TUESDAY 25 MARCH 2014 • [email protected] • www.thepeninsulaqatar.com • 4455 7741 inside Divergent CAMPUS teen warriors • Four ASD students perform at defeat Muppets Carnegie Hall P | 4 P | 8-9 ARCHAEOLOGY • Mesopotamia: Dilmun seals and Dilmun land Technology is slowly making their presence felt in sports. The latest trend P | 6 in sporty self-improvement: sensors that analyse your physical form and RECIPE CONTEST give instant feedback. • Send in your best recipe and win a dinner voucher for two P | 7 HEALTH • How to strengthen your core P | 11 TECHNOLOGY • Rise of open source coder generation P | 12 SPORTS Learn Arabic • Learn commonly used Arabic words GADGETS and their meanings P | 13 2 PLUS | TUESDAY 25 MARCH 2014 COVER STORY High-tech sports gadgets that promise to improve your game By Seth Stevenson I wondered: Could technology help? port hidden in its handle. Pop open the with a larger or smaller head size? I tested a few products to see. Babolat’s butt cap and it’s hard not to What if you’d like to be able to swap ’ve made peace with the notion One must acknowledge a fundamen- feel you’re peering into the future of in, mid-set, a backup racket with a that I’ll never run point for the tal weakness with these sports sen- sports. The promise is obvious: Play different string tension? Or what if, Celtics in the NBA Finals, shoot sors: Simply knowing, say, how fast you a set or two, plug the racket into heaven forbid, you break a string? Ia 63 on Sunday at Augusta, or swing your 7-iron does not at all trans- your laptop, and download an instant, Because the sensor is buried within bagel Rafa in straight sets on Roland late into hitting a golf ball straight and detailed analysis of your performance. the handle, and the handle is non- Garros clay. I’ll forever be a sad-to- true. Improving in an athletic endeav- I couldn’t wait to take this thing out transferable, you’re forced to play middling weekend athlete. And yet I our requires a collection of tiny, subtle for a spin. with this particular $400 racket if like to imagine that I still can be better. adjustments. Tweaks to your stance, Sadly, the reality was far less fun. you wish to record your data. Seems I’m not alone. Millions of plodding, rhythm, balance, alignment, fluidity. Despite repeated efforts, I couldn’t like a fatal flaw. And one that could athletically challenged, wannabe jocks Only a trained eye will be able to watch get this thing to work. Scads of online be easily obviated — as demonstrated out there scour YouTube clips for the whole motion and identify its weak reviews confirmed my suspicions: The by our next competitor. coaching tips, enroll in lessons from link. Babolat is buggy. Though my computer local pros and buy bizarre and, frankly, Still, while they won’t immediately recognised the racket, it failed to locate Zepp golf and tennis sensor, embarrassing instructional aids. launch you onto the front of a Wheaties any data from my on-court sessions. I $149.95. The latest trend in sporty self- box, some of these sensor products called up Babolat, which acknowledged The Zepp can be used — in tandem improvement: sensors that analyse your are useful. Herewith, my rankings on the bug, promised me it’s working on with various mounting accessories — to physical form and give instant feed- the country club ladder, ordered from a long-term fix and gave me instruc- analyse a tennis shot, a baseball swing back. These consumer devices — packed worst to first: tions for a short-term workaround. I or a golf stroke. I first tried it with ten- with teensy accelerometers, gyroscopes followed those instructions closely, yet nis. It slips into a rubbery housing that and Bluetooth transmitters — promise Babolat Play Pure Drive tennis the racket still failed. stretches over the butt of any racket, to track the speed of your golf swing, racket, $399. Even if the Babolat had performed even a cheap one. The sensor doesn’t the shape of your tennis stroke and the There’s something pleasingly sci-fi smoothly, I see a core problem with get in the way of your grip. I soon for- backspin on your jump shot. about a tennis racket with a mini-USB its model. What if you prefer a racket got it was there. PLUS | TUESDAY 25 MARCH 2014 3 Unlike the Babolat Play, the Zepp offered some actual results. I eas- ily paired it with my phone using Bluetooth. The Zepp tennis app imme- diately downloaded a snapshot of the set I’d played. The sensor informed There were interesting nuggets in the data. The Zepp tallied 254 shots me I was almost always over the hour I was on the court, of hitting the ball with which 58 percent were forehands and 35 percent were backhands. It showed the club face too open that I struck my groundstrokes with (instead of square on) consistent power over the course of the set, while my serve lost oomph toward and that my swing path the end as I got tired and my shoulder was too outside the grew grumpy. ball. This is useful and But I wasn’t convinced the details were totally accurate. The Zepp said actionable knowledge. 