How an Australian decathlete's adventures in GPS technology are changing modern sport

Saracens' Alex Goode, Noah Cato and
Adam Powell training in GPS vests Emma John, The Observer

It was a windsurfer with a satnav who started it all. Adrian Faccioni watched him take to the water with the unwieldy box strapped to his arm so that he could measure his speed. "He had a big laptop in his backpack, a satellite dish on his head and all these cables down his arm," says Faccioni. "I thought, 'Oh boy.'"

The Australian, a former decathlete, saw how valuable a personal GPS device that measured an athlete's movement could be. Six months later, he resigned from his job as a lecturer in Sports Coaching and found a software developer to help pursue his idea.

Within a couple of years they had developed their first device, which could tell a coach, in real time, exactly how fast and how far their athletes were moving. When he showed the technology to coaches of Australian rules football, they leapt at the possibilities.

"The biggest problem team sports have had in the past is they never know how hard an athlete has trained," explains Faccioni, from his home in Canberra. "Heart rate doesn't give a true indication – you can have high heart rate if you don't feel well. Coaches didn't know if players were training hard enough." Adrian Faccioni Adrian Faccioni.

Faccioni's GPS data proved that players were actually training too hard. "Often the sessions didn't look as hard as they were. Players would do some sprinting and then stand around. But they were running multiple kilometres on the Thursday or Friday before a match, and would go into a game carrying residual fatigue."

In the nine years since Faccioni founded his company, the GPS units have become more sophisticated: the most recent is fitted with an accelerometer that measures the effect of sprinting and tackling on the body in terms of G-force.

With all this live data fed to the bench, coaches are able to make far more informed decisions about the physical state of players – in particular, when to make substitutions. "We set up alerts for when a player's heart rate's too high or they've done too much sprinting," explains Faccioni. In Aussie rules, which allows unlimited player "exchanges", the average number of exchanges per match has risen from 20-30 to 70-80 since GPS units were introduced.

Rugby union and football are already embracing the technology, and this year Real Madrid, Man United, Milan and Ajax all put in orders. And Faccioni hopes his units will, eventually, be able to monitor everything that is happening in an athlete's body. "At the moment, measuring glucose or lactic acid or pH is not easy to do live, but there are some early stage technologies doing the rounds."

If he cracks it, the one-time decathlete could change every sport played.

Recovery followed in detail

Cristiano Ronaldo's recovery is being analysed to the millimeter

He practices with a next generation GPS device (GPSports Systems, Australia) that also has a heart rate monitor and an inertial device (including an accelerometer).

Thus Madrid doctors are now obtaining more complete information, not only that arising from inside the player's body (heart rate).

You can also handle all external conditions. "The information we get is like the camera system that is in the Bernabeu and games that we can detect all types of data, with focus on the physical preparation.

The GPS is capable for accounting for the speed at which Cristiano faces in every moment and in certain segments and even calculate the accelerations, decelerations and even the frequency of hits (jumps). The information is available in real time but in this case is discussed in detail post event by the medical staff that are able to better formulate a recovery plan for their players.

All data captured is very important to identify the players' training loads and to avoid injury.

As Andrew Sheridan contemplates up to four months on the sidelines after his operation tomorrow to reconstruct his dislocated shoulder, the RFU is stepping up its efforts to reduce the risk of similar serious injuries with ground-breaking technology at the forefront of its campaign.

The union, which for the past eight years has led the way worldwide in its assessment and audit of injuries, is now pioneering the use of GPS units in training. These units contain a small accelerometer that can accurately measure the force of collisions and offer valuable insight into the cause and effect of high intensity confrontations. The gadget, which weighs only 76 grams sits in a harness between the shoulder blades and is being used by Guinness Premiership clubs and England’s elite playing squad.

GPS data is already beeing used to measure the speed and distances covered by players in training.

It is hoped that the information gleaned in what is the very early stages of a three-year project will enable the two surgeons who carry out most of England’s shoulder surgeries, club doctors, physiotherapists, and strength and conditioning coaches to work more effectively in combating the risk of these impact-related injuries that appear to be a direct by-product of having bigger, faster and more powerful players colliding more regularly in the modern game.

Under IRB regulations, the technology can be used only during training sessions, but it is hoped that the study will show that it can be safely used in matches, enabling rugby medics to gain valuable insights into injury forces.

“This would mean we could measure the forces of collision in a match. The technology is available with the potential to help us to start answering important questions,” Dr Simon Kemp, the RFU’s head of sports medicine, said. “Within the game we are working very hard to lower the risk of shoulder injuries such as Andrew Sheridan’s.”

Sheridan, the England loose-head prop, dislocated his shoulder when a scrum collapsed during Sale Sharks’ Heineken Cup victory over Cardiff Blues at Edgeley Park last Friday night. His loss will be keenly felt by his club and England, who already face a mounting injury crisis before next month’s internationals against Australia, Argentina and New Zealand.

A fifth of the approximately 1,000 injuries reported each season by Premiership clubs and the England elite squads since the audit began in 2002-03 are to the shoulder, second only to the knee. Of that figure almost half, 49 per cent, occur in the tackle.

But the shoulder dislocation suffered by Sheridan accounts for more days’ absence than any other injury in the sport. “It has cost more time lost between 2002 and 2008 than any other single injury. It is a major problem,” Kemp said. “It is the highest risk injury in terms of the number of days out of the game for our elite players.”

