The emergence of electronic technology is evident in today’s world since the latter side of the 20th century. From this emerged the wave of wearable technology in the 21^st century which is seen to be growing ever more so. Naturally this wave has spilled into the sports industry. From which GPS devices have been a growing trend in sports since its first use in 2001 in orienteering. The technology takes advantage of multiple satellites which orbit the earth to pick up signals from GPS units on athletes to establish the location and speed of it. It has been employed across a range of sports including rugby, soccer, Australian football and American football to name but a few. This blog post aims to look at its application in sports, how accurate is it really?, criticism of its utilization and what the future holds for GPS in sports.

The application of it uses in sport from training to competition day is limitless. Coaches can gather information on their athletes such as work rate, heart rate, total distance the athletes ran and the speed at which they ran it. One major use for GPS is injury prevention. A coach can see if an athlete has done too much and equally too little. How else is it used? The devices can map out an athletes positioning on the pitch which allows the coach to see their movements and make informed decisions. Is it too good to be true though?

Anytime a new piece of technology comes to the fore the accuracy of it is put into question. Here GPS technology is no different. Even though its manufacturers might claim and promise full reliability for their products, no GPS device is 100% accurate. Inaccurate measurements can occur leading to incorrect data which leaves the coach with ill informed decisions that can be crucial for competition outcomes. This leads into criticism of its utilization.

Often is the case where coaches are receiving too much information from these devices which leads to information overload and no better informed than they were before. On the flip side it is just as frequent for coaches to receive all this data and not do anything logically with it or only select 1 or 2 metrics to observe and not as a whole. This can be equally as negative. So what does the future hold for GPS in sport?

It is likely that GPS technology will stay a firm part of sports for the foreseeable future. Its cost once an unreachable factor for many is reducing due to the increasing number of manufacturers and brands associated with it. Particularly GPS watches are the trend in the race to achieve a ‘quantified self’ movement. Its accuracy will only increase with the continuous improvement in technology. For now though it cant be trusted 100% for accuracy. However the methodology of how a coach utilizes it is crucial. Knowledge and experience will come into play here and should be a key focus for any team contemplating investing in GPS. Nevertheless, with all the positives and negatives with its use taken into consideration you must ask yourself is GPS technology in sport a friend or foe?

Interested in learning more about GPS in sport? Click the links below!

https://metrifit.com/blog/gps-in-sport/

https://www.sportperformanceanalysis.com/article/gps-in-professional-sports

https://www.catapultsports.com/blog/6-reasons-coaches-using-gps-athlete-monitoring

https://sportsperformancetracking.com/blogs/spt-playbook/how-do-coaches-use-gps-technology-in-sport

https://mikerawson23.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/do-global-positioning-systems-have-a-future-in-sport/

https://mharrison2011.wordpress.com/2014/05/03/the-use-of-gps-technology-in-sport-2/

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