I apologise for the delayed response.

Yeah I have had a few brief chats with Andy Walshe (Red Bull’s High Performance Director’ via phone after I posted this article. Interesting guy. I reckon he has one of the coolest jobs going around.

The accuracy of any sport’s monitoring technology varies depending on the company, the hardware they are using, the algorithms they are using to extract the data, how well the algorithms have been trialed, tested, validated and reworked if there are errors, and also if the algorithms they use have been created for a specific sport or just reused for similar sports.

For many sports professionals, the errors are often overlooked in lieu of the ability to capture data in the field and in real time however I think you can still be rigorous if you are up-front about the errors, determine if it is a systematic error or one that perhaps cancels itself out over a long duration of data capture.

If you know the exact error in your measurement, I think you can still comment on performance in a scientifically rigorous manner. Companies however are often not up-front about the errors within their measurements so it is up to you to do your own validation. This is ok though because you can tailor the validation to your own specific needs and those of the athletes you are dealing with.

Your honours sounds interesting. Keen to stay in touch. Contact me on either the gmail email address provided on this website or my new work email j.harding@griffith.edu.au

Talk soon Dave.

JH.

I would be very interested to know if you received any feedback from Red Bull regarding this open letter. I am a Strength and Conditioning Coach, just finishing my degree (B. App. Sc- Sp&Ex Sc.) and am preparing an honours proposal on a very similar topic but focusing more on the biomechanical side of surfing performance.

I was also wondering about your take on GPS units and their efficacy? My contact with them has been through the Waratahs Rugby program and I have doubts about the efficacy of the program they use and the accuracy of the data interpretation (GP Sports). What units have you used and how reliable the data?

I would love to talk more to you about these topics and also get some advice on my research going forward. You can contact me at dave@fptcoach.com any time.

Look forward to getting your feedback and advice!