovery data leading into a game. You can see heart rate data as a pro golfer approaches a putt, and fans betting on it in real-time based on some of that biometric feedback.”

The Future of Biometrics

Sensors, wearables, cameras and GPS are all being used in varying capacities to track biometrics. But Dr. Phil Cheetham, director of sports tech and innovation at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, says the future of this technology lies within smart cameras that can track and analyze all at once. 

Biometric technology must be “non-intrusive and invisible” to the athlete, easy to use and simple to understand, says Cheetham, who gave the closing keynote at the SportTechie PRO DAY and also participated in an exclusive fireside chat with SportTechie PRO members. 

“The magic camera that automatically tracks motion is the holy grail; it’s going to advance biomechanics,” he says. “I think biomechanics has been stuck in the weeds because of the expense and the complexity of the technology in the past.”

Once the system is powerful enough to do this, the next goal will be to synchronize and overlay data with video. 

“That’s the way we have to sugarcoat it for the athletes, we have to spoon-feed it by having the video of their performance and overlaying key points and key pieces of data that don’t confound them so that they are impactful and very clear,” he says.