|
|
 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
| |
APRIL 15, 2003
The Tech Edge in Training Athletes from rowers and runners to gymnasts and golfers are increasingly using slick hardware and software to hone their workouts
On Apr. 6, at 4:48 p.m., the 250,000 fans lining the banks of the Thames River in London held their collective breath. Both crews in the 149th annual Oxford Cambridge Boat Race had crossed the finish line nearly simultaneously. Which had won? For a few moments the two crews slumped across their oars as the boats drifted under the dark arches of Chiswick Bridge. Then came the decision: The Oxford Blues had beaten their archrival by one foot, the closest margin in Boat Race history. "MORE POWER." Oxford beat the odds with the help of OmegaWave, a high-tech diagnostic tool that monitors an individual's cardiac, energy, central nervous, and hormonal systems, among others, to give coaches a real-time look at how the athlete is responding to training. Each day, Oxford coaches attach electrode clips to their top rowers' chests and heads to determine how each is adapting to his training regimen -- and whether the upcoming training session should be more or less intense. "With OmegaWave we set up a higher-intensity workout than we would have dared do previously," says Derek Clark, the Oxford crew's technical adviser and a former coach of the Swiss Olympic team that won rowing gold medals in 1996. "We won because we were able to get more power out of the crew's relatively lighter, smaller bodies, than the bigger, heavier Cambridge guys" could deliver. Rowers and runners, gymnasts and golfers, and more are increasingly using technology to individualize their training regimens -- and give them an edge. In 2002, Nike (NKE ) launched the four-year Oregon Project, a high-tech experiment where six athletes live in a house skimmed of oxygen in an effort to recreate the thin air found at the high altitudes from which the world's best marathon runners hail. GREEKS AND RUSSIANS. Since 1999, more than 2,000 athletes have signed up with Carmichael Training Systems, a Web-based company that matches up runners, cyclists, and triathletes with world-famous trainers who design individual programs for them based on such biofeedback such as heart rate and power meters, which measure an athlete's output in electric wattage. And it isn't only full-time athletes who are getting in on the act: One of OmegaWave's latest clients is a 73-year-old retired school teacher who cross-country skis in winter and kayaks in summer. The system, which includes a laptop, software, printer, and a set of electrodes, costs $25,000 to $35,000, depending on the number of users. Most of the new technologies try to combine science with the theory of "periodization," the division of training time into discrete blocks focused on different fundamentals -- endurance, strength, and speed, for example. The ancient Greeks first developed periodization to train athletes for the Olympics. But it wasn't until the early 20th century, after the Russian Revolution, that the methods resurfaced. Since then, Russia has led the way in refining periodization theory. OmegaWave was developed at the University of Irkutsk in Siberia to test the physical fitness of cosmonauts.
  | | |
 Copyright 2003, Bloomberg L.P.Terms of Use | Privacy Policy |
Printer-Friendly Version