Sports technology is undergoing unprecedented growth. Where once cutting-edge advancements were the sole preserve of teams with big budgets, now all of us have access to performance data via our smartwatches and bike computers.
It’s also big business, with the wearable technology market alone estimated at $95bn in 2025 and expected to grow to $115bn by 2030.
Objective data ensures you make the right training and lifestyle decisions for peak riding speed. That’s the theory, but is that the reality?
Was your latest tech purchase guided by your heart or your head? Let’s investigate whether technology is helping or hindering your performance.
‘To Tech or Not to Tech…?’
Johann Windt is the senior director of analytics, insights and research at the Canadian soccer team, Vancouver Whitecaps.
He has a PhD in experimental medicine and a particular interest in the use of data in sport and its usefulness, so much so that he co-authored a 2020 paper in the Journal of Athletic Training entitled ‘To Tech or Not to Tech? A Critical Decision-Making Framework for Implementing Technology in Sport’.
Within, Windt and his team reviewed the vision and pitfalls behind technology’s role in sport: “The paper came out of a talk I delivered at the World Physiotherapy Congress,” says Windt.
“At the congress, like most conferences, you walk through the halls, and they’re just lined with technologies and manufacturers selling their wares.
“There are so many options. Teams and individuals notice that other teams and individuals are buying these new technologies, and do the same. ‘You got GPS?’ you might ask. ‘Of course,’ they might reply. ‘What are you going to do with the GPS?’ ‘We’re not sure.’ You simply don’t need the technology if you don’t know what to do with it.”
Windt says it got his team thinking about the process sportspeople go through when buying new equipment: “With the rate of growth, you just can’t buy everything, so how do you differentiate between competing products in the same space or deciding when there’s, say, five different products in five different spaces and you only have X number of pounds? Which one do you choose?”
Four-point purchase plan
To that end, Windt and his team created a four-point framework for the user to tick off before spending their hard-earned cash on the next transformative piece of tech.
- Performance relevance: Does the tech do what it promises, and would that information genuinely help improve your performance?
- Data trustworthiness: Can you trust the numbers it provides, knowing that no technology is perfectly accurate?
- Integration and analysis: Can you effectively combine and interpret the data alongside other tools you use, without it becoming a burden?
- Practical implementation: Is the technology easy to incorporate into your actual training or practice, without usability or workflow issues?
Performance relevance
“The first point is, if this piece of tech does everything that’s advertised, would the promised information be helpful to my performance?” says Windt.
“Remember, whoever’s selling you their latest, greatest advancement is literally paid to market this technology. They won’t share the ugly wrinkles underneath the tech.”
Arguably, the most explicit example of a recent product that nestled high on tech, but less so on application, was the Supersapiens continuous blood-glucose monitor, which arose from work with diabetics.
The American company used pharmaceutical company Abbott Labs’ glucose-monitoring patches, which have proved a life-changer for diabetics in managing their blood-glucose levels.
In the cycling sphere, they were also mooted as nutritionally transformative tech that could more accurately help you train and race by knowing your fuelling status.
Supersapiens received several rounds of investment and spent heavily on marketing. Then, in February 2024, they announced they were shutting down.
They couldn’t get approval to operate with US customers, so their market area was limited; the UCI banned their use in competition; and arguably it didn’t prove transformative in the non-diabetic market.
That’s down to non-diabetics’ blood-glucose levels being very tightly regulated, so while you were given some interesting information, it wasn’t totally clear what you could do with that information.
Data trustworthiness
“The second part of the framework focuses on trusting the information you’re receiving,” says Windt. “We know no technology is perfect – stand on the most high-tech of scales and there’s a good chance it’ll be at least 1g off – but can you trust the numbers?”
Heart-rate monitors (HRMs) are the exemplar here. Wrist-based HRMs are omnipresent in both sports and smartwatches.
But the general consensus is that accuracy is somewhat compromised, especially when working hard.
A 2023 study by Spanish authors suggested that “heart-rate estimations should be considered cautiously at specific intensities. Indeed, an effective intervention is required to register accurate HR readings at high-intensity levels (above 150bpm)”.
Chest straps are considered more accurate, but they’re not overly practical.
“Are you comfortable with how ‘wrong’ technology is?” says Windt. “If you are, that leads to the third point, which is, can you integrate and analyse the data effectively?
“You might have five or six technologies on the go already, so how easy is this new tech to use and manage? If you’re having to spend half your waking day downloading Excel files, that won’t be sustainable, and you’ll cease using that tech.
