Helmets should be top of the list for new gear, as football season gets ready to kick off. Concussions are an ongoing problem, and many teams use reconditioned helmets rather than new ones, which exacerbates the problem. There’s no complete safeguard for preventing head injuries for players who choose to go out on the field, but every little bit helps. Xenith, a company founded by a Harvard grad who played as quarterback on the varsity team, has a new design to help cushion and protect the head. Continue reading Xenith X1: Building a Better Brain Bucket
One thing was proven at this year’s World Cup tournament: you need to have eyes like a hawk to keep track of the ball. That’s why Dr. Paul Hawkin, inventor of Hawk-Eye, is pushing for adopting of his tracking system by the International Football Association Board. If adopted this could see the use of goal-line watching technology put in place this year.
Hawkins isn’t new to the world of sports either, and he previously developed the ball-tracking device used in cricket, snooker and tennis, and is pushing for similar technology to be used in football/soccer. The system includes six cameras facing the goal from different angles to track the ball, where a signal is transmitted via a bank of computers to a referee with half a second of the ball crossing the line. Given some of the disputed calls during the World Cup, this could make a huge difference.
However, not all are in embracing the idea. It has been noted that many English Premier League matches are carried by Sky TV, which has eight cameras on the field, so a simple replay should often be enough to determine a call. But the real question is whether you can ever really have enough eyes – Hawk – or otherwise watching the action?
This week the California Institute of Technology gave new meaning to the concept of “air ball” as aerospace engineers at the prestigious school put the controversial new “Jabulani” football (that’s soccer to most of us Americans) to the test in a wind tunnel. The ball, which was developed by adidas, is currently being used in the World Cup, where players, coaches and fans have blamed it for missed shots. So much for blaming bad play?
According to reports two balls were put into the Lucas Wind Tunnel and exposed to wind speeds of about 10 meters per second, which is actually slower than a typical kicked ball. To determine the movement of air around said balls, a smoke machine was called in. This helped the engineers visualize the air movement. The findings actually matched some complaints from teams in the World Cup. The ball reportedly had some “bizarre trajectories.”
Developed by the adidas Innovation Team (a.i.t.), the ball has been tested as new “match ball” for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. This mean tests under the toughest laboratory conditions, but it isn’t clear if this is in fact the first time the ball went into a wind tunnel. At this point it doesn’t look as if the ball will pulled, but with more studies coming dare we say that the windofchange is blowingthrough.
These players are kicking on a hybrid natural grass and artificial turf.
Field caretakers at this year’s World Cup may get a break from patching grass at this tournament. The fields are sewn with reinforced natural grass produced by Belgian-based company Desso Sports Systems. An article appearing in USAToday details “a surface with 20 million threads of synthetic grass fibers woven in between and beneath the natural grass.” The surface is far from Astroturf of yesterday. Natural grass composes most of the playing field, but is reinforced with artificial threads driven eight inches into the surface and intertwined with the roots of the real grass to keep the field intact for the long series of soccer games to be played.
The enhanced surface is already installed in a number of fields worldwide. For soccer, or football as the rest of the world calls it, Arsenal and Liverpool in the U.K. and the training grounds of Real Madrid. For American football, the Denver Broncos and the Philadelphia Eagles already use the reinforced natural grass.
The heart rate monitor and GPS device is no longer personal for world football players. Australia’s World Cup players are picking up data via satellite for each player’s workout. Teams get competitive data on their own performance, and their competitors, according to “Socceroos go high-tech to gain an edge over rest of the world,” an article published in The Sydney Morning Herald.
Players down under were able to compare their training to that of their Russian counterparts. Team coaches also use the data to provide support for their players. “We’re analyzing the players’ volumes of sweat and composition so we can accurately predict how much fluid they’ll lose during a game and at training,” Australia’s strength and conditioning coach Darren Burgess told the paper. “We want to have a rehydration strategy for each player.”
It will be interesting to see what other teams and leagues pick up this method of training. Will it lead to real-time data access to personal workouts instead of uploading details upon return from a run?
When you sign up for a contact sport such as football, boxing, ice hockey, and wrestling you know you need a mouth guard, but do you realize how important it is? Not just to protect your pearly whites. “Ninety percent of concussions resulting in unconsciousness are caused by impact to the lower jaw,” says Joe Manzo, president of Brain-Pad, a company that offers a new mouth guard with more absorption power.
Bite on this mouth guard, the Brain-Pad 3XS
Brain-Pad’s new piece, the 3XS professional model (available at Wal-Mart and other retailers for $34.95) uses a patented technology and dual-protection system that offers 40 percent more absorption power than comparable models. The 3XS is a dual arch, bi-molar mouth guard that stabilizes the jaw in a neutral position, creating a safety space at the base of the skull that reduces the risk of jaw impact concussions and TMJ injuries. Traditionally mouth guards just protected the upper or lower teeth, but not both. The 3XS also opens the airway in the throat 100 percent, which allows you to breathe better, which is crucial to any sport.
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.
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.
