It’s not only the Storm that’s using GPS data to improve NRL training, recovery and game planning – the Wests Tigers are also using the technology to their advantage. The Tigers seeing some interesting stats from their trial of the GPS equipment during a pre-season game against Shellharbour recently.
Star hooker Robbie Farah apparently clocking up 8000 metres traveled during the match, with his heart rate averaging around 160 beats per minute and peaking at 192 beats per minute – which is quite a scary number.
The heavy workload on Farah was surprising, given the pre-season game was an easy victory for the Wests Tigers. Imagine the stats we’d see from Farah if the Tigers were under the pump and defending all game?
As the no.9 Farah obviously does much more work than his team mates, other stats showed that the Wests backrowers ran for a total 3.5 km’s during their 60 minutes in the game – statistics that are a godsend for Tigers coaching staff trying to plan future sessions that will increase endurance.
“We’d been wearing them all summer at training and the coaching staff approached a few of the boys and wanted them to wear them in the game to find out how much work we were doing,” Farah told the media “I think me and John Morris ran a fair bit so it’s a good guide to see what we do on the field.”
Apparently a handful of clubs including the Tigers and Storm, approached the NRL for permission to wear the GPS trackers during games, which are embeded to their vests and sit on their backs between their shoulders.
As mentioned with the Storm tests; the GPS units also provide player speed stats and the force of hits and tackles.
“The main advantage is that we know how much they are doing each week so we might have to lighten them up a bit at training,” Tigers coach Tim Sheens confirmed about the popular devices. “Robbie is one of those hookers who play 80 minutes so we don’t want to be pumping him too much at training because he runs a fair bit there, too.
“It’s more to give us a guide for workloads than anything else. Robbie’s heart rate was up around 160 plus a few times [in the trial] so he worked really hard.”