Polar's new smart shirt includes GPS and a built-in heart-rate monitor
The Polar Team Pro Shirt lets coaches monitor an athlete's recovery and performance throughout an entire season.
Polar is entering the smart apparel market. The company, which is primarily known for its wireless heart-rate sensors and fitness trackers, on Tuesday announced the Polar Team Pro Shirt, a smart workout shirt designed for professional athletes.
The shirt integrates Polar's heart rate technology directly onto the fabric, removing the need for an uncomfortable chest strap or not-as-accurate wrist sensor. In addition to heart-rate tracking, a small GPS-equipped motion tracking sensor on the back collar is used to measure metrics such as an athlete's speed, distance and acceleration.
The shirt is compatible with Polar's Team Pro system, a platform used by sports teams to gain insights into an athlete's performance and monitor effort, recovery and other metrics throughout an entire season. The sensors in the shirt can also broadcast training data to a coach's iPad in real time.
Pricing information wasn't immediately available, although the Polar Team Pro Shirt won't be available to consumers. It is instead being offered exclusively to sports teams and will arrive sometime in March.