FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – If you’ve ever looked at photos of the players on the New England Revolution training ground and wondered why it looks like they’re wearing sports bras, you’re not alone. It’s a common question and also a common misconception.
While it may look like a sports bra, the players are actually wearing athletic vests designed to keep a GPS tracking pod secure and close to their bodies. Those wearable performance monitors help players, performance staff, coaches, and the medical team better understand player output and make more informed decisions about training and recovery loads.
The Revs use a brand called Catapult, which makes the pods and software for data collection. New England’s performance staff collects that data throughout training and games, then uses it to help plan sessions, individualize workloads, and give players the best chance to perform at their peak.
“We use the data to individualize their training load. It’s an external measure of the load that they are doing on the field and on an average level to know how the team is doing and what the average data is of the team. We also go positionally, and individually with each player,” explained Federico Pizzuto, director of sports performance. “We know each day what distance we want them to cover, the speed that we want them to achieve, the number of accelerations. We call it ‘load,’ the physical periodization. It’s not just that, but it’s a big piece of the puzzle that helps prepare what we want to do each day.”
The data isn’t limited to the performance staff. After organizing the data, they share it with coaches and medical staff, who use it to shape training plans, recovery work, and treatment decisions.
“They can know based on the loads if a guy is more tired, if a body part is more affected than others, it allows them to individualize their treatments and recovery in the training room,” Pizzuto explained.
For players and staff alike, Pizzuto also hears the sports bra question a lot, but he says it is not the only misconception people have about the vests. Many assume the point is heart-rate monitoring. While some systems can track heart rate, the Revs’ vests are primarily designed to hold the GPS pod in place.
While GPS data is mainly used by the coaching staff, Pizzuto says the players have access to their numbers, too. Some are more interested than others, but in true athletic spirit, the players tend to get a bit competitive about comparing their data.
“We always put the data from the previous game up on the TV in the gym for anyone who wants to look at it. Some of them also want training data, so we provide them with that so they can know how fast they are running, if they are getting quicker or running more,” he said. “Sometimes when one guy has a higher volume than another, they play around like ‘no way, I don’t believe that they did that, next time I’m going to do more!’ So, it creates some competition for them.”
The players have been wearing the vests for years, and after training you can occasionally hear Pizzuto yell, “don’t forget your GPS,” a reminder for players to turn in their pods and vests after a day of work. Wearing them has become such second nature that it is easy for them to forget they are even on at all.
And as the Revs continue to use every tool available to get better, the sport itself keeps moving further toward the numbers. As data becomes more important across professional sports, those “sports bras” aren’t going anywhere soon, and are likely only to get more and more high-tech.
