Heart Rate Monitors Fine-Tune Players’ Fitness

Jere Longman writes of how the use of heart rate monitors can enhance a player and team's training to make their fitness as game-like as possible.

As soccer practice began one recent afternoon, each University of Connecticut player grabbed a puck before he kicked a ball. The puck was a small rectangular transmitter that attached to a chest strap and was worn beneath the players’ jerseys.

On the sideline, a wireless receiver sat next to a laptop computer. As the Huskies performed their drills, heart rate data for each player appeared on the computer screen in real time, both in block numerals, as if on a gas pump, and in the wavy, crayon-colored lines of a collective stress test.

For nearly a decade, UConn, a perennial power, has been at the forefront of using heart rate monitors in N.C.A.A. soccer in an increasingly sophisticated attempt to gauge the intensity of training and create optimal conditioning for its players.

Coaches estimate that 10 percent to 30 percent of college soccer teams use similar technology to customize workouts, help plan their lineups and substitution patterns, and rethink the hoary tenet that harder training is always the best training.

The aim is to calculate precisely that players are giving the desired effort during workouts and, just as important, to prevent them from overtraining and to limit their susceptibility to soft-tissue injuries that can arise from fatigue.

“Soccer is a great game, but there is very little science to it,” said Chris Watkins, the soccer coach at Brigham Young University, which has used heart rate monitors for two seasons. “If you can find science, it gives players an advantage. We’re much smarter in our training now. Fitness is not an issue. We know exactly how to address it.”