Stay Injury-free with Wearable Technologies

Activity in sports is a very important part of lifestyle covering both fun and healthy purposes. However,as fun as sport may be, it comes with its own set of hazards.
Given the statistics on sport-related injuries in the U.S provided by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, there are 1.35 million youths having serious sport injuries each year. The most common injuries causes are poor training methods and improper equipment.
There are many well-supported wearable devices that could help to avoid sport injuries. These wearable devices are about to make a huge breakthrough for sport lovers! We‘ve already written an article regarding sport injuries prevention in America football here. But take a look below for new emerging tech.

Garmin Forerunner 620 could be your own personal running coach. You can definitely train smarter because Forerunner 620 features recovery advisor, race predictor and VO2 max (maximal oxygen consumption). Forerunner 620 estimates your VO2 max from a heart rate monitor and 620 data from your running speed and heartbeat to measure your physical fitness and improve your performance. According to your VO2 max, the 620 can give you a time target for several distances. Moreover, with the 620, you know exactly your recovery time between workouts. There is a colour coding on the gauge of the 620 that makes it easier to interpret. It signals that you are ready to go when it turns green. When you see red and a recovery time of more than 3 days, it’s time for a rest day or a lite recovery run. Besides, the 620 also gives you feedback on your running form by showing your cadence- total number of steps you take per minutes with both feet, vertical oscillation – the degree of “bounce” in your running motion and ground contact time.

The next best thing is Sensoria smart socks which is designed to improve your running form. Research of Prof. Daniel Lieberman from Harvard has shown that over 65% of runners get injured each year. Nevertheless, don’t worry! Sensoria socks are here to help. They are made of comfortable textile pressure sensors. They identify and inform you in real-time when you are striking with the heel or the ball of your foot. Sensors on the sock count your actual steps to monitor cadence. You can connect the socks with your smartphone and run the Sensoria Fitness mobile app. You will receive feedback about your form through audio and video to remind you if you are doing anything harmful to your feet during your run.

Sensoria Coaching Evolved from Sensoria Inc on Vimeo.

Stridalyzer is the next best thing for runners. It is smart insole simply inserted into your footwear to detect potential hazards for your feet and knees. On the only display screen of Stridalyzer, you can find every precious information about pace, distance, time, stride length, stride rate, ground contact time. You will definitely get an alarm to correct your balance and form during running.

Kinematix is getting closer to us through TUNE. TUNE is a wearable device that provides you with specific information about your run. With the recorded information, TUNE adjusts a personalized plan for you which adapts to your running profile. Tune can lead you to a better performance and less injury risk.

Do you know that poor warm-up is one of the top ten causes of sport injuries? Warming up and cooling down are essential part of any training session but they are easily fudged, neglected or cut short. TomTom Cardio Multisport is here to rescue. TomTom allows you to build warm-up and cool down segments into your pre-planned session. It provides 5 intensity zones for cycling and running. The first level –easy is for warm-up and cool down. You will be well prepared before high intensity interval session.

It is of great necessity to care about the quality of your shoes when you want to play sports. An unqualified pair of shoes could bring you severe injury that you might not notice. Runmino takes notice of this risk and creates the Mino. The Mino is a shoes’ life tracker which definitely warn you when your shoes are worn out. Taking into account height, weight, gait length, the Mino is calibrated to count 400 miles worth of compression at a different pace.

We know that training and running hard is not the solution for our fitness. Notwithstanding, running and training smart could help. Take the advantage of wearable technology to create your active lifestyle with injury worry-free.

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