Kuortane Olympic Training Center Helps Finnish Javelin Throwers Win More Medals with Movesense

Movesense sensors and Solita’s data analytics power the next generation of training tools

Helsinki, Nov 7

Kuortane Olympic Training Center, digital transformation company and Movesense development partner Solita and Suunto announce at the sports tech event Smash on Nov 8, 2018, a cooperation that aims at creating new tools and services for athletes and coaches in different sports to help them to develop sports specific skills and understanding at the highest possible level.

The first solution is being developed for the traditional Finnish track&field favorite javelin. As a result, athletes will receive new, highly accurate data and immediate feedback of all of their throws with an easy to use, lightweight sensor system and data analysis. In the future, similar tools will be built to other sports and expanded from the elite level to all participants interested in improving their performance.

The project is part of Human Performance Hub, a two-year program by Kuortane Olympic Training Center that focuses on improving physical performance of athletes. It is partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund and lead by world record speed skater Pekka Koskela who ended his sports career this spring.

The actual development is enabled by project partners Solita and Suunto who bring in their world class expertise in using high end wearable sensors and advanced data analytics in sports.

Movesense sensors are used to collect movement data from different locations around the athlete’s body. Also the javelin is sensored to detect key parameters of its launch from every individual throw.

Solita processes the measured results and background data to turn it into useful insights and feedback that help athletes and coaches to improve the quality of training.

”In today’s high performance sports, it’s extremely important to understand the complete movement of an athlete’s body. With modern measurement tools, we now have access to this also in sports where a successful performance requires explosive speed and strength”, says Pekka Koskela.

Petteri Piiroinen, Javelin head coach of the Finnish Athletic Federation, tells that the project gives important new understanding of the biomechanics of throwing. ”Sensors are so small and easy to use that we can use them even in maximal throwing training. This allows us to compare training indoors and outdoors and get immediate feedback from every throw to optimize the training outcome”, explains Piiroinen.

“The measurement data gives me a quantified confirmation of my feelings and perceived effort of each throw. That helps me to improve my training and makes indoor training even more motivating”, says athlete Toni Kuusela who has been testing the system from the very first data collection sessions.

“The opportunities of utilizing data are better and wider than ever. We will take our learning from elite sports and expand it to different health and wellbeing applications”, tells business lead Antti Brunni from Solita.

”We are proud to join creating new tools and methods that help Finnish athletes to great performances. For Suunto, Movesense is a way to share our expertise to other companies and developers, helping also them to perform better”, explains Terho Lahtinen from the Movesense team at Suunto.

For those who want to know more about the project, we will publish the project presentation from Smash in the next few days.

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