This article appears in the March edition of US Lacrosse Magazine, which includes a special section on innovation in the sport. Don’t get the mag? Join US Lacrosse today to start your subscription.

Wearable technology is a steadily growing industry as it relates to sports performance. We heard about products like Sports Performance Tracking (SPT) in last year’s Innovation Edition.

These devices have helped athletes track the load put on their bodies through the course of the season and other metrics like kinetic energy and stress. 

What’s next for wearable technology?

Sleep

More researchers are studying not just how an athlete’s body reacts while on the field, but when it’s inactive. The study of sleep has become an integral part of understanding how an athlete functions.

Products like the WHOOP Band are worn 24/7 to gather results from physical activity, but also to optimize sleeping habits. The WHOOP Band measures how long an athlete sleeps, as well as time spent in each stage to better understand sleep quality.

“The mindset of when you talk about your eight hours, going to bed at midnight and waking up at 8 a.m. and thinking you’re sleeping for eight hours — WHOOP shows you’re really not even getting close to that,” Team USA’s Joel White wrote in a 2017 testimonial. “Being in bed a little earlier and knowing how long I need to wind down and fall asleep has been a game-changer. If I know my alarm is going off at 6:30 in the morning, now I know I need to be in bed at a certain time to get enough sleep. That’s been huge for me and has energized me on and off the field.”

Bioethics

The wearable tech boom has given rise to concerns about bioethics. 

With the ever-expanding pool of data these devices measure, consumers and companies have a responsibility to understand who has access to it and what they are doing with it.

Barbara Osborne, professor of exercise and sport science at the University of North Carolina, spoke about bioethics during the Sports Medicine Symposium, presented by MedStar Sports Medicine, at the US Lacrosse Convention in January. Osborne cautioned that although data collected from wearable tech can be useful, if that data ventures into a user’s personal health, it could be dangerous.

“You need to be really sure that whatever you are using protects the user’s privacy,” she said. “It’s for the benefit of the technology company who is using all of the aggregate data to continue to develop new algorithms to monetize that for other reasons. You have to be very careful with what you choose to collect and why you’re collecting it.”

Osborne referenced data breaches like that of the Houston Astros database in 2015 — one that exposed scouting reports and internal trade discussions — and the hacking of the World Doping Agency that revealed health information on Serena and Venus Williams as examples of what could go wrong with access to information. 

5 Questions You Should Ask

1. What does this technology do?

2. Is it actually better than the current methods that we have?

3. How invasive is it? Is it safe?

4. What can we learn from this information?

5. Is what I’m getting from this information better than what I have access to now?