Athletes adopt new training technology

Over the past decades, professional athletes have embraced new technologies to gain an advantage over their opponents and better hone their skills. As these technologies have improved, they have also gained popularity, reaching college and even high school athletes.

For some high school athletes, this new technology has provided invaluable insight into how to fine-tune their game, pinpointing specific areas of weakness.

Senior golfer Kevin Sze, for instance, uses his coach’s TrackMan, which costs upwards of $30,000 and is also used in baseball and football.

The TrackMan, a portable, radar-based device that can be placed right behind the practice tee-off area, provides Sze with a wealth of specialized statistics such as his launch angle, spin rate and how aligned his swing is with the path of the ball as well as more basic measurements like carry distance and roll.

“Using the numbers the TrackMan gives me, I’m able to really diagnose my mistakes,” Sze said. “From there, I know what I need to work on, and then I work on it.”

Because the TrackMan is mainly used to check progress  and refine approaches, Sze said he only uses it about once every two weeks to a month.

Boys’ cross country co-captain senior Kole Tippetts said that he has begun to use an advanced Garmin heart-rate monitor, a band that is worn around the chest that records a variety of measurements, including heart rate, cadence, stride length and up-and-down movement.

In addition, other runners on the boys’ cross country team have used more basic heart-rate-monitors that only record heart rate. 

Cross country runs are done in a specific zone of exertion. For example, longer-distance runs are done in a lower zone, while shorter runs are done in a higher zone. The heart rate monitor, Tippetts said, gives runners an accurate measurement of exertion.

Tippetts’s heart rate monitor helps him ensure proper form, which is critical to running fast. For example, Tippetts said that the heart rate monitor can alert runners of excessive up-and-down movement, which can indicate insufficient knee lifting. 

In addition to the heart rate monitor, Tippetts said that the cross country team uses a device called a Theragun that contains a piston that massages and loosens muscles after a run. Tippetts said that since the device’s adoption two years ago, the team has used it in place of rollers when doing sprint-based workouts.

“During our sprint workouts, it’s really hard to roll in between [sprints] because you don’t get much time,” Tippetts said. “You can’t roll out [for] half an hour in between those or else you’ll lose the gain that you get out of sprinting over and over again.”

By using the Theragun instead, the team is able to go on more runs, as well as much longer ones than before. 

“[The Theragun] has allowed us to run eight mile runs every day instead of five mile runs every day,” Tippetts said. “That’s a lot, especially for training.”

Meanwhile, junior Dylan Li, who plays for the Mountain View Volleyball Club, said that his team uses an app to keep track of in-game stats such as passes, kills and blocks. 

The app, iStatVball 2, provides coaches with a breadth of information, storing player kill rates, pass rates and serving percentages. In addition, the app also tracks pass quality on a scale from zero to three. Li’s team especially focuses on the quality of returns, and strives to maintain an average of 2.3 every tournament. However, they also use other features of the app to check the quality of their defense and attack.

“It gives you an overall sense of who’s doing well and who’s doing bad, and what areas we need to improve on, like if our defense is really bad or our offense is not really effective,” Li said.

Junior Jane Loo said that the girls’ basketball team also uses an app, Hudl, to assist with team scouting and compiling highlight reels. The team records a game on an iPad, and then the company analyzes the game and provides both statistics and highlight clips, Loo said. According to Hudl’s website, the analysis is completed in under 24 hours.

Not only does Hudl provide highlight clips, but it also sends clips to college coaches, which helps with recruiting, Loo said.

Although Hudl costs the team over $1,000 annually, Loo said it can be invaluable in helping to record other teams’ games and to scout for game strategy. This is especially helpful during the  league season, when teams play each other twice and reviewing statistics from the first game can give an edge in the second, Loo said.

“It’s pretty expensive,” Loo said, “but it’s really good knowing your stats and knowing your opponents and their stats.”