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| Zulfairuuz Rudy, Goalkeeper, Home United Football Club, demonstrates an abbreviated form of his training regimen while wearing a vest fitted with sensors to monitor physical responses. |
SAP's HANA platform has a bright future in sports analytics, a relatively new area of focus for software vendor SAP. At the SAP APJ Media Summit 2015 in Singapore the company demonstrated how a football player training while wearing a vest fitted with sensors could have physical functions such as heart rate and respiration monitored and sent via the cloud in real-time to HANA, which then displays the information in visual form for analysis on-the-fly.
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| Panel from left: Scott Russell, COO, SAP APJ, (moderator), Dirk Schauenberg, Head of Sports Performance, Home United Football Club, Dr Roger Tian, Sports Physician, Singapore Sport Medicine Centre, and Puneet Suppal, Solution Strategy and Adoption Executive, SAP. |
Puneet Suppal, Solution Strategy and Adoption Executive, SAP, noted that HANA can accept unlimited volumes of data input and an unlimited number of data types, all live. "Real time monitoring of certain activities can help build an outcome," he said, pointing out that the data can be used to pinpoint where a competitor might be under-performing or to avoid potential risk of injury.
In a panel following the demonstration Dirk Schauenberg, Head of Sports Performance, Home United Football Club, noted that despite knowing that the tasks performed by footballers in various positions are very different, everyone traditionally goes through exactly the same kind of training. He said that sports analytics can help him decide how much of a workload an athlete can take, as well as how long the athlete should need for recovery, rather than relying on the old adage that "if the training is tough and hard it's good".
"With a better understanding of his body (the sportsperson) can better perform," he noted.
"If we have this technology, we can track people to a very sensitive (level) and we can personalise," he said.
"The idea is to.. collaborate with different groups and make sure everyone can take advantage of the same platform in their own way.. What's going to happen next is something that hasn't happened before, it's about personalised attention to the individual," Suppal added, emphasising that one size cannot fit all when everyone is unique. "We need to be able to go really broad over a lot of data to be able to make sense of it, to get something you can use."
Dr Roger Tian, Sports Physician, Singapore Sport Medicine Centre, commented that up to 70% of the injuries seen in sports are called 'overuse' injuries, due to overtraining, when a small force is applied over a prolonged time. 'Acute' injuries, on the other hand, see a large force occurring over a short time.
"If a player is not fit, there could be a lot of stress going on the joints, (that's how) a lot of overuse injuries can happen," he said. "You can see them in recreational and professional athletes."
While the sports analytics app is a prototype, Puneet said that SAP Labs is open to collaborating with third parties and is already working with or in discussions with associations in a range of sports, including cricket, soccer, baseball and ice hockey.
In a panel following the demonstration Dirk Schauenberg, Head of Sports Performance, Home United Football Club, noted that despite knowing that the tasks performed by footballers in various positions are very different, everyone traditionally goes through exactly the same kind of training. He said that sports analytics can help him decide how much of a workload an athlete can take, as well as how long the athlete should need for recovery, rather than relying on the old adage that "if the training is tough and hard it's good".
"With a better understanding of his body (the sportsperson) can better perform," he noted.
"If we have this technology, we can track people to a very sensitive (level) and we can personalise," he said.
"The idea is to.. collaborate with different groups and make sure everyone can take advantage of the same platform in their own way.. What's going to happen next is something that hasn't happened before, it's about personalised attention to the individual," Suppal added, emphasising that one size cannot fit all when everyone is unique. "We need to be able to go really broad over a lot of data to be able to make sense of it, to get something you can use."
Dr Roger Tian, Sports Physician, Singapore Sport Medicine Centre, commented that up to 70% of the injuries seen in sports are called 'overuse' injuries, due to overtraining, when a small force is applied over a prolonged time. 'Acute' injuries, on the other hand, see a large force occurring over a short time.
"If a player is not fit, there could be a lot of stress going on the joints, (that's how) a lot of overuse injuries can happen," he said. "You can see them in recreational and professional athletes."
"There is good potential for this technology," he said, "One of the main factors affecting sports performance is dehydration. In a 90-minute game a player can lose 3-5 litres... even a 1% drop in body weight can affect performance significantly."
With the ability to monitor resting heart rates and other data through HANA, it is now possible to pick up on the early signs of overtraining at an early stage, Dr Tian said, as most overuse injuries occur during training, and not at the competition. Such data, interpreted by an expert, can show if a sportsperson is lazing during training or pushing too hard. "If you have data from day one it would do a lot to prevent injuries," he commented, cautioning that the risk factors for injury - such as how often someone runs, how often he or she competes, fitness levels, and genetics - should be understood in the context of the analytics reports before training can be modified.
While the sports analytics app is a prototype, Puneet said that SAP Labs is open to collaborating with third parties and is already working with or in discussions with associations in a range of sports, including cricket, soccer, baseball and ice hockey.
Puneet stressed that HANA is a platform, not specific software. "Structured and unstructured data, sensor-driven data, videos, all that can be brought in and massaged in a way that provides the right outcome. We're in the business of working with the data and making it work for you," he concluded.
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