Sports Technology & Communications News from Around the World

adidas – a designer, developer and marketer of athletic footwear, apparel and accessories – has announced the adidas miCoach sports technology app, as a new development to adidas miCoach, the company’s personal and real-time audible training system. The new application will feature sports-specific training programs that have been designed to coach sports and fitness enthusiasts, amateurs and professionals.

The personal coaching program for running developed by adidas has now been extended to include six specific conditioning programs for basketball, football, running, soccer, and tennis, in addition to a dedicated program for staying fit. The miCoach app deploys Global Positioning System or GPS technology for active real-time pace-based coaching and location tracking, and also provides the adidas miCoach platform to a huge number of smart phone owners, who can download the application at selected app stores including iTunes and BlackBerry (News - Alert) App World, from August 2, 2010.

Bernd Wahler, chief marketing officer, adidas Sport Performance, said the introduction of the miCoach app and sports-specific training plans was the natural next step to bring miCoach to an even wider audience, as adidas works with the world's best coaches and athletes, and the company wanted to share this knowledge and experience with its consumers to inspire and to help them reach their personal goals. Wahler continued that adidas’ service approach is unique and sets new standards in terms of personalization in the entire sporting goods industry.

While developing the miCoach app, adidas collaborated with a number of well known coaches, athletes and teams, and sought support from various renowned athletic trainers such as Mark Verstegen, founder and director of the Athletes' Performance Institute, or, API training and sport research center, for development of sports-specific training plans. The company also coordinated with the World Cup Champion Spanish National Soccer Team, FC Bayern Munich, AC Milan, and a number of athletes like Reggie Bush and Jessica Ennis, in order to ensure high quality of the training program.

According to Reggie Bush, an athlete who contributed in the development of adidas miCoach app, coaching is essential to improving as an athlete, no matter which sport or whatever a player’s goal is, a coach can help him improve. Bush noted that miCoach has a plan designed specifically to make the player faster in football, and who doesn’t get faster by just running long distances, or running sprints, as it takes interval training specifically designed to optimize football performance and the miCoach app provides a pretty cool plan to improve the player.

In January 2010, Sennheiser, a provider of headsets, headphones and microphones announced that it collaborated with adidas to release a new line of sports headphones. The new headphones are water- and sweat-resistant and are designed to be secure yet comfortable during sports activity.