It's about finding the balance between stress and regeneration: How can data analysis be used to improve the training of professional soccer players, increase their performance, and minimize their susceptibility to injury? This was the question addressed in a cooperative project between the Data Engineering Master’s Program at Jacobs University and the SV Werder Bremen Soccer Club.
Sports medicine data on heart rate, strength, speed, endurance, mobility, nutrition, and players' injury histories are now plentiful. Many soccer clubs are working hard on finding ways to use this data as profitably as possible. For this purpose, SV Werder Bremen has made use of the expertise of Jacobs University. As part of an advanced course of their Data Engineering studies, three master's students worked on anonymized data records of the German football league team SV Werder Bremen in a project that lasted several months. One of them, Ishansh Gupta, developed his master's thesis from the semester project.
The students' task was to first standardize the data from the different sources and then, with different formats, to connect them and to visualize them," explained Professor Stefan Kettemann, coordinator of the study program. "In a second step, correlations were established, for example, between training content, the amount of training, and injury frequency."
Joint projects with companies are not unusual for the study program at Jacobs University; however, this is the first time that there has been a collaboration with a soccer club. "Data is everywhere, it permeates all areas of life," said Kettemann. "Our students not only gain theoretical knowledge, but they can apply it in projects from their first semester on," he added.
Werder Bremen assessed the collaboration and the insights gained extremely positively. "We have been analyzing a lot of data for several years, including in the area of individual endurance management. We are interested in optimizing the performance of players by finding the right balance between exertion, regeneration, and injury prevention. The project with Jacobs University was a very exciting and helpful experience for this," said Werder's sporting director Frank Baumann. There was also great satisfaction from a technical point of view. “Our expectations of the project were exceeded in terms of data cleansing, its processing and visualization, and the resulting gain in knowledge," said Nico Hruby, Chief Digital Officer of Werder Bremen.
Ishansh Gupta's master's thesis (entitled "Enhancing Football and Athletics using Data Science”) takes an even more in-depth look at the data than the semester project. Based on the data, he defined "wellness zones" for individual players, such as those in which they are fully trained and fit and less susceptible to injury. "By monitoring various health data, training can become more targeted. Data analysis can help make players better,” said the graduate. “There’s no doubt about that,” agreed Hendro Wicaksono, Professor of Industrial Engineering at Jacobs University, who supervised Ishansh Gupta's master's thesis. "When individual players get better, the whole team benefits," he observed.
About Jacobs University Bremen:
Studying in an international community. Obtaining a qualification to work on responsible tasks in a digitized and globalized society. Learning, researching and teaching across academic disciplines and countries. Strengthening people and markets with innovative solutions and advanced training programs. This is what Jacobs University Bremen stands for. Established as a private, English-medium campus university in Germany in 2001, it is continuously achieving top results in national and international university rankings. Its more than 1,500 students come from more than 110 countries with around 80% having relocated to Germany for their studies. Jacobs University’s research projects are funded by the German Research Foundation or the EU Research and Innovation program as well as by globally leading companies.
For more information: www.jacobs-university.de
Facebook | Youtube | Twitter | Instagram | Weibo
Prof. Dr. Stefan Kettemann
Program Coordinator Data Engineering
Professor for Complex Systems
Tel: +49 421 200-3521
Email: s.kettemann@jacobs-university.de
A cooperative project between the Data Engineering Master’s Program at Jacobs University and the SV ...
Werder Bremen
Werder Bremen assessed the collaboration and the insights gained extremely positively.
Peter Balthazaar
Werder Bremen
Criteria of this press release:
Business and commerce, Journalists, Scientists and scholars, all interested persons
Information technology, Sport science
transregional, national
Cooperation agreements, Transfer of Science or Research
English
A cooperative project between the Data Engineering Master’s Program at Jacobs University and the SV ...
Werder Bremen
Werder Bremen assessed the collaboration and the insights gained extremely positively.
Peter Balthazaar
Werder Bremen
You can combine search terms with and, or and/or not, e.g. Philo not logy.
You can use brackets to separate combinations from each other, e.g. (Philo not logy) or (Psycho and logy).
Coherent groups of words will be located as complete phrases if you put them into quotation marks, e.g. “Federal Republic of Germany”.
You can also use the advanced search without entering search terms. It will then follow the criteria you have selected (e.g. country or subject area).
If you have not selected any criteria in a given category, the entire category will be searched (e.g. all subject areas or all countries).