Product innovation
Wearing your heart on your sleeve: Polar's releases shirt that tracks heart rate
Finland-based sports technology company Polar introduced an entirely new wearable category to its growing portfolio of fitness kit at CES. The Polar Team Pro Shirt is a smart workout shirt designed mainly for professional (or “very keen”) athletes.
The shirt integrates Polar's heart rate technology directly onto the fabric and is the company’s first heart rate monitoring and GPS tracking apparel. The shirt is compatible with Polar's Team Pro system, allowing athletes and coaches to gain insight into their effort, speed of recovery and other metrics. The sleeveless, base-layer shirt replaces the need for a chest strap monitor by building two thin, unobtrusive heart rate capture points directly into the fabric. The sensors in the shirt can also broadcast training data to a coach's iPad in real time.
“As a company with a deep heritage in team sports, we’re constantly working to evolve design and function in ways that will improve an athlete’s performance,” says Tom Fowler, president of Polar US. “Polar technology and products are, at their core, developed for the needs of professional athletes and coaches. “As a result of our continued focus on improvement, we’ve reimagined the chest strap for professional athletes and developed Team Pro Shirt.”