View: Technology is helping modern athletes push the envelope

Around 800 years before the birth of Christ, the different city-states and Kingdoms in and around Greece let go of vicious rivalries and age-old feuds once every four years to allow athletes to travel to the Olympic games. Human fascination with sporting events is lost in history even before even the first Olympics in ancient Greece and continues till date, with billions of humans associated with one sport or the other. Researchers believe that we could be so drawn to games and by extension the athletes themselves, because of mirror neurons that cause the same brain cells to activate in our brains whether we are watching sports, or playing it, or because watching sports with all its hits and misses fuels testosterone levels in our brains.

Whatever the reasons, we as a civilisation are obsessed with sports, and for athletes and their coaches and support staff, this obsession from the stands translates into a constant drive to perform better, push the envelope and break records. Unknown to the casual sports fan, at national and international levels across most sports, every second of the athlete's performance is recorded and pored over to figure out avenues of improvement.

After all, physical evolution takes millions of years to kick in, so the fact that what were world records only a few years ago, are now being achieved by the average athlete, points to improvements in technique, nutrition, mindset and coaching. While many of these improvements are based on iterative learning and experience, a significant number are also being driven by advancements in technology.

Tracking performance is very important in sports, as it allows athletes to push their boundaries while their coaches can monitor their vitals and keep the risk of injury to a minimum. From wearable devices to sensory fibers that are woven within high-performance smart clothing, athletes and their support staff can now keep track of everything from breathing and heart rate, to hydration and temperature. This means that athletes no longer have to rely on their gut feeling but have real, concrete, actionable data on when they need to rest, stretch or train harder.

By plugging this data into training management software, coaches can also ensure that their charges are receiving rest and nutrition in the right amount at the right time to minimise the chances of fatigue and self-inflicted injuries.

Today, AI-powered applications that pair the latest scientific research across the globe with an athlete’s personal information, are helping with the creation of effective, personalised training regimes for individual athletes. An example is Team USA Cycling, which has worked with IBM’s Watson AI to pull and analyse training data to provide real-time recommendations to its riders during training, enabling them to make live adjustments in their riding style and gauge the impact of every change.

This tracking has also spilled over the athletes and onto the field. Regardless of the nature of the sport, knowing the position of every player with an unerring degree of accuracy is important. Technology is making this possible through sensors that come in all shapes and sizes.

From magnetic socks for Taekwondo players that can pinpoint hits missed by the human judges, to chips embedded in the shoulder gear of American football players to allow accurate positioning within 15-centimeters: Today’s tracking mechanisms can ensure that human error in scoring is reduced to zero, athletes can watch thorough replays that offer deep, unprecedented insights for them to up their game, and specialised wearables that can be stuck to injury-prone areas, and forewarn athletes to ease up before pressure buildup on the area can lead to trauma or serious injury.

The sporting world is hawkishly watching the developments in genetics as the research so far indicates that soon, gene therapy could be used to significantly enhance performance potential. H. Lee. Sweeny, a physiology professor who discovered a way to potentially reverse muscle degeneration through a gene-based treatment, has been inundated with requests from professional weightlifters and athletes for help with "gene doping", despite his research still being at the experimental stage.

WADA has already taken cognisance of this new avenue of doping and is working to put checks on it. For instance, it banned the modification of cells to make them produce more testosterone than they would regularly, something which is already possible through somatic gene therapy.

While we are years away from genetically modified super-athletes, the study of genetics is still helping athletes improve performance. Our genetic data is a treasure trove of information about how our mind and body respond to external stimuli. In sports, this information can be used to guide budding athletes in the sports they are most likely to succeed. After all, other factors being equal, a genetic profile with better lung capacity and faster twitch muscle fiber will perform better in certain sports, say sprinting or swimming, than an individual who doesn’t fall under this profile.

The jury is still out on the ethics of genetic profiling, however, genetic information can be used in a myriad of other less contrary ways as well. For instance, medical professionals can work with the athlete's support staff to figure out his or her nutrition needs, what foods would suit them the most, and how their muscles would respond to different types of stresses.

Eliud Kipchoge, aided by technology, was able to smash the world record for marathons and achieve a pace of 1 minute 50 seconds per kilometer. While running the world’s first sub-2 hour marathon, Kipchoge was wearing Nike’s Vaporfly 4 percent shoes, which according to its manufacturer offer a 4 percent boost in running economy to the wearer, in other words, a reduction of 4 percent in effort while running the same distance.

At first glance, 4 percent may not seem like much, but in sporting events, the difference between individual contestants is often in the order of seconds or even milliseconds. A 2018 NYT study validated the role of tech-enabled auxiliaries when it discovered that the top five fastest men’s marathon times in history were set by runners in Vaporfly shoes.

Of course, this is a gray area since using shoes and other gadgets to improve performance could be construed as going against the integrity and fair play parameters. Sporting bodies have taken cognisance of the potential offered by these new-age gadgets, and are working to set up regulatory frameworks to monitor their usage in international and national events.

Digital technologies such as VR are helping transform the training regimens for top-tier athletes, for instance by using VR to stimulate their minds and get it in shape without stressing their physical bodies. Vision training (VR-induced or otherwise) allows athletes to record and iteratively improve response time to visual stimuli and helps them improve their reflexes and cognitive function. These training regimes are also being used to provide safe avenues for injured athletes to regain their skills and abilities. VR tech is creating a home for itself across sports including NASCAR, Basketball, Soccer, Rugby, etc.

Teams across sports are also combining machine vision technology with data and analytics to predict when a player is about to face a high risk of injury during a game or training session, and what are the most successful play patterns for them and their team. Companies like Liverpool FC are already using the historical gameplay data available with them to build and drive hyper-personalised athlete matchups and create custom strategies dedicated to each player, with great results.

Fans are in for some exciting times as the sporting world comes to terms with tech-led innovations that will allow athletes to blitz beyond what was possible and set new records. As for the athletes themselves, they will find themselves paying increasing attention to a new but all-important “technical” paradigm in addition to the mental and physical dimensions during training and gameplay.