We hear it from athletes all the time, ”there’s always room for improvement.” So, what is the value of individual sports metrics? Simple. They tell you where that room for improvement is.
Baseball
He’ll never be Mike Trout, but Justin Turner of the Los Angeles Dodgers quietly had a break out year after overhauling his swing. No one had ever heard of Jose Bautista until he turned thirty and suddenly figured things out. Now thousands of fans call him Joey Bats and wear T-shirts featuring his famous bat flip. Amateurs may not have hitting coaches to help them break out like those two, but numbers have the potential to help baseball players more than any other sport. With a batter’s swing, the numbers don’t just show his or her physical deficiencies, they show mechanically deficiencies too.
METRICS TO ANALYZE:
- Swing Speed
- Time to Contact
- Swing Direction
- Power
- Efficiency
Basketball
You know what makes a pro basketball player special? Everything. They are amongst the most physically gifted athletes in the world. But what separates the best of the best is work ethic and consistency. No one has spent more time in the gym than Kobe. Steph Curry makes draining threes look easy, but it isn’t. He works at it. If athletes want to beat opponents to a rebound and gets shots off over defenders, they better be able to jump higher and faster. The best way to get there is to start recording in-game numbers and tracking progress.
METRICS TO ANALYZE:
- Jump Acceleration
- Rotation
- Vertical Height
- Hang Time
General Athleticism
Sports like football rely a lot on technique. DB’s need to leverage their hips and push off with the correct foot, offensive tackles need proper footwork and so on. Technique can take athletes a long way, but general athletes often have to improvise and for that they need elite athleticism. For athletes to improve every element of their game, they need to take training to the next level. They need to record and improve upon the game play factors that will help pad their game stats.
METRICS TO ANALYZE:
- Sprint Acceleration
- Rotation
- Vertical Height
- Hang Time
Golf
Golf has such an obvious need for analytical data. There are so many variables and elements to the game that all depend on swing mechanics and consistency. We can harp on keeping our elbows in and our head down, but without data, it’s hard to tell where the problems in a swing really lie. For golf, we want to divide the data into full swing and putting.
FULL SWING METRICS TO ANALYZE:
- Backswing Time
- Downswing Time
- Total Swing Time
- Swing Tempo
- Swing Speed
- Power Index
- Efficiency Index
- Velocity Direction
- Energy Transfer
PUTTING METRICS TO ANALYZE:
- Backstroke Time
- Forward Stroke Time
- Total Stroke Time
- Tempo
- Loft
- Lie
- Back Stroke Rotation
- Forward Stroke Rotation
- Rotation Change