According to Kemp there has been a noticeable recent development. Shoulder dislocations appear to be associated with a greater variety of mechanisms. “Shoulders now appear to be dislocating in a wider range of different positions, although the frequency with which they occur has remained largely constant,” he said. “We think this may be because there are more contacts within a game, contacts are between bigger and heavier individuals and these contact events are spread more evenly throughout the positions. This all results in more repeated pressure on the shoulder.”

The traditional one-on-one tackle is disappearing. Statistics gathered by the RFU show that more than half of all tackles in a game involve more than one tackler. There are more than 450 player-on-player contacts in a Premiership match. “Shoulder injuries are now shared out more evenly across the positions because players are increasingly performing and are expected to perform similar roles in contact,” Kemp said.

The shoulder, essentially a ball-and-socket joint, is vulnerable. Its intrinsic instability gives us the range of movements which we take for granted.The most vulnerable position is when the arm is elevated to an angle of 90 degrees with the body and then forced backwards.

The game is taking the risk of shoulder injury seriously — better rehabilitation exercises, better identification of players at risk and better treatment and rehab if they suffer a dislocation.

Hopefully, these initiatives will reduce the numbers of players on the sideline as a result of this injury.

Shoulder to shoulder

Andrew Sheridan Powerhouse prop is due to be out for at least four months after full shoulder reconstruction surgery tomorrow.

Riki Flutey Inside centre could be back by January after keyhole surgery on his left shoulder.

Tom Rees London Wasps flanker and captain out until February at the earliest after second major operation on his right shoulder.

Delon Armitage The sensation of last season will miss three months after dislocating his left shoulder.

Jordan Turner-Hall Faces four months on the sidelines after a tear to tissue in his shoulder joint.

Other casualties Lee Mears, Danny Cipriani, Simon Shaw, Joe Worsley, Harry Ellis, Toby Flood.

CARLO CASTAGNA,FRANCO IMPELLIZZERI,EMILIO CECCHINI,ERMANNO RAMPININI,AND JOSE´ CARLOS BARBERO ALVAREZ

J Strength Cond Res 23(7): 1954–1959, 2009

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of specific endurance (Yo-Yo Intermittent recovery test level 1, Yo-Yo IR1)on match performance in male youth soccer. Twenty-one young, male soccer players (age 14.1 6 0.2 years) were involved in the study. Players were observed during international championship games of corresponding age categories and completed the Yo-Yo IR1 on a separate occasion. Physical (distance coverage) and physiological match demands were assessed using Global Positioning System technology and heart rate (HR) short-range telemetry, respectively.

During the match (two 30-minutes halves), players covered 6,204 6 731 m, of which 985 6 362 m (16%) were performed at high intensities (speed >13 km/h-1, HIA). A significant decrement (3.8%, p = 0.003) in match coverage was evident during the second half. No significant (p = 0.07) difference between halves was observed for HIA (p = 0.56) and sprint (speed >18 km/h-1, SPR) distances. During the first and second halves, players attained the 86 6 5.5 and 85 6 6.0% of HRmax (p = 0.17), respectively. Peak HR during the first and second halves were 100 6 4 and 99.4 6 4.7% of HRmax, respectively. Yo-Yo IR1 performance (842 +/- 352 m) was significantly related to match HIA (r = 0.77, p , 0.001) and total distance (r = 0.65, p = 0.002).

This study’s results showed that specific endurance, as determined by Yo-Yo IR1 performance, positively affects physical match performance in male young soccer players.

Consequently, the Yo-Yo IR1 test may be regarded as a valid test to assess game readiness and guide training prescription in male youth soccer players. Click Here for full article...

Ulster's Paddy Wallace pictured ahead of their opening Heineken Cup clash against Bath on Friday night

When Brian McLaughlin first encountered the Ulster Rugby team last summer, their confidence was in such tatters that it was clear the squad needed to be dragged up from the floor.

Instead, the former Irish skills' coach decided to drag them up a hill.

A short walk from Instonians' RFC in Belfast lies Barnetts Demesne and it was here that McLaughlin, along with the province's willing drill sergeants from the strength and conditioning staff, Jonny Davis and Paul Hatton, instituted his model of army boot-camp.

Mention the experience to Ulster's stand-in captain Paddy Wallace and you can understand why Roy Keane's version must have seemed like a languorous picnic in comparison.

"I can speak personally," he says, only half-smilingly, as if still chilled to the aching bones by the memory of traipsing 300m up and down Barnetts Hill anchored by weights. "I vomited about 14 times, so that sort of set the scene for me. Guys had been at that for two weeks before I came back."

The benign dictators Davis and Hatton deployed GPSports technologies, a tracking and analysis technology used to improve a player's personal performance and decrease injuries. Each player wears a GPS tracker while they train, which then sends back live feeds to a computer to be analysed.

The tracker, also favoured by the All Blacks, the Lions, AC Milan and Chelsea, monitors everything from heart rate, oxygen levels, work rate and performance, to potential injury risks.

As Wallace wheezed his way past the bemused badgers and squirrels that populate the sprawling territory, he received the clearest indication yet that McLaughlin's reign would see Ulster revert to basics this season.