Wearable sports technology company Catapult has unveiled its new Catapult One tracking vest, available to consumers through a subscription service. Catapult is the developer of sports tracking vests used by some of the world's most prestigious sports teams, such as Bayern Munich, The Milwaukee Bucks, and the French National Soccer Team. The company's vests are used to track player movement, speed, intensity, sprint duration among other metrics, and have been available to professional teams since 2017.
Until now, the same performance solutions were not available to amateur teams, but reserved for professional sports clubs and athletes. According to the company, the data received by Catapult One has helped improve players' sprint distance by 26-percent, their top speed by 3-percent, total distance by 11.7-percent, and total power plays up by a quarter. With supposed improvements such as these, it is clear why sports stars including World Cup winner Kylian Mbappe use the technology.
The compression vest is now available to buy from the Catapult website and comprises of a 10Hz GPS tracker which includes an accelerometer and gyroscopic motion sensors. The company claims that the vest is capable of capturing ten times more data points than an Apple Watch. The aforementioned data, along with user heat maps and comparisons to other players, are then sent to the Catapult One app which is available to download from the App Store and Google Play Store. The data can also be sent to coaches for review with individual players after training.
Train Like The Greats
The Catapult One does require a subscription priced at $15.99 per month as well as an additional one-off payment of $34 for the starter kit. An annual payment plan of $180 is also available which includes the starter kit for free. The subscription service does also provide the user with access to training exercises from professional coaches related to several sports, further allowing those in an amateur setting to train smart like the professionals. If an injury occurs and rules the person out of playing, a subscription can be paused for a single month, every six months.
The Catapult One vest and application are equipped to give training routines for soccer, football, lacrosse, rugby, hockey, Australian rules football, tennis, and cricket. The high-tech vest is vying to be the ultimate in sports wearable technology, although it is not the only company competing in this space. Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group and US chipmaker Intel recently partnered on a 3D athlete tracking system that allowed coaches to monitor every movement of their Olympic athletes.
Source: Catapult