Report says Rio athletes want more out of their wearables

Wearables are becoming commonplace in practice games and training, but have received a lukewarm response from athletes, unhappy with the lack of advice or instructions.

Athletes see the advantages of using wearables, according to a report from Lux Research, but want to see wearable providers take more of an active role on the advice side.

That would include analysis on training performance, how to avoid injuries, and how to be healthier. Fitbit, the largest wearable vendor, currently provides limited analytics, outside of a weekly rundown of your efforts alongside heart-rate level and calories burnt during a workout.

“Most wearables today do a great job of reporting factual information but fail to educate consumers on how to modify their behavior to achieve their health and performance goals,” said Noa Ghersin, a Lux Research associate that penned the report.

“The 2016 Rio Olympics have highlighted how wearables can provide technique tracking, not just fitness monitoring. However, other major applications for sports wearables – like team strategy and safety – deserve more attention, too.”

In the MLB, two wearables, the Zephyr Bioharness and Motus elbow sleeve, provide coaches and physicians with detailed performance analytics and data on how hard balls are thrown or hit.

From there, coaches can inquire about lack of practice performance and physicians can check on health issues that need to be addressed before a big game.

Pro sports are embracing wearables warily

Other American sports are embracing wearables, albeit slowly to avoid oversaturation of tech on the field. Unions have also pushed back, worried that coaches will use the analytics as justification for benching or removing a player from the team.

Lux Research spoke to a number of athletes and coaches on three wearables, HTC and Under Armour’s HealthBox, Xmetrics swimming wearable, and Vert’s wearable clip.

For HealthBox, athletes said it needed more “instructive insights” to be a potential replacement for the personal trainer. Xmetrics has to make its metrics easier to understand. Vert should have alerts and recommendations to avoid injuries.

All of these are valid complaints, but part of the reason for low level insights and lack of medical advice is mostly due to regulation. The FDA has come down hard on wearables that attempt to be medical products, something that Apple reportedly found out when it filed its original Watch to the FDA, and had it swiftly denied.

For athletes to receive better insights and advice, U.S. and foreign regulatory bodies need to be more open to wearables outside the traditional healthcare market offering medical advice.

Germans couldn’t be bothered with your fitness tracker

In Germany, almost half of the people that own a fitness tracker have stopped using it and more than 85 percent said they have no interest in purchasing a fitness tracker.

It is dire news for the wearable market, of which fitness trackers make up more than half. Fitbit, the industry leader, sells more fitness trackers than the combined sales of Apple and Samsung’s wearables.

Over 2,500 people were surveyed by DKV, results found that 89 percent don’t own and don’t want to own a fitness tracker and five percent are thinking about it. Out of the six percent left, two percent don’t use their fitness tracker anymore, and 16 people confessed to never wearing the device.

“It’s a clear indication for us: the majority of people in Germany do not see the need to use wearables”, said Clemens Muth, Chairman of the Board of Management at DKV. “We believe that wearables don’t interest healthy people who have an average desire to exercise.”

The profile of the average fitness tracker owner, according to the survey, is young, healthy, and exercises often. That fits with the general profile of people that purchase fitness trackers across the world.

Fitness tracker design at fault?

Asked why they don’t use their fitness tracker anymore, 19 percent said it too difficult to use and 18 percent found it annoying. 15 percent felt that the fitness tracker didn’t give motivation to be healthy or lose weight.

Even though it is lower than the other two, the lack of motivation is a key point that fitness tracker providers need to figure out. Fitbit provides a way to log your food, water, exercise and see improvements, but there is no virtual coach telling you to walk faster, go swimming, or reduce the amount of carbohydrates in your diet.

This functionality could be necessary to keep people engaged and on a clear diet, but to implement it Fitbit (and other providers) need to make an assistant, like a bot, that can pester you to keep fit. It also needs a larger database that can give health warnings when you are eating too much of a certain food type.

Fitbit may be worried about the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), which may block wearables that attempt to control dietary regimes. Apple supposedly had similar problems adding health sensors into the original Watch, which led to underwhelming health and fitness features.