Training Tips: Polar Team 2


While playing many sports, including lacrosse, many of us are always trying to find ways to train more effectively.  Whether it’s running, playing hockey, lacrosse, or another sport, the Polar Team 2 has already made a tremendous difference across the world in a big way.  Haven’t heard of it?  Well, you should have because the USA Women’s Soccer team wore them while training for the world cup!  In fact, more than 200 team professional and collegiate teams use them currently.

If you have ever used a heart rate monitor then you would already know about the proper zones, thresholds, and possibly just how hard you could be on your body on any given day.  However, some people truly don’t know how to train effectively, and with that said, their performance when it matters most suffers.  I read an article about a basketball team and how they used them during practice, and with this system, one base station (laptop) can evaluate up to 28 individuals, so if you add two more, as I was told it could effectively watch about 80 athletes at one time.  Within the article it discussed how the coaches would watch the players during the practice and once their heart rate would get to a certain threshold and range, they would pull the player out to rest to ensure they were not over-working themselves at all.  This was done with every player over many weeks, and throughout the season they had noticed a tremendous difference in the players abilities to recover after practice, their heart rate recovery improved after strenuous activity, they aerobic and anaerobic capacities improved at a greater rate as well.  They were training more effectively and reaping all the benefits of this training, and while the cost of it was 10,000 dollars, it was a team aided investment that helped them deep into their venture and their best start of the season in years.

With this system many users enjoy comparing their data to see what all they are gaining.  In fact, many coaches are using it as a tool to setup all their practices to ensure they have practices with heavy workloads on one day, then a lower workload on others with the data they have logged from these units from all the players throughout the start of their seasons.  Especially after playing games, many players are going to be tired and needing to recover, so coaches either have days off or lower load days to ensure the players have time to recover and always evaluate the players using the Polar Team 2 during every practice as well to make sure their heart rate doesn’t get too high because it can always mean something could be wrong, and not just that they are tired.  Some coaches have even used them during games to ensure their players don’t become dehydrated because heart rates will become elevated when the body starts this process.

I believe this system is very empowering to not just the team but to the individual because it truly can show them every element of how to train in a healthy way because most people will just train to exhaustion and deplete their body and set themselves back so much.  However, when athletes are more educated, I believe this will lead to us hearing about less players dying around the nation, and even the world from training related deaths because of dehydration and other elements of sports.  Some players may not always say whats wrong with them because they might be scared to speak up, but fear not, with the Team 2, the coaches can already see and will step in to ensure that player is resting for a few minutes until they are ready to go again.

Here is a good website to go to just to read a little about it, and here is a nice article with a video that is very thorough and interesting to watch!

Be sure to like Polar on Facebook because they always have great information on their page, and make sure to say hi to Chris at Polar on Twitter!

As always if you need anything from me, be sure to email me at [email protected] or message me on Twitter @TheRealHag

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