If you’re looking to get the perfect swing you can spend more time on the driving range, video tape yourself to watch your form and get a golf pro to help you. Or you can fly over to Las Vegas or Dubai and hit the Butch Harmon School of Golf, where this golf expert is using technology from the Titleist Performance Institute.
The heart of this technology is TPI 3D, technology that has been long used in the video game industry and for movie animation. Now its being strapped onto golfers, where it can be used to study the biomechanics of a golf swing, and instead of just having the couch eyeball you, or going to a video tape, every intricate detail of a golf swing can be quickly examined and studied.
So while it might not turn you into a Tiger Woods (which given his “problems” is probably a good thing), but this technology might help you out on the course.
CamelBak is on the lookout for unconventional teams outfit with its bottles and hydration systems. It began its search with the “Official Water Bottle Of” campaign last week. CamelBak will provide BPA-free Better Bottles and t-shirts with the team logo and have water-carrying rights at the teams’ sanctioned events. It will also promote the team on the CamelBak Web site and its Facebook fan page.
Unconventional sports on CamelBak’s radar include dodge ball, roller derby, and underwater hockey. They’ll be happy to hear about more quirky sports, and so will KineticShift. So far Santa Cruz Derby Girls and San Francisco Sea Lions Underwater Hockey are charter members of the search.
CamelBak began years ago as a hydration system built into a backpack. It now offers a line of backpack hydration systems, clothing, and hands-free bottles.
Team Garman-Slipstream at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, February 2010
International cycling Team Slipstream, which rides under the sponsorship name Team Garmin-Transitions, known for its voluntary testing practice is adding metabolic and endurance training to its regime. Through a partnership with Angeion, the team will get the cardiorespiratory diagnostic systems company’s New Leaf metabolic assessment and training equipment.
Team Garmin-Transition’s president, Matt Johnson said, “We are focused on expanding our family of technology-driven partners, so adding New Leaf technology is something we’re incredibly proud of.” New Leaf will get to display its technology to a worldwide audience of potential customers and sports enthusiasts by association with the team.
The New Leaf metabolic assessment and training program is based on decades of medical research and learning. It’s New Leaf Active Metabolic Training System is available at some fitness clubs, corporate wellness programs, and sports training centers to measure human performance and how efficiently a person’s body burns calories.
Rudy Project was the eyewear of choice of Olympic athlete Anastazia Kuzmina of Slovakia who won gold in the women's biathlon.
As the Olympics close, the Rudy Project reports it had a hand in 18 medals, internationally. Before the torch was lit, Rudy Project said it would supply eyewear to a number of Olympic athletes. The round-up of athletes that placed on the podium included gold for women’s biathlon competitor Anastazia Kuzmina from Slovakia, who also won a silver medal. German cross country skier Claudia Nystad won gold in the team sprint. Johan Olsson from Sweden took gold in the cross country 4 x 10 relay.
Kinetic Shift congratulates all the athletes who competed in the Olympics. And kudos to Rudy Project for supporting so many winning athletes.
Nike makes team uniforms from recycled plastic bottles.
The recent trend in sports and fitness clothing is green, sustainability. Nike is part of this trend and especially when it comes to football (that’s soccer to many of you), and the upcoming 2010 World Cup in South Africa. This year Nike is outfitting the Brazil team with home and away kits, plus eight away kits for other Nike-sponsored federations appearing in the games. What’s so sustainable about these kits or outfits you ask? Nike’s fabric suppliers sourced plastic bottles from landfill sites in Japan and Taiwan to produce the jerseys and shorts.
Eight plastic bottles produce one jersey. To turn bottle into soft, breathable fabric bottles the manufacturer melts the plastics down to produce new yarn and then convert that yarn into fabric to construct jerseys. Just because the jerseys are made from plastic doesn’t mean players will drown in their own sweat. Designed to keep players drier, cooler, and more comfortable, the outfit has a handful of features. The Dri-Fit fabric is 15 percent lighter than previous Nike kit fabrications, which also benefits players’ ability to do their stuff out on the field. The coordinating shorts have additional ventilation zones below the waistband and near the base of the spine to keep the outfit breathable.
The outfits have some protection built in as well. Nike Pro Combat, adds protection against light impact and abrasion in the Slider and Impact shorts. The Pro Combat also features a therma Mock that protects a player’s neck against harsh conditions such as sun.
The process saves raw materials and reduces energy consumption by up to 30 percent compared to the manufacture of virgin polyester. For the upcoming season and competition, Nike salvaged roughly 13 million plastic bottles, totaling around 254,000 kg of polyester waste from landfill sites. That’s enough to stretch a distance of 3,000 kilometers if the bottles are laid out end-to-end.
The games take place in South Africa with teams from Brazil, The Netherlands, Portugal, U.S.A., South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, and Slovenia. Get your own team kits at nike.com and nikefootball.com.
Omega has kept track of time for the Olympic Games since 1932.
Omega has had its hand in the Olympic Games since 1932. At that time Omega supplied 30 stopwatches to track all 14 sports events. Over the years Omega developed timing technology such as the photo finish, which captured images of athletes as they crossed the finish line. This helped determine who had the lead when all the competitors finished in a group.
The drive to advance its accuracy and reliability in timing for the Olympics means Omega does much more than supply 30 stopwatches to the games. In Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games Omega deployed 220 timekeeping professionals and engineers supported by 290 local volunteers. The watch manufacturer brings roughly 250 tons of equipment for timekeeping, on-venue results, and TV services. The equipment and support from timekeeping professionals tracks athletes to the split second, and often means the athletes wear sensors so they are accurately tracked during competition.
The SCUTA project is working on custom garments for individual athletes for football, Taekwando, and Cricket.
Certain sports require padding to protect athletes. That padding has sections, panels, seams, and doesn’t always conform to the body. The Tailored Injury Prevention & Performance Improvement for Protective Sports Garments project known as SCUTA is a joint effort with experts from Loughborough, Nottingham, Cambridge, and Cranfield University in the U.K. and the Georgia Institute of Technology in the U.S. SCUTA works on the areas of manufactguring, sports technology, sports science, remote sensing, and impact and aims to develop garments tailored to the individual.
SCUTA concentrates on garments for three disciplines: Football, Taekwondo, and Cricket,
though it doesn’t specify if that’s American or European Football, one can assume both sports would benefit from the research. The group researches garments made from an additive manufacturing method known as Rapid Manufacturing, which allows for the production of virtually any geometry. It
Garments are made from layers of protective fabric.
can be custom made through a three-dimensional scanning process so each team member gets his own garment that fits the body perfectly. The garment
will be made in one piece, without seams or joins, and can be optimized to reduce the particular impact conditions of the sport and even position player. The defensive players may get a garment that’s protective in different areas than the offensive players. The project utilizes state of the art manufacturing, biomechanical, and impact facilities to continue its reasearch.
SportsMEDIA Technology Corporation, the company that draws the virtual yellow line on the football field in TV broadcasts of games, just made it to the green with a multi-year deal with the Golf Channel to enhance broadcasts of its PGA Tour and LPGA tour coverage. This mean when a pro-golfer lines up his shot, the SMART Virtual Putting Line will draw a line to show the optimum putting line. It will use AimPoint’s positioning data system to measure the slope and grain of the putting surface to rate the difficulty. The optimum putting line will show where the ball must travel to make a successful putt.
See the action this week on the Golf Channel’s broadcast of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. You can decide whether the addition enhances the broadcast when the Golf Channel puts it on the line with SportsMedia Technology.
