Mountain Bike Marathon Training
Could Technology Be More Important Than The Athletes Using It?
Sports are more competitive than ever and with growing number of countries and competitors going head to head for gold medals, having an edge is very important. There have been many cases of people doing unsavoury things to get an advantage, such as blood doping and even poisoning competitors before an event. As sporting bodies crack down on this type of rule-abuse however, many are turning to technology to improve their chances. Lets take a look a few ways in which technology can help sporting performance.
Training Facilities. Sports performers of old were sometimes quite limited in their training facility options. You might find yourself training in a nearby field one day and your neighbour’s garden the next. Modern sporting stars have it a little better however as they can now utilise special variable-environment chambers when training. In these rooms the trainers can vary temperature, air pressure, humidity, oxygen levels and whole host of other things using special equipment. This allows the replication of any environment, from altitude training to exercising in a very hot and humid country, and if you train in these conditions the body will adapt quite quickly.
Better Equipment. There has been a constant evolution of sporting equipment ever since people first started competing in events. Depending on the sport, equipment can play an incredibly important role in performance.Compare something as simple as swimming costumes to how they looked a couple of decades ago, or how advanced archery bows now look. Advances in technology and materials are arguable as important as the athlete training, and provide us with such amazing things as carbon fibre mountain bikes and hydrogen filled running shoes.
Monitoring Tools. One of the most important developments in sporting technology, and one that shouldn’t be overlooked, is our ability to very closely monitor athlete’s performances. This could be from super slow motion video analysis or the ability to measure heart rate at every second of a marathon. A company in Australia have even developed pressure pads in surfboards that can relay information about a surfer’s board positions and balance. If you can isolate even the smallest problems in performance and correct them, you get an edge over your competition.
Six months in three minutes – Ultra marathon training diary – week 18
