Launch of new golf athlete monitoring app informed by OU research

While conducting research with an under 18’s England Golf squad, Dr Ben Langdown, Senior Lecturer in Sports Coaching at the WELS School of Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport, soon realised the challenge of obtaining accurately recorded practice data. 

Dr Langdown’s subsequent research aimed to understand how volumes of practice influenced performance and the risk of injury in golf.  However, asking golfers to log their training data in a spreadsheet made it difficult for them to do so while practicing, relying on input from memory which impacted the accuracy of the data gathered. 

Based on the need for more accurate data and the goal of providing golfers and their coaches with insights into individual practice loads and performance, Dr Langdown established the idea of a mobile app.  Two years on, the AMI Sports: Golf app has officially launched.

The AMI Sports: Golf app enables golfers to record data from their daily training, practice, tournaments and wellness measures live, which then provides users with immediate research-based insights to help optimise performance and reduce their risk of injury.  In turn, where permission has been granted, data gathered from the app will be used to inform much needed research in the area of athlete monitoring in golf. Findings from the research will be published by Dr Langdown for the benefit of the golf community.

As well as demonstrating the applicability of research in real-life scenarios, the app and data gathered will also provide valuable case studies in OU curriculum.  In the OU sport module, E236: Applying sport and exercise sciences to coaching, students explore the concepts of athlete monitoring, measuring training loads and the response of the body. The app will provide an applied example of the processes used to ensure athletes are not under or over training, to reduce the risk of fatigue and injuries, while maximising performance.  As Lead Digital Champion in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies, Dr Langdown will also share his experiences of developing the app with academic colleagues to promote the use of mobile applications for research and encourage further digital research innovation.

Commenting on the launch, Dr Ben Langdown said, “From original conception through to development and testing, it is incredibly exciting to see the AMI Sports: App officially launch.  The app is the first of its kind to offer in-depth athlete monitoring intelligence purpose-designed for golf.  It’s great to see the impact of my research resulting in a product with real-life applicability, and I’m keen to see what further insights the data gathered from the app might help uncover.”

The AMI Sports: Golf app is available to download now for iOS and will be coming soon to Android.
Find out more on the AMI Sports: Golf app website, or discover more about the OU’s School of Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport.