Welcome to the Tech Race.
Every single step a hockey player takes
is important and will be tracked.
Now elite athletes train and compete
under surveillance to achieve their best.
(HOCKEY TRACKING SYSTEM)
During a 60-minute hockey match,
players may sprint at speeds of up to 30km/h,
making it nearly impossible
to analyse their explosive movements
without the help of technology.
We started very basic,
a GPS similar to what's in a car.
As the technology got a bit more advanced,
we very much went from very linear stuff,
like rowing, like I mentioned before,
to very multi-directional and explosive sport movements,
like you see in hockey.
Without collecting this information,
we'd be guessing.
The biggest thing we can do
is we can start answering questions.
I started playing when I was 12.
I can't imagine training without it.
(UNITED KINGDOM)
(BISHAM ABBEY)
We visit the British National Sports Centre
in Bisham Abbey.
The British female hockey team,
gold medallists at the Olympic Games Rio 2016,
no longer train or play without GPS technology.
We had the chance to see how the device works
and what it tracks during a match.
We get the data from matches such as today
and then we can use it to replicate our training -
the high-speed running with cover,
the number of accelerations and decelerations,
and it's interesting to see sort of
different styles and tactics we play, how that affects
our running and movement.
Let's say, for example,
that we make an attack and then the team
counterattack against us.
We can see if our players are sprinting
as hard as they can to get back
to get behind the ball, to win it, to go back again.
If we can calculate how much work they're doing
and characterise a response,
we can also say these players are fitter,
for example, or these are stronger,
these have a better diet, these sleep more.
How does that impact or affect
how well they recover?
The powerful GPS system works at 10Hz,
meaning it samples data ten times a second,
requiring at least four available satellites.
In addition to field hockey,
this technology is used in soccer,
basketball, rowing and ice hockey.
10Hz is ideal for human movement.
The GPS in a car is 1Hz.
You turn left too late,
cos it only samples once a second,
you do miss some information, whereas a car travels fast
and the GPS struggles to keep up.
The more explosive the players are,
the more changes of directions they do
and the more they work in small spaces
like they do in hockey,
the higher the quality of the GPS has to be
to be able to track those movements.
We basically use two satellite constellations
for our GPS fix.
We use The American Navstar constellation
and the Russian GLONASS constellation.
The factors involved are
how many satellites you can connect to,
the size of the GPS antenna as well -
you can imagine that if you have a very small GPS antenna,
it's very difficult to get a good signal.
Also the sampling frequency.
You mentioned 1Hz versus 10Hz.
The GNSS is a satellite tracking-based system
where GPS is still a vital component,
but, thanks to GLONASS, the Russian satellite system
doubles the available satellites,
increasing the accuracy of the tracking system,
also reducing velocity noise in difficult conditions
and works when there is sky coverage.
The heat map shows
where each player has spent most of their time.
The arrows indicate a sprint.
The velocity graph shows peak speeds
and even heart rate.
What the gyroscope can help us to do
is work out which direction the unit is facing.
We might be able to see that a player makes more movements
this direction than that direction.
We can feed that information
to our medical team and say,
"This player has made significantly more movements
"towards their left than towards their right.
"Has that had an impact on muscles,
"on how their back is, how their hips are,
"or their joints?"
Coaches create a profile of work
that needs to be done on the field
in order to find the ideal player for each position
and to succeed in competitions.
The fantastic thing about hockey
or team sport is that, you know, it's not a race,
it's not an all-out physiological event.
So different people
with different physical characteristics
can still make it to the most elite level.
It's the role of us as trainers and scientists
to try and find the best way for them to get there.
Tracking systems may provide a big advantage.
However, they are dependent on satellite coverage,
a limitation researchers are trying to overcome.
The next step is so-called local positioning -
a technology that provides positional data
via wireless nodes that serve as satellites,
ideal for indoor sports.
(THE TECH RACE)