Technology the present and future of presenting and sharing information to athletes?

Hey followers sorry for the delay in my week seven post in the past week i have been working with my internship at ACTAS which included doing some work with the Australian Hockey team and was an amazing experience but finally here it is my week 7 post.

The week seven lecture looked at sharing and presenting information and technology in recent times has played a critical role in determining how information is shared and presented to athletes and coaches.  Technology has added a new level of professionalism to sport, which has resulted in improved performances in players, as athletes and their coaches are able to access crucial information on their technique, strength/weaknesses and their performances in general.  GPS is one of the technological advances that has revolutionized the information that coaches are supplied with to help optimize their athlete or teams performance in the short and long term. Not only can this equipment supply information about the speed, acceleration and distance covered by the athlete, but it can also supply information about the forces and body loads of the athlete. This plays a critical role in the way the coaches train their players, as a player who is placing greater strain on their body is more likely to get injured.

This raises my first discussion point: as technology involvement increases and develops, is there actually a need to increase the involvement of sport scientists and statisticians in high performance teams? Is having more people in high performance areas going to assist or hinder the performances of coaches and athletes?

The second part of my post today looks at specifically how you present and share this information to the athletes in terms of feedback. Feedback is an interesting but difficult mechanism, as a mentor or coach you need to provide the information and advice in the right way to ensure that the athlete takes in the information and learns from it.

Here are some of the common types of feedback used by coaches-

The first two are a result of extrinsic feedback which is information not inherent in the movement itself but which improves intrinsic feedback. This is also known as augmented feedback.

v Knowledge of performance (KP) - information about the technique and performance. This can be provided verbally from the coach or visually via video and software systems such as Sport Coding. This enables the athlete to establish a kinaesthetic reference for the correct movement. e.g. an analysis of the rowing technique or tennis serve.

v Knowledge of results (KR) that is information with regards the result of the athlete's performance e.g. the sprinter's 100 metre time or how high or far they have jumped

The timing of the feedback is also important and has to be done occurring to the stage of learning and experience of the athletes.

v Terminal feedback – is the information provided to the athlete before or after the performance has taken place

v Concurrent feedback - information provided to the athlete during the performance

My second discussion question relates to whether there is a right method of feedback? Or is it dependent on the athlete, coach and sport?

Also to whether there is a length to the amount of feedback on coach can provide?

As always would love to hear your thoughts on this interesting topic.

Cheers