While various “speed suits” have been banned in swimming competition the new Roka Viper Speed Suit is ready to race. This new suit was designed for swim trainers and triathletes with help from NASA technology. It might not help you get to space, but with this suit you might just fly through the water.
Swimmers don’t get a lot of sensory data while in the pool. There have been efforts to provide ways to train with music and many heart rate monitors are now swimming compatible. But unlike with running and cycling, it isn’t so easy to see the watch while engaged even in long distance activities.
This is where the Instabeat could come in. The device is now being developed via an Indiegogo campaign.
The device provides a heart rate reading from the temporal artery so no heart rate strap is required across the chest, while a head strap to the goggles provides the read out via a colored LED that is projected directly to the eyes. This helps swimmers track their heart rate while actually swimming to determine if they are at their own specific fat burning, fitness or maximum performance heart rate. The device even tracks calories burned, while a motion sensor tracks laps, flip turns and breathing patterns for a post-workout analysis. Video after the jump
If you are considering a goggle search – even if that search is on Google – look no further than the Aqua Sphere K180 Swimming Goggles. These offer 180-degree panoramic vision with a water-tight fit. There is a 100 percent Softeril gasket that provides comfort along with a leak-resistant seal. These goggles offer three interchangeable nose bridges and an adjustable headstrap. The goggle search may be complete.
Trainers are interesting devices. These simulate an activity, and provide great exercise but without actually doing said activity. In other words a bicycle trainer lets you ride a bike and put in miles while you go nowhere. A cross-country ski machine needs no snow, and rowing machines need no water.
Keeping with the waterless concept the Vasa Trainer Pro is a swim simulator for those who don’t want to get wet – at least until you work up a sweat and then later hit the showers. It uses the same principal of a Nordic Track with pulleys and cables and your own body weight to provide the resistance. Video after the jump
Under the water, it can be difficult to see every kick and every stroke a swimmer makes. But Manhattan Mocap did just that with Olympic swimmer Dana Vollmer to analyze her butterfly stroke and underwater dolphin kick.
Manhattan Mocap worked together with the New York Times and the NYU Movement Lab to film Vollmer and create models of her strokes to analyze how the body and water move together. Findings can help coaches instruct swimmers in how to move better in the water to gain speed. A motion capture session might help a swimmer learn where their strokes go wrong, and how to correct them. Read the rest of this entry »
The company that has made its business in helping people find their way is now looking at helping users find their way to better fitness. This week Magellan announced its new Magellan Active Website for fitness activity tracking. And to help users get there the company has released its new Switch and Switch Up crossover GPS watches.
Magellan Active’s Dashboard is designed to help multisport athletes from a single location for viewing all of their performance activities. Users are provided with total control of data and given the ability to quickly search through all of their activities with a range of filters. Activity analysis is easy with summaries, lap comparisons and easy-to-read maps and charts. Multisport athletes can further record each segment on their Switch GPS watch, upload the data to Magellan Active, and then view all of the segments with a single view. This ‘True Multisport’ experience presents multisport activities naturally with a single view of the entire activity and the ability to drill into each segment such as swimming, biking, running and transitions. Read the rest of this entry »
Imagine flying half way around the world, having to sleep in a strange bed the night before a big event and then being told you can’t take a prescription sleeping pill! All that worry is probably enough to have many competitors tossing and turning, but this is no joke!
The Australian Olympic Committee announced that it amended its team medical manual to prohibit the use of Stilnox and other zolpidem related drugs by athletes at the Olympics. The reason is that former Olympic swimming champion Grant Hackett said he became heavily reliant on the sleeping pills at the end of his career.
So the committee has responded by saying that there is an “obligation… to protect the health of our athletes.” But isn’t serious insomnia a health problem as well?
How ridiculous does some of this get? Well, consider that the World Anti-Doping Agency once considered caffeine a performance enhancer and it was on the list of banned substances. That has since changed, but it still doesn’t address how athletes with insomnia will deal at bedtime.
