Sports

Gone are the days when all you wanted from a pair of sneakers or cleats was a little protection and traction. The new adidas Nitrocharge soccer cleat (or football boot, if you prefer) takes over from where predecessors like the F50 left off with a raft of "energetic technologies" designed to put a little extra punch into your game.  Read More

Finis has significantly upgraded its SwiMP3 underwater audio player with the release of the new US$160 Neptune. Like the SwiMP3, which has been on the market for five years, the Neptune waterproof player uses bone conduction to deliver sound to the inner ear. Drawing on its experience, the company has redesigned almost all components for the new model, including the bone conduction speakers, and added greater memory, an OLED display and improved file transfer compatibility with iTunes.  Read More

Man has made many attempts at bringing the smooth, Mother Nature-powered flow of surfing to dry land. The ARIS Blade Runner and SurfSkate are two of the attempts that have come to our attention most recently, but there are plenty of others. The big sticking point is that you just can't magically transform hot, cracked asphalt into cool, smooth ocean breaks. But you can ride that asphalt with an actual surfboard, as the Waveskate demonstrates beyond the shadow of all doubt.  Read More

Electrostimulation: It doesn't sound like the most relaxing thing in the world, but a French company is hoping to change this impression. The VEINOPLUS Sport is one of the latest devices to use this method for providing post-workout muscle recovery. It's designed to provide all the benefits of an active recovery without the negatives.  Read More

All of the common avalanche safety gear – beacon, shovel, probe, airbags and breathing devices – are aimed at preventing burial and/or suffocation. But burial isn't the only way avalanches cause death. The Canadian Avalanche Centre estimates that somewhere between a quarter and a third of avalanche deaths are caused by trauma, not burial. The Mountain Airbag Harness from French manufacturer UBAK protects against both burial and blunt trauma.  Read More

For pretty much any endurance-oriented sport, athletes like to be able to reach a target hear rate when they’re training. Typically, this is done using a sensor integrated into a chest strap, that’s linked to a sports watch, smartphone, or even to a heads-up display in a set of glasses. While there are sports watches designed for swimmers, users have to stop swimming in order to read them. With the Instabeat, however, swimmers get the heads-up option in the form of colored LEDs that are projected through the bottom of their goggles.  Read More

Snowboarders endure a lot of issues when compared to their skiing counterparts – these include twisting and contorting their ankles to fit on footrests designed for skiers, wearing useless leashes around their legs even though skis are more likely to pop off, and getting stuck on flat traverses that skiers push through with their poles. All those issues aren't getting solved in a day, but a group of French students is working on the last one. Their solution is called the Propul~Surf and it's designed to motor knuckle-draggers over flat ground and up hills.  Read More

If you've seen a skateboard, you've probably seen grip tape, the typically black, sandpaper-like covering that adheres to the top of the board. As its name reveals, grip tape helps to provide more traction for staying stable on the board. Australian skating outfit Ramshackel believes that the grip tape market is in need of an update, which it provides with a woven hemp kit.  Read More

TomTom is a name that sometimes gets lost in the GPS market amidst the Garmins and Magellans. The company is hoping that it will stand out against those names in a new segment of the market: fitness watches. Its new range of GPS-powered fitness monitors is designed to provide a sleeker look and fit while giving athletes all the information they need to perfect their training.  Read More