The Polar Team Pro tracking system has become an invaluable resource for strength training and athletic coaches both across the country and the world. It has helped in not just the monitoring of team fitness but also in understanding overall athlete wellness.
Georgia Tech men’s basketball director of sports performance Dan Taylor has been using Polar products “in one capacity or another” for at least a decade. When Taylor joined the Yellow Jackets in 2016, he inherited an existing Polar Team Pro system, and he has used it ever since. He favors the ability to track acceleration in combination with heart-rate monitoring.
“From a basketball perspective, one of the things that makes the system so useful is even though its simple to break down big guys and guards, you still don’t know exactly know what’s going on individually,” Taylor said. “One wing may be more of a three-and-D guy, one might be a slasher, the expectations on them are different. This takes the macro and micro looks of it, comprehensively what we did as a team or position.”
In basketball, while there can be as much as an 18-inch difference in height between a short point guard and a tall center, large parts of their jobs are at least somewhat comparable. Both have to run down the 94-foot court, dribble the ball, and shoot. In comparison, in football, offensive linemen are entirely different from wide receivers. One is charged with pushing forwards against other heavy and powerful players over a typical distance of just a few feet, and the other may run the length and breadth of the field in search of a touchdown pass.
A.J. Neibel, the Jacksonville Jaguars’ athletic performance specialist, has worked with Polar equipment for more than 15 years, but started using Polar Team Pro while with the Atlanta Falcons in 2011.
“You may have 10 wide receivers running the same drill around the same speed, but internally it’s doing 10 different things,” Neibel said. “And you wrestle for a minute, you’re dead tired. Those offensive linemen, they’re not running around, but they’re fighting a hand-to-hand battle, and there’s a huge amount of strain.”
Polar Team Pro is valuable because it helps Neibel to monitor how players are doing in comparison to past performances, to other players in their same position, and to all positions on the field. It can also be used to monitor overall stresses and loads, and make training adjustments in order to keep athletes healthy all the way through what can be a grueling season.
In 2018, the Jaguars were one of the six teams that made the long trip across the Atlantic to play a game at Wembley Stadium in London. “Leading up to a game like London, we’re dealing with different stresses, a different strain, lack of sleep, dehydration. Or it can be as simple as you played a real tough game versus blowing someone out. You can look and see where a team is at as a whole, and the goal is to keep them as fresh as possible. It sparks good conversation with the athlete themselves.”
Both Neibel and Taylor feel that younger players are comfortable using technology like Polar Team Pro. “We have a generation of athletes who’ve grown up with tech and are comfortable with it as a concept,” Taylor said. “Embracing it is critical. And having enough filters in place as a specialist to be able to get to the questions you want answered is important. Something might pop up you weren’t aware of.”
Ultimately, getting the buy-in from athletes is key. Players are motivated by both the opportunity to play in the biggest games and roster incentives, and may push back against anything that might bench them. Try telling a 300-pound defensive lineman to sit when one more sack can trigger a financial bonus.
“Look, if a guy is feeling tired, you want to make sure we can change things around for him,” Neibel said. “It becomes a recovery phase. And it’s on the athlete, too. They have to go to sleep. As much as tech is good, tech is bad—these guys are addicted to their cell phones. It really boils down to the individual athlete. I’ve had the great privilege to work with someone like Jerry Rice early in my career. He got it from the get-go. There was nothing there to tell him.
“Today’s day and age, there’s still that with elite athletes, and I think tech helps educate the guys a little more.”
The NFL regular season comprises just 16 games played over 17 weeks. Missing a key player for even one of those can be devastating to a team’s playoff chances. The challenge in college basketball isn’t quite as extreme, but Taylor’s Yellow Jackets only play 30 to 35 games. He is still faced with keeping his players healthy in a limited number of appearances.
“All of our guys have to play in all our games,” Taylor said. “For us, understanding in practices, in shoot arounds, the habits around it is really important. Missing a game just isn’t something we can do.
“The important piece that gets missed, and Polar is really good at this, is being able to translate this to the player,” Taylor said. “To be able to articulate it in ways that have a measurable outcome. Initially, most of them think it’s cool—some of them may have been exposed to wearables before. But education is one of the most important aspects of this, aside from its practical value. It allows me, working with young men who want to develop into professionals, to give them concrete ways to understand their body.”
One of Taylor’s recent NBA draftees played through college with a constant high motor. Taylor’s task was to help the player learn when to rest, when to back off.
“He played unbelievably hard all the time. He and I had a background deal, if I was seeing numbers that were off, I’d let him know. For a guy like that, it’s less about acting like a pro and going hard all the time, like it is for usual high school guys. It’s about knowing how to manage yourself in a smart, intentional way.”
Coaches typically fall into two archetypes: more experienced coaches who focus on old-school intangibles, and young, data-driven coaches who believe the key to victory is knowledge. Both like the ability to hold the players accountable, Taylor said, particularly with sleep monitoring technology. But when it comes to coaches, Taylor said the key is the approach.
“A lot of coaches are evolving with modern tech, but they still are having to trust, essentially, a machine and numbers, and the art of coaching is so intuitive,” Taylor said. “But it’s also on us as support staff in terms of how we present that. If I bring up load metrics, I’m talking gibberish really. I can go to a coach and say it in a way he understands—I may be thinking on the load size and he’s looking at heart rate—but we’re accomplishing the same thing.”
Added Neibel: “Information is like a steak. It’s all in how you serve it. If you serve it on a trash can lid or a silver platter, it’ll be received differently. I tell our coaches ‘You wanna know how fast he’s going, I want to know how much gas is in the tank.’ I hear ‘I don’t want to change my practice.’ It’s not changing practices, it’s telling you who is hot and who is cold.”
