The German national football team becomes Virtual Reality (VR) in training in the future. To this end, the DFB with the American company Strivrwhich specialises in VR training.
How can you make the best even better? And make the most successful even more successful? The DFB Academy and is now also relying on the power of VR, which is to become an integral part of the training centre.
To this end, the team is cooperating with the innovative American company STRIVR Labs, the institution for virtual reality in sport. STRIVR originated from a master's thesis at Stanford University on the effect of 360 videos on professional athletes. The start-up initially specialised in VR training programmes for football players; they have since been able to continuously expand their portfolio of VR training courses.
Pilot project with 350-degree videos
In a pilot project entitled "Perception and decision-making", the DFB and STRIVR are jointly using 360-degree videos to play typical match situations over and over again for the German players. The constant repetition is intended to improve instinctive and intuitive decision-making and strengthen routines. The method is also intended to promote concentration and give players the opportunity to repeatedly visualise successes.
STRIVR has been applying the same principle to teams in the US basketball and football leagues for around two years. For example, US basketball star Andre Drummond is trying to use the VR glasses to remove mental blocks in order to optimise his miserable free throw rate. And Garrett Temple is also testing the training application in the picture.
The following video shows an example of the training.
DFB expands cooperation with STRIVR
Following the successful pilot project, the cooperation will be intensified and expanded. Markus Weise, Head of Concept Development at the DFB Academy, says: "We have gained important initial insights from our pilot project with STRIVR. By intensifying our cooperation, we now hope to gain new impetus for the further development of training content and diagnostics. Virtual reality is an extremely exciting technology that is still at the beginning of its development and offers many possibilities."
Which new methods will be used is not revealed. The press images show that HTC Vive including 3D controllers and Oculus Rift are being used. This could mean that players will use interactive learning applications in addition to 360-degree videos in the future, which makes perfect sense.
Source: DFB / vrodo / washingtonwizardsblog / STRIVR
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