Technology that makes us stronger

GADGETS

There are characters in fiction that for decades made us think that the idea of a “superhuman” was the stuff of comics or some movie. Today many things that perhaps in the 60s, when Wilt Chamberlain broke all those records in the NBA, including the 100 points in a game or the record for most broken records (as redundant as it sounds, but broke 72 records), never imagined that 5 decades later someone with 1.75 meters tall was going to win three times the contest of nails on a board at 3.05 meters from the soil, as is the case with Nate Robinson.

Sources: https://topesdegama.com/listas/gadgets/gadgets-inteligentes-deportivos

Feats of this kind demonstrate how far sports have advanced, thanks to how much science, medicine, and technology are advancing. Facts such as Nate Robinson or the 36.9 km/h reached by Héctor Bellerín playing as a side of Arsenal in the Premier League, speak of how technology and science applied to sports have created authentic superhumans with physical capabilities that go beyond any talent. Many of us may not be high-performance athletes like those mentioned above, but there are many lovers of sports or exercise. It is possible that our ambition is not to reach the maximum speed of the Spanish full-back but to improve our performance to the maximum.

Below I will present three examples of smart gadgets that can be useful to us. I’ll start with something basic like a dumbbell kit. The KSIX Smart your tech brand launched this smart weight equipment that can be synchronized to the cell phone. Something that helps us improve our performance is being able to monitor our physical activity. These dumbbells, along with the app, not only help us keep track of our routines, but the application can make recommendations of when it is necessary to change the intensity or even helps us customize the routines, in addition to that we can find online some other routines designed by experts to perform with them. If what interests us is something more specific for football lovers, the following gadget will be interesting.

Sources: https://www.decathlon.co.uk/p/connector-sensor-footbar-meteor/_/R-p-X8662714

The Footbar Meteor is a band that fits the calf and will help us give us data statistics such as the force of hitting the ball, sprint speed, distance traveled, heart rate, jump capacity, and the number of passes, among many more. This article also has permission from FIFA to be used in competitions, not only for training.

Finally, I would like to present an article designed more for care than for performance. The Beurer EM49 is an ideal electro-stimulator for when physical activity generates some muscle discomfort. With it, we can relieve pain, strengthen some areas or receive massages to relax, through very slight electrical stimuli that do not cause any discomfort and that barely manage to feel a slight tingling.

Sources: https://beurer.com.mx/products/aparato-digital-tens-ems-de-beurer-em-49

This is how technology helps us get the most out of sports. Without forgetting better-known items such as smartwatches, these are just some of the many recommendations on the market, because although we cannot become (yet) superhuman, some of this makes us better athletes who do not have the discipline of high-performance athletes; Fiction will have become reality.

Mauro Orozco Moreno

Communicologist and Historian from the University of Guadalajara. Since 2019 he is dedicated to journalism and content creation about video games, technology and geek culture on the internet. Co-founder of the page Operación Gamer; currently his content appears on his page Totherland on Facebook Gaming.