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Does anyone have experience in tracking athletes using wrist GPS units? Our soccer coach here would love me to do this for his players (from time to time) this year.
Has anyone done this before? What GPS watch did you use? I’m looking to buy a few…
Thanks!
RB
Thanks
By the way, do you have any concept of how much one of these costs? I’d like to prepare myself before I call a distributor and pass out 
My boyfriend has one of these (he’s a distance runner). I’ll ask him to post something, if he has something to share. I remember him finding it at a very discounted price
Polar has three options
Watches that use the S1 GPS are best
Watches that use the S3 GPS are lower quality
they also have a Chest strap that uses your Smartphone instead of a watch.
Garmin have GPS built into their watches - again, like polar different watches have different GPS strengths - again, the more expensive the more quality you can expect.
Some places also use like polar, Bluetooth chest straps that send a signal to your Smartphone.
Polar also have a team issue - basically you have a Stand that can receive signal from 64different players at one time and this stand can also be connected to a laptop or PDA so you can see what your players are doing instantly. It’s looks like a pretty cool device for team events.
I know some others do what polar do in the above example, i just cannot remember their names sorry.
hope it helps
Polar has three options
Watches that use the S1 GPS are best
Watches that use the S3 GPS are lower quality
they also have a Chest strap that uses your Smartphone instead of a watch.
Garmin have GPS built into their watches - again, like polar different watches have different GPS strengths - again, the more expensive the more quality you can expect.
Some places also use like polar, Bluetooth chest straps that send a signal to your Smartphone.
Polar also have a team issue - basically you have a Stand that can receive signal from 64different players at one time and this stand can also be connected to a laptop or PDA so you can see what your players are doing instantly. It’s looks like a pretty cool device for team events.
I know some others do what polar do in the above example, i just cannot remember their names sorry.
hope it helps
Garmin has also many gps watches. The 2xx, 3xx and 4xx series have the best quality than the 1xx and 5x series. The 2xx ~ 4xx series have great menu, they are not heavy and they do not need external receiver like older models. Ι don’t like 2xx and 3xx because of there size. I feel like I’m running with a laptop on my hand. I own a garmin 110 forerunner and it is one of the cheapest of this type of watches. It cost me about 140 euros and I bought it from England before 2 months. Although it is very cheap, it has great sensitivity. I used it in a race last Sunday and it was very accurate. I didn’t expect it. I ran a 20km race and garmin record 20.050m (It was a road race so I couldn’t ran always straight and I was loosing few meters to corners and when I was bypassing some runners ). http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_4_10?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=forerunner&x=0&y=0&sprefix=forerunner
Top 10 Running GPS Watch Units 2011 — Best Buy and Bestsellers GPS Sport in 2010.
Top 10 Garmin Forerunner GPS - Best Garmin.
#1. Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver With Heart Rate Monitor.
And for all cyclists, go for the Garmin Edge 800 GPS unit.
Awesome piece of kit.
Guys - and Stephanie -
Thanks, I really appreciate it. This will get me barking up the right tree…
Be careful though, as GPS senzors aren’t a good choice for sprinters as they detect fast movement (during acceleration for example) the movement quite “late” and aren’t appropriate for running
around the curve either…
Be careful though, as GPS senzors aren’t a good choice for sprinters as they detect fast movement (during acceleration for example) quite “late” and aren’t appropriate for running
around the curve either…
KK
Interesting thought. Do you think this would effect data from a soccer match?
Most watches will have a 1sec recording rate.
So - it’s no good for Rapid Speed changes if you’re after speed
however, It will still measure that Guy A has gone 30m - it might just take an extra couple of seconds to really fine tune 30m v’s instantly. Overall - over say 5km of work on the field, if it’s only out 100m from the odd dodge and weave done faster than 1sec - It’s going to give you a far better idea on how far the guys do than Guessing.
Most watches will have a 1sec recording rate.
So - it’s no good for Rapid Speed changes if you’re after speed
however, It will still measure that Guy A has gone 30m - it might just take an extra couple of seconds to really fine tune 30m v’s instantly. Overall - over say 5km of work on the field, if it’s only out 100m from the odd dodge and weave done faster than 1sec - It’s going to give you a far better idea on how far the guys do than Guessing.
It would measure the distance and it may even record some top speed during sprinting, but it may get quite confused because of constant direction and velocity changes and eventually the signal can be lost. That’s at least my experience when using it on the track (when doing tempo 100’s) and when trying to measure some speed work with it.
If you’re looking for more “precise” speed measurements (I believe it’s more precise with the shorter distances and sudden direction changes) you should probably consider using a foot speed sensor (not sure if really applicable in soccer)
sth like this for example: http://compare.ebay.com/like/220749588711?ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar
Yes and no
It depends on the accuracy of the GPS sensor.
Catapult is probably the best unit in terms of accuracy.
Is it accurate enough for sprint timing? No
But as a training monitoring tool it is very, very useful for analysis of a number of components.
Also, the ‘GPS’ is only one aspect of the Catapult GPS unit, there is also HR, gyroscope and accelerometer data used in analysis.