The profound impact Artificial Intelligence (AI) has on the world of business is hard to deny, with clear evidence that AI-tools have the capability of directly and indirectly increasing profits (Basri, 2020). This might stir the heart of many finance departments, but the average gymbro remains unfazed. For them, ever-increasing economic growth takes the back seat to ever-increasing physical growth. Luckily, Artificial Intelligence has also found its way into the world of sports. Bodemer (2023) shows that AI is capable of enhancing an athlete’s individual performance, optimizing their training strategies as well as function as a surrogate-coach for those who do not have the funds to afford a ‘real’ coach. Particularly, those athletes who use wearables such as smart watches are able to reap the benefits of AI-based training programs, resulting in more optimized training loads and recovery strategies, which directly improve training performance and reduce injury risk (Cossich et al., 2023). Besides structured, highly individualized training programs AI also has the ability to provide an athlete with a detailed and well-balanced diet (Bodemer, 2023) which is paramount to making consistent gains.
Where AI can provide valuable data metrics, Augmented Reality (AR) has the potential of overlaying the physical world with digital information (Dargan et al., 2022). This can provide an athlete with real-time feedback on bar path, optimal lifting technique, and live corrections, enhancing their form and reducing injury risk during heavy lifts. With AR, a lifter could visualize data such as speed, force output, and angles of movement, enabling a more precise and immediate understanding of their performance (Cossich et al., 2023).
The use of AI and AR in sports is not the future — it’s here already, and it is accessible to everyone! The days of spinning your wheels and guessing your way through a workout are a thing of the past.
Basri, W. (2020). Examining the impact of Artificial intelligence (AI)-Assisted social Media marketing on the performance of small and medium enterprises: Toward Effective Business Management in the Saudi Arabian context. International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems, 13(1), 142. https://doi.org/10.2991/ijcis.d.200127.002
Bodemer, O. (2023). Enhancing Individual Sports Training through Artificial Intelligence: A Comprehensive Review. Eng OA, 1(2), 111-119.
Cossich, V. R. A., Carlgren, D., Holash, R. J., & Katz, L. (2023). Technological breakthroughs in sport: current practice and future potential of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, and modern data visualization in performance analysis. Applied Sciences, 13(23), 12965. https://doi.org/10.3390/app132312965
Dargan, S., Bansal, S., Kumar, M., Mittal, A., & Kumar, K. (2022). Augmented Reality: A comprehensive review. Archives of Computational Methods in Engineering, 30(2), 1057–1080. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11831-022-09831-7
