AI & Fitness: How AI Can Help World-Class Athletes and Average Jo(e)s
When we think of professional sports, we think of strong athletes with strict diets and hardcore training routines who just so happen to be extremely good at what they do. Compared to average people, athletes typically have lower heart rates, longer life expectancies, and overall higher levels of positivity through the help of their everyday regimens. Although we aren’t all Olympic medalists or multi-million-dollar football stars, it doesn’t mean that everyday people can’t train like the pros. With the help of AI, athletic performance can be tailored to any individual, promoting both training efficiency and preventive care.
There are many ways AI can impact athletics and other forms of exercise — here are a few for you to consider:
Improving Cognitive Strength
The idea of training your brain is growing in popularity for athletes and those engaged in physical exercise. With regular cognitive training, levels of attention, memory, visual processing, sensory integration, and thinking skills can be significantly improved. Neurotracker, a company specializing in cognitive training across athletic, educational, medical, and scientific use, provides a mind exercise program that tests athletes’ ability to recognize and identify objects and improve their overall situational awareness. By training the brain, athletes can become more focused and attentive to stimuli while possessing and processing multiple pieces of information to make a more informed decision.
Implementing AI into pre-existing brain training programs could allow athletes and average Jo(e)s to tailor their own cognitive exercises. AI could be used to monitor patterns in the brain’s recognition ability and could tailor each module to enhance strengths and improve weaker areas. The average Jo(e) can also benefit from cognitive training by increasing awareness and memory extension to make daily routine tasks — like driving and holding a conversation — much easier.
Heightening Endurance
To be a successful athlete, high levels of endurance are critical. To perform at their utmost potential, athletes’ bodies need to be able to give it their all. A wearable device called Humon is helping professional athletes build and monitor their personalized endurance training programs. Typically marketed towards marathon runners, Humon is a lactic acid threshold monitor that is strapped to the leg or other working muscle. It measures oxygenated blood by shining light into the skin and recording changes to the color of the blood. By tracking these changes, athletes can measure their levels of endurance as they improve.
By using AI to track these changes, athletes can form a personalized performance plan that indicates how much or how little to push themselves, taking signals from the body to tell how much exertion is right for them. Just like professional athletes, the everyday person would be able to find the right exertion balance for training, performing, and recovering phases.
Increasing Hydration Levels
We’ve all heard the advice to drink eight glasses of water a day to ensure our bodies stay hydrated. However, intense exercise can rid our bodies of the fluid it needs through perspiration. To help athletes manage their hydration levels, Gatorade created the Gx Platform to deliver personalized hydration for athletes that fits their exercise routines. By measuring an athlete’s sweat content, including sodium levels and electrolyte concentration, the program delivers a personalized drink formula to replenish the lost nutrients. Gatorade is also developing “smart caps” on water bottles to keep track of fluid intake, promoting healthier ways to manage hydration during exercise.
With the help of AI, athletes and everyday people can track patterns in their fluid concentration levels. Artificial intelligence can take personalized hydration one step further by forecasting the body’s levels in the future to create more dynamic recommendations for each individual.
Producing a Healthier Diet Regimen
In order for our bodies to perform, we need energy. This energy comes in multiple forms, most commonly through the foods that we eat. A new app called KingFit is in the works to track glucose levels and provide the user with recommended eating plans based on the monitored results. With various alerts and reminders, athletes can work to keep a routine healthy diet.
AI can be used to tailor this experience to each individual. By applying artificial intelligence to the app, athletes can learn how to feed their bodies efficiently through each phase of activity — training, performing, and recovering. Personalizing dietary intake at each phase promotes maximum performance and optimal health.
Analyzing Movement
Flexibility and balance are two key points in movement efficiency. In order to have high movement efficiency, the body must be able to exert the least possible amount of energy while simultaneously yielding maximum athletic performance. Atlas wearable devices assist athletes in monitoring their movement by recreating their body in 3D space, pinpointing the differences of each exercise and their effect on the body as they perform.
Using AI provides increased scalability and accuracy, exceeding the capability of humans. With an automated training assessment, this insight can be accessed by everyone, not just those who can afford expensive trainers. When it comes to factors such as reaction time, AI can measure more precisely than humans, down to less than a millisecond.
The Connection
Here at Aspire, the connection is the Connexion, an AI-powered technology platform equipped with a multitude of powerful sensors that can be harnessed for a host of new health applications. The first app of Connexion is a movement efficiency screening using our partner Fusionetics’ technology. By combining powerful sensors and AI to create an automatic health assessment, the user can pinpoint which parts of the body are working efficiently and which parts need more work.
As we dive into the age of intelligent technology, we will continue to see changes in our daily routines. These changes are influencing our health — from cognitive memory to mobility and stability. Artificial intelligence is fueling great innovation in training and exercise. And whether we are athletic pros or average Jo(e)s, it is becoming clear that AI can help us maximize our performance.
Aspire Ventures, an Aspire Universal company, is a venture lab/startup studio based in the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Follow us here or on our website to stay up-to-speed with our innovations. You can also find us on Facebook,Twitter, and LinkedIn.
