Smartwatches can be stylish accessories, and new features are slowly turning them into the smartphones we wear on our wrists. But what they do really well is cold, hard data. The millions of people who use them to track their daily fitness know this, but a 3-mile jog around the block isn’t halfway there. Apple Watch’s fitness tracking capabilities are good enough that even elite athletes depend on it.
Australia’s Olympic swimming team uses both Apple Watch and iPad to fine-tune their training, according to a profile Apple made on Swimming Australia. The Australian swimming team, the Dolphins, are among the best in the world. He won 21 medals at the 2020 Olympics, including nine gold medals. It came second only in the United States. (And one of the Dolphin’s coaches briefly went viral for his incredible celebrations.)
Apple Watch has supported swimmer tracking since Series 2 of 2016. Updated models, like newer ones Series 7, can not only count laps and lap pace, but also can automatically detect running types. The ability to track data is one thing, but being able to do it accurately enough for Olympic athletes is another.
“Being able to accurately measure my heart rate between sets has been a really valuable data point for me and my coach to understand how well I’m reacting to training,” said Zac Stubblety-Cook, who won a gold medal. gold in the 200 meter breaststroke. at the Tokyo Olympics, said in a statement via Apple.
“Data is the key ingredient when it comes to designing performance outcomes for athletes,” said Jess Corones, Swimming Australia’s performance solutions manager. “We’ve seen increased engagement from athletes wearing the Apple Watch, giving us more data points to inform analysis and make training decisions.”
Apple is not the only tech giant that Swimming Australia has turned to to optimize the performance of its elite athletes. The Olympic team partnered with Amazon in 2019 to use machine learning. The collaboration saw Swimming Australia dump all of its data on its athletes – and competitors – into a data lake, which informed performance and training strategies for the 2020 Olympics.
The iPad has also been hailed as a useful tool for Swimming Australia Olympians, although the Locker app the team uses to analyze race and practice footage is only available to “training coaches and analysts”. Nationally Accredited Swimmers”.