Towards Accessible Technologies for Coaching

Abstract

Keen observation skills are an essential trait for successful coaches. Technologies by which to quantitatively measure and validate their observations and intuitions remain few and far between. For well funded professional teams and individual athletes, access to highly specialized equipment is available. For highly motivated amateur sports personnel, as well as some professional teams, training staff have little access to such technology. This situation is changing. A new generation of affordable technology will be available in the next few years. This offers coaches an unheralded opportunity to harness technology to improve performance of the teams and athletes in their charge. This paper considers the use of wearable technologies as a means for aiding coaches to plan, monitor and compare training sessions. The design of a prototype system that illustrates the easy applicability and potential of such technologies in coaching is motivated and described. A detailed implementation is provided and an overview of the interface presented.