How Unicaja Malaga Maximizes Athletic Performance with WIMU Pro

Home to the tallest athletes on average across any sport, basketball features players who are capable of generating incredible amounts of power and agility.

However, this level of power and agility can be extremely rigorous on the players in the professional game. So for any team which has aspirations of success, the questions must be asked: How can professional organizations optimize the unique physical gifts of their players while also keeping their bodies healthy?

A great place to start with this answer is to gain a deeper understanding of inertial sensors.

Inertial sensors are based on inertia - changes in velocity, speed and direction. These sensors are used to convert inertial force into electrical signals to measure acceleration, inclination and vibration of an object.

The wearable hardware in the WIMU Pro system collates a comprehensive suite of internal sensors which allow for tailored biomechanical analysis and data collection.

Inertial sensors can be used indoors and outdoors to track a player's movements, detect their every movement, and measure training loads. We look into the merits of how sensors can also measure the intensity, change of inertia, micro-movements, and direction of acceleration change.

“There are some metrics that are essential to both deceleration and acceleration," explained Hudl Senior Sports Scientist Carlos Martinez.

“The good part about the change of inertia is that we have information about which task produces more change of inertia.”

The detailed level of data collection generated by WIMU Pro allows coaches and practitioners the ability to gather insights that translate to the specific demands of their sport at hand.

“We know that the majority of sports are multi-directional, but we can see in some players that they have a tendency to produce higher changes of inertia in one direction,” said Martinez.

"If a player has to play defense against a particular kind of opposition, he would have to produce more change of inertia in a specific direction, so we need to know that this player is prepared to achieve this demand.”

As a professional team competing in the top level Spanish Liga ACB, EuroLeague and the EuroCup, Unicaja Málaga completely understands the value of inertial data for basketball.

Unicaja Málaga Fitness Coach Marcos Cerveró uses inertial data as the bridge between his role and the role of the Head Coach, allowing the athletic needs of the players to be communicated effectively.

“We have a dashboard that my Head Coach knows how to use,” said Cervero. “Here he has a filter for the weeks, a filter for position, the session of the day and the type of drills.

The variables that a Head Coach understands and that perceives helps him to create practice sessions, so if I go to him and I say a lot of numbers, names and things like biomechanics, I'm talking like a martian to him.

He will not buy in because people don't like what they don’t understand. So the point is not to show them that we know a lot, the challenge is to show them what can help them in the practices and decision making processes.”

This scientific buy in from the Head Coach means the Fitness Coach can use inertial data to plan training sessions.

“In creating training sessions, I could ask myself if I should do some work with a player’s right leg, or maybe he's one who defends against a player who has the ball in his hands many times, or maybe when he goes to the basket, he pushes more to the right hand so he pushes more with one leg or the other,” explained Cervero.

“This is the context of what we are talking about”.

In this webinar, we take an in-depth look at maximizing athletic performance through inertial sensors. Some key points of the webinar will include:

• Understanding inertial sensors

• Application of inertial data to athlete training

• Identifying patterns of performance

• Helping coaches understand inertial data