“I’m a recreational rider and I’d like to see how the recovery parameters from my smartwatch impact the power outputs from my Rouvy and vice versa. Can I integrate these data sources, or do I need to click through each and make a best guess?
“Or how might my overnight HRV (heart rate variability) score relate to my maximum wattage later that evening? Integration and making sense of several data points is important to a cyclist.”
“The fourth and final point is, can you implement the technology in your practice?” says Windt. A recreational cycling example falls back to point two and the application of heart rate monitoring. While chest straps are more accurate, their implementation is minimal because of usability.
“For professional cycling teams, implementation of technology might be curtailed because there’s a history of mismanagement of data between staff and riders,” Windt adds. “If there’s not an environment of trust between the coach and the rider, technology can erode an environment, not enhance it.”
If the information’s helpful to your performance, you can trust it, you can integrate it with other data sources and it’s easily implemented, all that’s left to determine is whether it’s worth the spend.
Would remortgaging your home for a series of wind-tunnel sessions, for instance, be worth the cost-benefit analysis when you’re two stone over race weight and cycle twice a week? No.
Don’t let the data rule you
So, you’ve bought your spanking piece of latest technology and, like the new manager effect touted so often in the Premier League, you see an uplift in performance through a freshness of ideas and a new motivator.
But as time goes by, things aren’t what they once were. Instead of your performance being liberated by data, you’re now manacled by it. Over to Mike Tipton, acclaimed environmental physiologist, for more.
“I attempt an Ironman triathlon every five years. I’m in my mid-60s now and have done so ever since giving up rugby in my early 40s. The last one, in Austria 2024, went badly for various reasons but I finished.
“During that race, it became clear to me how detrimental wearable technology can be to many people. Most athletes think that the more they’ve got stuck on them and the more data they collect the better. But that’s not always true.
“There’s definitely a cohort of people who begin catastrophising to unexpected detriments in their performance data, caused by internal or external factors, like gastro-distress or the weather.
“It happened in Austria with a friend of mine. It was a cold and wet day in the mountains, and the numbers emanating from his power meter and heart-rate monitor weren’t what he expected.
“He was used to cycling on much nicer days on less hilly terrain. The computer told him he wasn’t performing, and he spiralled; he psychologically catastrophised the situation and eventually stopped. The technology really didn’t help him.”
Motivation or damnation?
You could argue Tipton’s friend failed to plan, to test the tech in the myriad scenarios you face in a triathlon.
But data-thwarting sporting performance isn’t an isolated incident in the Carinthia Mountains. Armagan Karahanoglu is a design researcher who works on human-centred personal health technology at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.
She’s fascinated by the interplay between sportspeople and technology. Karahanoglu knows that tech and data can provide great motivation for athletes, but has also studied the flipside.
“We’ve observed that data can ‘impair’ your efforts because it’s telling you something that you don’t want to hear or don’t want to know, like you’re performing worse than a week ago or riding slower than the previous year,” she says.
“This can be especially true in your 40s where, despite your best efforts, data points like VO2 max and recovery time tend to be negatively affected compared to your younger years.
“From a performance perspective it might be useful to see, but from a psychological perspective what’s being projected onto athletes’ screens might not have the desired effect. It can kill your motivation.”
And that is key, says Karahanoglu, who’s undertaken research into sport, technology and motivation, specifically the self-determination theory.
This framework identified psychological needs that drive motivation: autonomy – feeling in control of one’s actions; competence – feeling competent and skilled; and relatedness – feeling connected to others.
“The theory says that when we fulfil all of these psychological needs, we are intrinsically motivated [doing something because you find it interesting],” says Karahanoglu.
“If we’re not intrinsically motivated, if these needs aren’t fulfilled, we can identify which need isn’t fulfilled and look to turn extrinsic motivation [doing something for an external reward] into an intrinsic motivation. We thought data, technology, could help here. But the results were mixed.”
Karahanoglu says that cyclists, certainly committed roadies, tend to be intrinsically motivated as they’re passionate about what they’re doing.
However, technology can thwart an athlete’s autonomy and competence if they become too obsessed with data and hitting certain numbers. This is an extrinsic strike that then hits a rider’s intrinsic motivation, knocking their desire to ride.
Then there are those individuals for whom technology holds such a fascination that their training tools becomes dictatorial.
