An idea from Northeastern University here, but one I think can be taken into two UK sports: Football and Rugby. To give you some background, Northeastern University have developed a baseball shirt which allows the wearer’s performance, action and health to be transmitted to a computer system for instant analysis.
Its a really fascinating development in health technology and can help ease the pain pitchers feel when pitching. Identifying areas of weakness is where it comes to the fore and I think this could be really interesting to understand how impacts affect the body. This is particular interest to me given my love of rugby.
Jonny Wilkinson and other great players have always been troubled by the new, fast, heavyweight impacts that rugby puts on their body. Jonny was the personification of this with an injury which he described as “stingers” a deadening of the nerves in the shoulder by a fierce contact, caused by his brutal tackling. However, I think a potentially interesting use of this technology is to develop into something that focuses on the different pressures put on the body for people like Jonny Wilkinson on his shoulders, but other players on their backs.
Another interesting deployment could be in football boots to understand how football players feet react to different type of impacts, and thus how boots can be developed to prevent injury and increase performance.