47 percent of my forehands were sliced, But again, putting it into which couldn’t be right — I know I hit all but a few of these strokes either play would be much flat or with topspin. More damning, it easier if I had a pro by claimed I hit a total of only 16 serves over the course of the set, which is sim- my side to coach me. ply impossible. I hit nearly that many in a single long game that featured multi- ple deuces. Zepp acknowledged the flaw and said it’s working on better serve recognition. Perhaps a seasoned golfer with good and so forth. The GSA Over at the Chelsea Piers driving form and self-knowledge could use Pro seemed trustwor- range, I slipped the Zepp into a mount the Zepp to experiment with nuanced thy: When I purposely that lets you affix it to your golf glove. adjustments. But for a duffer like me sped up or slowed down Then I hit a slew of balls, alternating (personal best round: 106), the Zepp’s my swing, or changed between a driver and a 7-iron. The feedback was like sparks thrown on its arc, the device rec- sensor tells you your club speed (mine damp kindling. I didn’t know how to ognized the difference. ranged from 77 mph to 103 mph as I use its suggestions, and I wanted the My favorite feature: cycled through differing levels of frus- help of a golf pro to spot basic flaws in The sensor informed tration and physical anger) and com- my form. Perhaps in concert with some me I was almost always know which player did what, and it pares the tempo of your backswing to human instruction, the Zepp could be hitting the ball with the club face too can’t automatically switch between your follow through (mine mostly hov- a handy device. The coach could point open (instead of square on) and that analyzing ball handling and shooting), ered around 2.5:1, meaning it took me out my best swing, recording its data on my swing path was too outside the ball. but the accompanying app is perfectly 2.5 times longer to draw the club back the Zepp, and then I could check future This is genuinely useful and actionable designed to lead you through individual than to swing it forward). swings against that ideal when I prac- knowledge. But again, putting it into drills. I tried it out with friends before It also creates a beautiful animation ticed alone. By itself, the Zepp wasn’t play would be much easier if I had a our weekly Wednesday evening game. of your swing, which you can rotate to enough to improve my game. pro by my side to coach me through The sensor seems highly accurate. view from different angles. This was the the necessary adjustments, instead of It tallied my dribbles, told me the most intriguing feedback for me, as it 3Bays GSA Pro, $181.30. guessing how best to achieve them. precise revolutions per minute on my let me compare the plane of my swing This slick little sensor didn’t inter- jump shot and recognized whether that to the ideal plane that Zepp suggests. fere with my grip. It’s mounted to a 94Fifty Smart Sensor basketball, shot more closely resembled a rain- According to the sensor, I swing too fixed spot on the base of the golf club. $249.95. bow or a clothesline. As a diagnostic horizontally (like a merry-go-round) To me, that seemed likely to offer I had high hopes for the 94Fifty, exercise, this seemed hugely useful: and should get more vertical (like a more consistent results than the Zepp which embeds sensor technology and It was evident that everybody in my Ferris wheel). By watching the ani- approach, in which you wear the sensor a Bluetooth transmitter inside a stand- game was dribbling the ball with inad- mated playback of my swing immedi- on your hand and then tell the device ard basketball. The ball can measure equate force, shooting at too flat an ately after each drive, I nudged myself the approximate angle of your grip.