About ten years ago, football performance trackers were not accessible to most people. You could only find them with top-level teams. But today, both professional and amateur players have access to them. Boost your football skills by making the most of the football performance trackers.
GPS vests work fine, but they don’t give you as much information as the football stats trackers and don’t measure football-specific movements. Football is a game that involves your feet. And a fitness vest does not record your foot’s activity. That’s what makes the Playermaker and CITYPLAY the best fitness tracker for football players. It provides you with insights that are related to the game and covers technical and physical metrics of players.ofIt shows you how you use each foot, helping you improve your skills faster.
Traditionally, a football match analysis relied heavily on watching pre-recorded videos. But today, technology has become prevalent in all areas, including football. You can now get an in-depth analysis of a football match using tracking systems.
Tracking systems, such as GPS vests and football fitness trackers can collect more information than a video recording. But what is the difference? Which wins in GPS Vests vs. Football Tracker? When you wear a football performance tracker, you can tell the movements you made, the speed, the distance covered, and more. Afterwards, you can use that information to improve your skills.
If you want to track your performance in the match or training, should you go for a GPS vest or a football tracker? Or can you use both? Let’s compare these two technologies to help you make a wise selection.
WHAT ARE THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN A GPS VEST AND A FOOTBALL TRACKER?
A vest and a football performance tracker help collect information during football practice and matches. The insights they provide helps you improve your football performance. For instance, you can measure the physical ability of a player, metrics include distance covered, training intensity, top speed, sprint distance, and the number of sprints.
This information can help you, your physiotherapist, and your coach determine whether your training is optimum for an upcoming game. The data also helps monitor your training intensity to ensure you don’t exceed your safe training zone.
Both GPS and football stats trackers save information in a mobile app for you to review after the training session. Set up is easy as you only need to pair the device with the app on your phone. Then, most devices will start working after you plug them into their tracking settings.
You don’t have to worry about forgetting to turn them on. Also, the devices don’t need a phone to be present at the moment for them to work. You only need your phone at the end of the training to transfer the data via Bluetooth to the phone’s app. Both devices are lightweight and use battery power. That means you have to recharge them before the game.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF A FOOTBALL TRACKER OVER A GPS VEST?
A vest requires you to wear the tracker on your shoulders. Due to the location of the sensor, you can only get data of your whole body movement, not your feet. But since you attach a football fitness tracker on your boots, it can collect additional data on the activity of your feet – the technical ability of a player. You can compare data of your weak foot vs your strong foot to help you improve but most importantly you can measure football-specific movements of a player that is in the context of the game. For example, the new proprietary rating system in CITYPLAY powered by Playermaker, is an objective skills rating system that covers both physical and technical abilities, obtained during real world scenarios of match play; metrics include Two-footed, dribbling, agility, first-touch and speed.
Other benefits of a football tracker over a GPS performance vest include;
- Some people may not feel comfortable wearing the GPS vest. You can feel the vest and it might interrupt your training. But a football performance tracker is small. You can’t feel it and it doesn’t interrupt your game at all.
- A football tracker doesn’t require GPS or Wi-Fi to work. Meaning you can use it anywhere, including indoors. GPS doesn’t work indoors, so you can’t use the vest when training indoors.
- You can collect more information using a football fitness tracker than a GPS vest. The vest doesn’t collect technical metrics such as the number of touches, kick velocity, volume of possession and foot release zones.
- A football stats tracker uses accelerometer technology which is highly sensitive to small movements. So it can measure every action of the foot with high accuracy.
- The data you collect with a football stats tracker is more relevant to the game. For instance, you can measure the power at which you hit a ball. Then, through consistent practice, you can try to beat your previous record.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF A GPS VEST OVER A FOOTBALL TRACKER?
A GPS fitness vest shows you the map of your training field. In this map, you can see the location where you made various movements and the part of the field where you were most active. Some vest devices come with a heart rate monitor, which helps collect more data on how hard you’re working.
IS IT RECOMMENDED TO HAVE BOTH?
If you need more data about your training, it’s not a problem having both. But some of the collected information may be redundant. However, having both will still give you the benefit you can’t get from using one.
WHAT IF I CAN’T AFFORD IT AND HAVE TO CHOOSE ONE?
If you have to choose between a vest and a tracker, you should consider the one with the highest benefits. Also, take into account whether you’ll be using the tracker indoors at least some of the time.
Football trackers are reliable since you can use them both outdoors and indoors. Moreover, they give you technical information that you can’t get from a vest. Besides that, the essential thing in football is how your feet interact with the ball. And only a football fitness tracker can help you get that critical information.
