Clothing and Personal Equipment
Every element is being considered now when people look to improve sporting performance and this is no different for clothing, there has been a range of clothing produced to try and improve athletes sporting performance. An example of clothes that have been used is Nike Dri Fit which has been created to keep athletes cool by wicking away any unwanted sweat on the body. The material moves sweat away from the body by using a fabric layer that helps the sweat to evaporate. This material has been endorsed by many clubs such as Manchester United. Nike's competitors Adidas has also created similar clothing, ClimaCool clothing. This is very similar to Nike's Dri Fit, it helps athletes keep cool during sports. The Climacool technology uses micro ventilation allowing air to travel through to the skin, Climawarm is also available and is designed to preserve heat in clothing keeping you warm.As you can see different clothing will be used depending on the weather conditions. In the Spanish La Liga, it is much more popular to use Climacool/Dri Fit technology to allow for the athletes to keep cooler due to the weather being hotter and this will improve sporting performance. It will improve sporting performance because it will remove unwanted sweat which will allow for the athletes to concentrate fully on the game and be less fatigue later in the game due to having unwanted sweat. The Climawarm technology will be used when the weather is cooler to keep athletes warm in colder conditions. Other technology has been incorporated into clothing such as E9 which has been used by Tottenham Hotspur, this technology within the clothing allows for coaches to see the players heart rate and breathing rate which can tell the coaches how a player is feeling/how fatigue the athlete is. This technology has improved sporting performance due to the fact that coaches will be able to see when they need to make substitutes on there players, not improving the individuals performance but improving the coaches decision making. Another development is football boots, football boots can have different features ranging from being lighter to allow for faster running to having sprint frames which allow you to accelerate faster and turn quicker. Football boots can also include specialised features as well that improve passing or shooting accuracy. Boots can also contain chips to say how far the player has ran.