The Australian Olympic Committee has made a few other questionable decisions this year. Two Aussie swimmers, Nick D’Arcy and Kenrick Monk, have added a self-imposed social media ban prior to the games. The reason is that the pair visited a California shooting range in June and posed for pictures with “high-powered pistols [sic] and shotguns.” The AOC reacted to their posting the photos online.
“They showed poor judgement in posting what we saw as inappropriate photos, in which they appear to be skylarking with guns while in the US last week,” said Swimming Australia CEO Kevin Neil. “While what the boys did was not illegal, posting the photos on social networks encourages public debate, and that debate can be seen to have a negative impact on the image of the sport and their own image.”
The pair are adults and visited a legal gun shop so we see no problem? Of course we wonder if members of the Australian Olympic Team competing in shooting sports will be allowed to post photos of themselves with their firearms?
When you’re competing in a triathlon you can customize just about every aspect of your uniform. But then you strap on a pair of standard goggles that everybody else is also wearing in the swim component. TYR just announced a custom goggle program that lets swimmers create their own goggles. Read the rest of this entry »
Most heart rate monitors are waterproof, and therefore you can track your heart rate while doing laps, but it’s difficult to track what you do in the pool. The new Swim training watch from Garmin is designed specifically for swimmers, and provides feedback on laps. The Garmin Swim training watch was announced ahead of the U.S. Masters Swimming Championships in Omaha, Nebraska taking place July 5-8. Read the rest of this entry »
Designing a completely new suit for swimmers isn’t so much about going back to the drawing board as it is about going back to the desktop, and the Aqualab. That isn’t some “Bat Cave” secret base for lackluster super hero Aquaman, but it could help competitive swimmers see gold in London in a few weeks. This was also the center of a simulation that helped the designers of the revolutionary Speedo Fastskin Racing System, which utilized the engineering simulation software ANSYS.
When worn together as a complete system, a Fastskin suit, cap and goggle can reduce full-body passive drag by up to 16.6 percent, improve oxygen economy by up to 11 percent (enabling the athlete to swim stronger for longer), and reduce active body drag by up to 5.2 percent. And to help make this possible Speedo looked to ANSYS. Read the rest of this entry »
There hasn’t been this much drama over swim attire since the bikini arrived followed World War II. With just two months until the London Olympics swimsuits are stirring up trouble. This comes in the wake of the Speedo LZR Racer Elite was banned following the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.
The Speedo LZR Racer Elite was notably worn by Olympic gold metalist Michael Phelps, and after the games aquatic leaders banned all rubberized bodysuits. This was thought to be the end of the technological “arms race” that stirred up the trouble in the first place. Bob Bowman, coach of Phelps has gone on the record to say that the suit matters and helps, but that it doesn’t change the swimmer. In other words the Speedo LZR Racer Elite doesn’t make Phelps transform into Aquaman. Read the rest of this entry »
While this isn’t quite what most people have in mind with a lifeguard name Emily (above) that’s because E.M.I.LY. is actually a robot lifeguard that can be deployed on beaches to aid human lifeguards.
Designed by Hydronalix, the Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard will be making the rounds this summer, where it can be used as a tool that can be deployed at 25 miles per hour – so much quicker than even the Bay Watch crew could likely swim. E.M.I.LY. works as a floatation system for those in trouble while they wait for the real life human life guards to arrive.
When we think of BMW we don’t think of the Olympics and we certainly don’t think about swimming – in fact the only time we even think of German cars and water is that scene in Risky Business where Tom Cruise goes deep with the Porsche.
But now BMW, which has in the past aided long jumpers, is getting all wet helping USA Swimming prepare for the Olympics. So how is the company involved? According to the press release:
This latest effort will provide quantitative analysis of swimmers’ starts and turns – critical to success in the sport – via a unique motion tracking system. This technology initiative is central to BMW’s comprehensive U.S. Olympic program which endeavors to advance the performance goals of Team USA while bringing communities across the country closer to the excitement of the Olympic Games. Read the rest of this entry »
