Baltimore, MD. — As the Olympics are now less than a month away, athletes from all over the world are getting prepared to compete to fulfill their athletic dreams in Rio next month. As always, athletes continue to utilize technology in their training programs and anything they can legally take advantage of to give them the best chance for success.
We recently got to sit down with Kevin Haley, the President of Product and Innovation at Under Armour at their recent Lighthouse announcement to discuss how Under Armour athletes are training differently with technology since the 2012 London Olympics.
SportTechie: How has the technology used for training for the Olympics changed over the past few years?
Kevin Haley: Michael Phelps is a great example as we’ve been working with him for 5-10 years now. Even in that short period of time has been a massive shift in the way things are done. He is wearing our recharge suits after he trains and at the time it was a manual process of tailoring them to his very unique body shape. We now have whatever fits him on file and in the future you walk into a 3D body scanner.
But I think the big that has changed since 2012 is actually in the digital space. So if you go back, the thing that happened first is actually the powerhub on the back of the bike at the Tour de France. Because once they got that the doctors, the scientists, the PHD’s all of a sudden could measure to the watt instead of just ‘over the course of the race, here is the total time’.
Honestly, after talking to people who were the most knowledgeable about it, they will tell you that there was an assumption or a suspicion that some of the illegal things that people were doing in that space were driving the vast majority of the gains. And what they found out was that individually each of those things might only be driving 15, 20, 25 watts of difference. Now, the aggregation of marginal gains can be real. So if you drive 20 watts of change and you do five different things that drive 20 watts of change then now you got 100 watts and for people who are closely matched that can make a big difference.
But what they found that was really incredible was some very simple things. Proper hydration is a driver of performance enhancement and performance benefit. But by orders of magnitude even more important was not the night before, but for the entire training period leading up to the competition, the proper amount of rest and recovery was massive. It wasn’t 10, 15, 25 watts. it was 250 watts. And so now you have athletes armed not only with the knowledge of ‘hey, this rest thing is real. No more running around partying or waking up at 5am when you’re not rested.’ Now you have that combined with the ability to track it.
ST: On Sleep Tracking and the recovery process:
KH: We have somebody on our staff who this is what they do, they’re the best at the world with this. They partner with Andy Murray or Michael Phelps or an elite team and it’s just putting them in touch with people who are the best of the best in the world at tracking these sleep and other necessary vitals for high performance athletes whether it’s through saliva or through blood and saying you’re recovered or not.
But the biggest thing we got right now is the ability to measure. Because if you don’t measure you can’t manage it. And so people being able to measure and track their sleep and their recovery and know if the central nervous system is exhausted or if you’re heart rate is recovered and you should go harder than you planned today? That is massive.
ST: Have you seen a change in athletes that are growing up in these tracking technology? What is the difference between an athlete who grows up with this technology versus an athlete who has to learn this?
KH: I think that generation is still growing up, those kids are still kids. They’re walking around with something that monitors with in their daily routine which includes their sleep tracking. It remains to be seen what the world is going to look like when they get there, but for someone like Michael Phelps, certainly the world has changed and so has he. As the world has changed, the ability to monitor more has changed. He’s always been at the forefront.
He was monitoring blood lactate early. But what exists now is the ability to measure his sleep and his recovery. And that really didn’t exist before. If you went into a lab and had wires hooked up to you and you slept in a strange place then you couldn’t really monitor someone’s sleep and now we’ve got a great way to do that because of the algorithms and the devices we have. That is a huge advantage for both an athlete and coach to just level set and say ‘look, he’s in a much difference place in his life now and he’s older. So he actually needs more recovery.
His resting heart rate is going down and his maximum heart rate is going down. The need for recovery is more, which we are all painfully aware of as we get older. So for someone who is measuring hundredths of a second like Phelps, he’s painfully aware of all this as it effects his results. He’s going to pick the right races and the right training regimen to adjust for that and it’s just that now he can actually measure that sleep and get an accurate measurement of that resting heart rate every single morning. This is a fantastic tool to have and now it’s available to everyone.
ST: Have you seen athletes be more receptive to tracking their sleep data recently?
KH: I think over the last 30 years there has been people that have been aware of it. I have had the good fortune of having a track coach who is an Olympian and a coach and he was aware of that. He knew it was the sleep leading up to the race that really mattered, but now to be able to track all that sleep and that’s what has really changed. The awareness of the masses to it instead of the very tip of the spear and the elite Olympic track coaches know it, you’ve got stories about Bryce Harper or so and so knowing that 8 hours sleep plus an hour for each hour you work out is crucial. So whether it’s Bryce Harper or some of these other pros, they’re doing it. They’re doing 8 plus 2.
Even around the way we can track it now you can see it’s one way to sleep 8 or 10 hours a day every day. But if it’s early this day, late the next day, two naps, no naps, then that’s not nearly as valuable as your body and its circadian rhythm being everyday, go to bed here, wake up here. That way your body just behaves better and recovers more quickly when you do that.