Way back in the dark ages of the early 2000’s the STEMfit team were working with Australia’s elite athletes to develop a swimming technology to help improve performance. One of the secrets of performance enhancement is that first you have to be able to measure the performance. A stopwatch and lap times is a great start, but in today’s world if you want to finish on the podium you need a bit more than that. It turns out that using wearables like we use in STEMfit can do a whole lot of measuring. STEMfit co-founder, Jim, has used wearables to measure stroke rates, stroke times, body roll angle, and even how long it takes to do a turn at the end of a lap. So why is lap turn so important? , it turns (sorry ’bout the pun) out it takes up to 0.5 seconds…and thats often the difference between finishing on the podium or finishing last! FWIW, swimming turns can take up to 30% of a whole swim’s time – how? Well, that is a story for another time….
Here is some more reading from on of Jim’s publications
Inertial sensor, 3D and 2D assessment of stroke phases in freestyle swimming
(See more here)
