Wearable sports technology company Polar added an apparel category to its growing fitness portfolio, it was announced Tuesday.
The Polar Team Pro Shirt, which replaces a traditional chest strap monitor, will integrate proprietary heart rate technology onto the shirt’s fabric in addition to a GPS tracking sensor for coaches to glean insight into various player metrics.
“As a company with a deep heritage in team sports and trusted fitness technology, we’re constantly working to evolve design and function in ways that will improve athlete performance,” said Tom Fowler, President of Polar U.S., in a statement. “Polar technology and products are, at their core, developed for the needs of professional athletes and coaches. As a result of our continued focus on improvement, we’ve reimagined the chest strap for professional athletes and developed Team Pro Shirt.”
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Added Andrew Murray, Director of Performance & Sport Science at the University of Oregon: “Polar’s move to using smart fabrics and integration of the monitor within a garment removes one barrier to use, especially with some of our larger athletes who find the chest strap restrictive.”
Through two heart rate capture points, the Pro Shirt gathers real-time heart data while a sensor pod also slides into the back collar to provide other motion-tracking information, including an individual’s distance, speed and acceleration.
The newly-launched wearable shirt technology will pair with the Polar Team Pro system where sensors broadcast live training data to a coach’s iPad in order to better understand athlete performance. Some leagues and teams currently working with Polar include the NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL and Atlanta Falcons, who have been implementing the team system since 2010.
“Polar’s system is used every time our players train during structured off-season workouts and practices throughout the year,” Falcons head strength and conditioning coach AJ Neibel said in a statement. “Analysis of the data collected allows us to assess conditioning levels, properly prescribe off-season training volume, establish valid return-to-play conditioning parameters, and effectively monitor workloads during training camp.”