How Digitalisation has Shaped the Modern Athlete

The world is going technology crazy. Smart watches. Hoverboards. It’s as if some kid escaped puberty with their ambitions of lightsabres intact, and now has a pocketful of money. I’m not saying you need to be a kid to enjoy lightsabres. Digitalisation is the hot topic. The vogue. It’s the puzzle that every business is trying to solve and simultaneously stay ahead of. So how do you make all this technology useful for business? That’s where digitisation comes in. You can walk down streets and see the remains of shops that didn’t evolve in time with the digital revolution, yellow print ‘all stock has got to go’ stuck to windows as the final farewell to the analogue.

Digital is Here

You can take any industry and see the importance of digitalisation. Half a billion recently pledged to the NHS to digitally transform and update its facilities. Digital currencies and blockchain. Virtual Hearings and over 1 billion spent on digitalisation within the UK Court. Like in evolution, businesses need to adapt to survive. Managed IT services, provided by the likes of Timico, are essential in these times to help navigate the digital storm. Why’s it all happening? To get an edge on competition/to stay competitive/to survive. Efficiency, automation, aid. The digital transformation of the sports-world is an interesting model of success for any business.

So How Does Digitalisation Relate to Sport?

We’ve come along way since Sugar Ray laced his boots and Sir Don Bradman departed a lucrative career with a duck. There is a marriage of sport and technology, it seems that the record breakers of the future will have to be a hybrid of both, human and technology. And so it is in business. Nowadays, this merge is seen with supplements and training aids, altitude chambers and physiology tracking. You can look at business as an anatomy; digital transformation is essential for an athlete to gain a competitive edge, the same can be said about any enterprise.

Here are innovative ways that athletes and trainers are utilising technology:

Training

Tracking Technology – the ability to record data. Wearables or Smart Clothing are fitted with sensors that track a player’s performance metrics. Smart courts also record speed and acceleration.

“HexoSkin, for instance, recently developed a shirt with sensors woven into the fabric that measure things like respiration, heart rate, speed, number of steps and calories burned.”

Data Anlysis for Marginal Gains – coaches are able to watch the athlete’s performance and identify weaknesses with mobile apps like Ubersense with immediate playback and analysis.

“The app has taken us from the ‘dark ages’ of using a video camera, computer and hours of downloading video to a simple-to-use technology” Latour, US Skeleton Team Coach

Recovery

Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, used a hyperbaric chamber (altitude chamber) in order to increase his white blood cell count via breathing thinner air in the build up to the Rio Olympics. This allowed him to circulate more oxygen around his body while swimming.

Intelligence

Tour de France cyclists train with special glasses that reveal heart rate, incline and speed. Athletes are also able to cycle and run while being in communication with their trainer via earpieces and headsets.

Diet

Sport and diet specific apps make it possible to track the macros and nutritional information of everything you’re putting in your body.

I’m not saying you can do what an athlete can do. Or that an athlete can do what you can do. But ignoring the benefits of digital transformation in business is aiming to be last. We hope you aspire to be on the podium. That requires a digital strategy.

Timico offer a Digital Transformation Checklist completely FREE. Download it here and make sure that you’re making smart decisions. For more information on our gold standard service visit our website.