Battery life issues, limited wireless technology range and the weight of sensors inhibited the use of wearable technologies to track elite athletes.

But in the past few years, smart watches, heart rate monitors, glucose level recorders and items as small as an ear piece have begun to transform how top athletes are trained, said Mounir Zok, a senior sports technologist at the Colorado Springs-based U.S. Olympic Committee. 

“Today we are at a sweet spot,” he said. “Whereby measuring performance is not an issue anymore.”

Zok said he works with several teams including the U.S. diving, gymnastic, rowing, bmx and Paralympic track and field programs, to use technology to monitor athlete training and performance. Sensors, ankle bracelets, sleep-tracking tools and other devices that can be installed in sports-specific equipment are some of the items used.

The laboratory-like conditions of a velodrome make it an ideal environment for Andy Sparks, director of track cycling programs for USA Cycling, to test new devices.

Sparks said his athletes use smart eyewear called Solos, which integrates Bluetooth technology. The eyewear can give feedback to bicyclists during training sessions based on customizable metrics. The team is preparing for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

“At the end of the day, you want to be lining up at the Olympic Games saying there’s no stone left unturned or no box I haven’t checked,” he said.

Sparks said the continuous data collection can help make incremental differences over a year of training.

“For us, it’s like a little sculpture. We’re just chipping away,” he said.

With a plethora of data, the sports national governing bodies under the USOC have athlete management systems to keep track of the information. Teams can use their own program or a USOC system, Zok said. Having these management systems allow coaches and trainers to incorporate the data they collect and have a single place to monitor individual athletes over time.

Sparks said he uses a program called TrainingPeaks.

While the devices and applications used to track athletes may record disparate things, Zok said he believes the next generation of sports technology will become more interconnected. He envisions athletes eventually training in a “smart environment” where real-time physical, mental and biomechanical information can be relayed to coaches and trainers.

“In an ideal world, and this is where technology is going and this is beauty of working in sports technology today, we would want the coaches to be able to look at an athlete from a holistic perspective,” he said. “This is where we are heading to, where all of the sports world is heading to.”