It’s no secret that technology is becoming increasingly involved in sports. Baseball, in particular, has been heavily leaning on technological advances across all disciplines of training. From player development technology like Trackman to wearables such as WHOOP, there is more baseball technology than ever.
Choosing which technologies to invest in can be overwhelming for baseball facility owners. We’ve previously covered the 5 essential technologies for baseball facilities, but in this post, we’ll examine 3 more that will put you ahead of the competition.
Technologies like Rapsodo, Trackman, and HitTrax are great at diagnosing the movement of the ball, but what about the body? There’s a saying across the coaching industry: “the movement creates the movement”.
While others are just learning what spin rate is, you can lean on technology to offer biomechanics services (from experienced coaches/analysts) - putting your business one foot ahead of the competition.
Some of these systems are extremely costly, like KinaTrax, with their in-game systems costing upwards of $1 million. However, the training lab version is likely closer to a few hundred thousand.
Budget options do exist, though, with companies like 3MotionAI offering a mobile solution through a single phone for a few thousand dollars per year. They’ve even released a validation paper comparing their results favourably to gold-standard lab setups.
Alternatively, Uplift Labs is another newer mobile option utilizing a two-phone setup to capture biomechanical data. They have a study comparing favourable results to a gold-standard biomechanics lab as well.
As every coach and athlete looks for ways to improve on-field performance, recovery becomes even more important. While there are new gimmicks every week in the recovery tech space, nothing beats good old-fashioned sleep.
Getting more scientific insights into your sleep, though, is crucial when trying to learn how to sleep well.
Fitness trackers like WHOOP have built-in sleep monitoring, spitting out a sleep/recovery score when you wake up, and letting you dive deeper into what makes up a good sleep.
For facilities, you can set up a Team on WHOOP, encouraging your athletes and coaches to join to keep everyone accountable. In a leaderboard view, you can see all members of your team (ie, facility) metrics. This can also give your coaches unprecedented insights into their athletes ahead of a training session, knowing when and when not to push the athlete.
Other options exist, like the Oura ring, which leans a little more into being exclusively a sleep monitoring device. Oura also has a “team” capability, allowing you to monitor a group of athletes at your facility.
Sometimes referred to as load management, baseball is seeing an increase in wearable technologies to monitor athlete workloads. With injury rates, and namely the number of Tommy John surgeries, continuing to rise, utilizing workload monitoring tech can help keep your athletes on the field and performing at their best.
Two popular options in this space are Catapult and PULSE.
Catapult is a popular option at the professional level as it can be adapted to both hitters and pitchers, tracking the number of throws, swings, sprints, and numerous real-time analytics. It works by strapping a sensor into a vest on the athlete's chest. Whereas PULSE is a sensor strapped onto the player's forearm (just below the elbow) or worn in a specially designed arm sleeve and delivers real-time data exclusively for throwing.
Those that followed spring training closely this season would have seen two superstars, Shohei Ohtani and Spencer Strider, both on the mend from Tommy John using PULSE to monitor their bullpen sessions. Jay Staph wrote about how PULSE could slow MLB’s Tommy John Epidemic in a piece for justbaseball.com.
While Catapult doesn’t publicize its pricing, PULSE comes in at a reasonable $245, though there is a software fee associated if you are interested in monitoring several athletes at your facility.
All the technologies above will give your facility a competitive advantage. All the technologies above give your facility an advantage. But once those clients start rolling in, what is your plan for keeping them coming? How will you manage all those new bookings, clients, and memberships? A high-tech baseball facility needs high-tech scheduling software. Your clients want convenience and simplicity, allowing them to get to their training in a matter of clicks.
Facility management software like Swift is built to grow your baseball facility on autopilot.
If you’re ready to grow your business and save valuable time each week, book a free demo with a member of our team today.
