Nike+ unveils new pressure sensor shoes for basketball and training

Nike+ launched back in 2006 and since it’s added a number of great products and tools to its eco-system, like the exciting new Fuelband, designed to track all of your fitness activities throughout the day.

This week Nike took a further step into the world of fitness and exercise tracking as it officially unveiled new ways to track basketball and interval training, which Mark Parker, Nike INC’s President and CEO, described as, “two new experiences connecting digitally enabled footwear with interactive mobile applications that together deliver a revolutionary sport experience.”

Both of these experiences utilise a new kind of Nike+ pressure sensor technology, which has been built into each of the different training shoes and can then be used to collect a range of information about the user’s movements, which are all wirelessly transmitted to the apps that work alongside them.

Nike+ Basketball

The Nike+ Basketball experience is designed to provide users with a much better understanding of how high, quick and hard they play each game. The first trainers to feature Nike+’s new technology are the Hyperdunk+, the Lunar Hyperworkout+ and Lunar TR1+ training shoes, which come with sensitive pressure sensors in the toe, heel, ball and outer foot that work alongside accelerometers, allowing all kinds of movement-based statistics to be collected and sent through to the app.

A big part of the Nike+ Basketball experience is about setting goals, competing with others and sharing your experiences among your social networks too. We wouldn’t expect anything less from Nike, and this kind of competition means people will undoubtedly train much harder and get better results in the long run.

Nike+ Training

The Nike+ Training experience is about high intensity fitness training to make users fitter, faster and stronger. There are lots of different interval training exercises to follow and all of the information collected from the special work out shoes gets sent to the Nike+ Training mobile app, which we reviewed last week. The whole point of Nike+ Training is to make working out into a fun game that anyone can enoy. The first NIKE+ enabled Training shoes will be the Lunar Hyperworkout+ for Women and the Lunar TR 1+ for men.

At the launch event in New York Mark Parker, President and CEO of Nike INC, said:

“NIKE+ allows us to connect the physical world of sport with the social elements of digital to create a better sport experience for every athlete, […] It’s about much more than a shoe. It represents a shift for NIKE from product, to product + experiences.”

It’s exciting to see that Nike is adding even more innovative devices to its range of tracking products and tools, particularly those that use the latest in pressure sensor technology AND encourage plenty of healthy competition and social sharing. Now we just can’t wait to see how everything ties together with the online dashboard and the new Fuelband, which is already receiving rave reviews from amateur and professional athletes alike.