Smartwatches are wonderful things. They’ve given so many of us access to data about our fitness that we otherwise wouldn’t know, gamifying, to some degree, being active by integrating targets and tracking info into a little device that sits on our wrist.
While most of us use a smartwatch for counting how many steps we take, tracking our heart rate and smashing previous times on say a 5km bike ride, it’s easy to forget that it’s this same tech that’s often used by Olympic-level athletes. Yes, you can practically call yourself an athlete if you use a smartwatch, I’ll allow it for a minute or two.
Australia’s national swim team, The Dolphins, has been using Apple Watch, iPad, and a combination of apps to improve their performance. Apple reckons this helped propel the team during its most successful period in history.
It’s not often we write about a case study, but this is kind of cool. You usually think of sports/fitness tech used at the Olympic level as intricate and high-tech, far more technical and expensive than that which we mere mortals have access to, but that’s not necessarily the case.
Within an Apple Watch lies a network of sensors and activity-tracking features, and this is what Swimming Australia’s coaches have been using to more accurately capture a complete picture of their athletes’ overall health and performance.
If you use an Apple Watch, it’s safe to assume you probably have an iPhone. And any owner of more than one Apple product will tell you the company’s walled garden works exceptionally well. So, the coaches are also using an iPad that delivers real-time data and analytics from the sensor tech via the Apple Watch Workout app back to apps on the tablet. Swimming Australia actually built its own app, Locker, which coaches use to play back race footage and analyze data to give feedback from. Video of both race and training footage is stored in the Locker app, and the athlete’s technique is analyzed to help coaches identify their stroke and kick counts, number of breaths, splits and time off the blocks.
Apple Watch uses the gyroscope and accelerometer to count laps, track average lap pace and auto-detect stroke type to measure active kilojoule burn. Users set the pool length and Apple Watch automatically measures splits and auto sets. For open water swims, Apple Watch uses the built-in GPS and accelerometer to accurately determine the swimmer’s route and distance.
WatchOS 9 will introduce new swimming enhancements including the addition of kickboard detection as a stroke type for Pool Swim workouts.
The pitch from Apple on this is that using sensor fusion, Apple Watch will automatically detect when users are swimming with a kickboard and classify the stroke type in the workout summary along with distance swam. Swimmers will also be able to track their efficiency with a SWOLF score (a stroke count combined with the time, in seconds, it takes to swim one length of the pool).
It blows our mind every day just what our everyday tech is now capable of.