Comparison of Non-Invasive Individual Monitoring of the Training and Health of Athletes with Commercially Available Wearable Technologies

Athletes adapt their training daily to optimize performance, as well as avoid fatigue, overtraining and other undesirable effects on their health. To optimize training load, each athlete must take his/her own personal objective and subjective characteristics into consideration and an increasing number of wearable technologies (wearables) provide convenient monitoring of various parameters. Accordingly, it is important to help athletes decide which parameters are of primary interest and which wearables can monitor these parameters most effectively. Here, we discuss the wearable technologies available for non-invasive monitoring of various parameters concerning an athlete's training and health. On the basis of these considerations, we suggest directions for future development. Furthermore, we propose that a combination of several wearables is most effective for accessing all relevant parameters, disturbing the athlete as little as possible, and optimizing performance and promoting health

A taxonomy for visualisations of personal physical activity data on self-tracking devices and their applications

Self-tracking devices and apps have been widely used for personal data collection, with particular focus on health and physical activity (PA) monitoring. Despite their pervasive use, data representation and data sharing on these devices and apps are still in their infancy. With the aim of contributing towards structuring the design space of personal health visualisation, we present an overview focused on visualisation methods and the typology of tracked data in the most popular health and PA tracking devices and their companion apps/dashboards. Our research method of data collection is based not only on a review of scientific literature in the field, but also on autoethnography, information collected from manufacturers' websites and user manuals as well as online communities and reviews. We then discuss the major issues and limitations users face with regards to health and PA data interpretation and sharing.</p