“In one study that we carried out with track runners, a coach told us a story about a 22-year-old he coached,” says Karahanoglu.
“The coach noticed that he was constantly checking his data and not ‘immersed’ in his performance. So, the coach instructed him to stop using his watch for two months so he could concentrate on how he feels. The runner felt liberated and made marked improvements.”
Windt tells a similar tale of an Olympic athlete. “Matt Jordan, one of the best muscle physiologists around was telling me about an athlete he coached on the morning of an important competition”, he says.
“He looked devastated. ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Matt. ‘It’s gonna be a disastrous day,’ the athlete replied. ‘Why?’ asked Matt. ‘Because my Whoop score’s terrible. What am I going to do?’. So Matt said ‘You’re gonna eat your breakfast, warm up and crush your event.’ And he did. When it comes to tech and sport, for most people it’s all about balance.”
And despite Windt’s framework suggestion that accuracy should be on your four-point purchasing guide, that balance doesn’t always have to feature technology that’s statistically spot on.
“We’ve looked into the area of ‘derived metrics’,” says Karahanoglu. “This is when you have several ‘real’ metrics come together for a derived metric, like your recovery or sleep score, or training load.
"Interestingly, many of the subjects weren’t that interested in the accuracy of these metrics. They knew that it wasn’t necessarily that accurate, but they appreciated the trends, whether things were going up or down. Many simply took this as a confirmation tool. That they weren’t feeling great and the trends reflected that.”
In the flow
The key take-home here is ‘feeling’. By becoming too reliant on numbers and data, you not only kill the fun of riding, but also fail to immerse yourself in the subtleties, the minutiae, of the ups and downs of a ride.
Most of our learning, be it in sport and life, is implicit rather than explicit. This implicit learning takes place in the unconscious parts of the brain, including the basal ganglia, which are often able to make faster, more accurate decisions.
Unfortunately, this primitive side of the brain isn’t that literate so relies on feelings, hunches and intuition. As a cyclist, you rely hugely on this implicit learning – say the subtleties of cornering, spatial awareness on the road, when to chase the pack in front of you and when to ease off – but if you’re always focused on numbers, you don’t cultivate this awareness of feeling.
It's something Tipton’s become more aware of as the years have rolled by. “There aren’t many benefits of growing older but one is that experience teaches you to listen to your body more.
“If you’re in pain beforehand, know that it’s not lying, that this might be a time not to ride whatever your wearable is saying.
“The other thing I’ve learned to ‘feel’ is that the start is really hard, so never make any decisions on continuing or not until at least 10 minutes in.
“It just feels more painful than when you’re 20 but there is a physiological rationale behind it, in that the speed with which your oxygen system cranks up is much slower as you age. It takes you a while to reach steady state. Until then, it’s a bit of a battle.”
Whether that age-related feeling is captured by a training tool’s algorithms is doubtful. It’s the same with female cyclists in that much of the assertions being made by training tools might be based off algorithms devised from research into the impact of exercise on men.
Most sport science studies have focused on young male participants, which is a blind spot in the field as a whole.
In 2016, Dr Anna Saw highlighted the objective shortfall compared to the subjective by revealing that perception of effort – in other words, how hard an activity feels, gauged on subjective charts like the rate of perceived exertion (RPE) scale – forecast fatigue in exercise more accurately than data emanating from the technologies of the time.
“You know if you’ve been sick twice that morning. Your computer doesn’t,” says Windt. “That’s not to say technology doesn’t have a place. But if you slept badly, you’re super stressed and you feel exhausted, how you feel is a much better guide to your ride – i.e., lowering intensity – than any Whoop score.”
Feel the data
Where does that leave us? Is it time to slip into your Luddite helmet and ride care-free off into the horizon?
There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but you would be missing out on the precise physiological adaptations that come from training by power and the motivation of beating your mate’s QOM or KOM on Strava.
Ultimately, how much technology you use and how you apply it is an individual choice. What works for one person, one personality, might not work for another.
A blanket prescription is to use training tools for some rides, ride purely on feel for others. This will balance empirical physiological gains with subtler psychological gains to optimise your cycling.
“At the end of the day, technology doesn't win the race,” says Windt. “It might help you train efficiently and help you monitor your power output for pacing during an event. But it’s your legs that drive the pedals. It’s you that must have the mentality to push through when it sucks, and you’d rather not pedal up that freaking hill! Be judicious with technology and it can really help. But do not forget that you are in control.”
