There’s an arms race going on in the world of sports — a technology arms race. Each year, new devices are introduced to sports clubs and elite athletes around the globe, which promise improved performance thanks to new insights into the athlete’s unique physiology and biomechanics. “It might sound nitpicky, but a small adjustment for a serious athlete can mean the difference between winning and losing,” says SnT former researcher and wakeboarder Dr. Christian Hammes. “More importantly, getting data about your movements can help prevent injuries. It helps bring problems to your attention before the pain of a repetitive stress issue has set in.”

Newly developed, wearable sports performance monitors can measure a lot more than just heart rate and step count — they measure the force of a limb in motion or the amount of lactic acid in a muscle. They can track an athlete’s location with GPS, and their speed with accelerometers. They even use 3D vision and sophisticated image capture technology. But there’s always a catch: the conditions need to be just right. “Many existing sensors don’t work well when the weather takes a turn for the worse. Others are complicated to set up or require consistent compliance from the athlete wearing the device,” says Hammes. “That’s not always an easy thing to secure from an entire football team, for example.