Ahead of the inaugural Under Armour Series, several Welsh Rugby Union athletes have been live training in a life-size app dashboard outside Cardiff’s Principality Stadium. The activity, orchestrated by Series sponsors Under Armour, falls on the eve of the autumn internationals and showcases to the public how professional athletes are able to track and record every aspect of their lifestyle – Sleep, Fitness, Activity and Nutrition – through the Under Armour Record app.
The dashboard installation, mimicking the home screen of Under Armour’s holistic fitness tracking app Record, showcased how easy it is to get fitter via four simple quadrants – Sleep, Fitness, Activity and Nutrition, which are all measurable via the app.
This was brought to life by international player’s and Under Armour athletes including Dan Lydiate, Rhys Webb, Hallam Amos and Leigh Halfpenny. Each tackled a quadrant of the Under Armour installation – a Sleep chamber, a Fitness centre, an Activity sector and a Nutrition facility – in short stints, reflecting a typical day in the life of the Welsh Rugby Union player.
We caught up with Leigh Halfpenny at the kick off to find out more about how taking a holistic approach and using apps like Under Armour Record can help performance and recovery.
Q. How tough is it to bounce back from an injury or an extended period on the sidelines?
It can be incredibly tough to recover and return after an injury. You’ve got to maintain your fitness and your strength. When I couldn’t do anything on my legs, I focused on upper body endurance and cardio.”
How big a part does nutrition play in your fitness regime?
Nutrition is an extremely important part of what we do. When you train, your muscles are stressed and you use up your energy resources. So you have to refuel and make sure you get the carbohydrates back in for your energy stores and protein for your muscle recovery and strength. And vitamins and minerals are vital for movement and support. Wholemeal toast, scrambled egg with avocado is a favourite of mine.”
How does the Under Armour Record App help bring it all together?
The App helps massively with my training. It monitors my training sessions, including stretching and activities like yoga. It monitors nutrition through “my fitness pal”, which I find really beneficial in terms of logging the food I have throughout the day. It helps to make sure I’m hitting my goals each day to fuel my body for training. And also sleep, it’s the most important thing for recovery and the Under Armour Record app can tell you how much you sleep but also gives you an idea of the quality of your sleep. This is great in particularly for me, because I can sometimes get nervous before games, so being able to monitor how well I’m sleeping, it can help me test and find different ways to address that.”
The real-world Under Armour Record app demonstration, created by global sports performance in partnership with UA, was to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It was also a great demonstration of how the training regimes and activity of professional athletes can relate to everybody’s everyday life to help balance their lifestyle for optimum fitness and performance.
This year’s Under Armour Series is the first of a nine-year commitment that will feature four international matches every autumn. It kicked off with the Wales v Australia game, and continues over this weekend as Wales takes on Argentina (12th November), followed by Japan (19th November) and South Africa (26th November).
Paul Nugent, Senior Director, Marketing, Under Armour Europe, said:
We’re continually striving to make all athletes better, and are looking to show just how simple it is to replicate a healthy lifestyle with our Record installation. Training intelligently – both physically and mentally – by adopting a holistic approach is vital to achieving health and fitness goals, like our Welsh Rugby Union athletes are demonstrating here. We’re proud to get behind the team and Wales as a nation, and we encourage fans to download Record, as we strive towards a fitter future.”
As part of its long-term partnership as Official Technical Partner of WRU, extended this year until 2025, the WRU will also now have total access to Under Armour’s Record app, which will give athletes the holistic view of their lifestyle and fitness to improve their performance.
Under Armour athlete Leigh Halfpenny was speaking during the launch of the inaugural Under Armour Series which showcased how they are managing their training ahead of the autumn internationals in a lifesize UA RECORD™ app. To find out more visit www.record.underarmour.com
