Full article

An Update from Eddie Hicks

Our athlete insider Eddie Hicks is off training in Finland, as part of the Candian National Mogul Team. He took some time to write about his experience using our technology. Here's a short excerpt. To read more visit his blog.

“There’s a kid in all of us”

That’s what they say, well as a kid what I really wanted was a speedometer in my goggles and I’m quite confident I’m not the only one. So now that Recon has made that a reality, it’s pretty much a childhood dream come true for everyone who spent their weekends terrorizing their local hills as children. Imagine having been able to compete with your friends to see who got going the fastest… so many victories lost.

As an athlete I find this technology extremely exciting due to the fact that it will allow me to have instant access to such a diverse amount of real time information that is highly relevant to performing at my best. However, as a mogul skier there aren’t an abundance of stats to be quantified (besides wins) and when I consider other sports, there’s almost no sport I can think of that wouldn’t benefit in some way from this technology. That’s huge for athletes everywhere. For myself, to be able to know how fast I was coming into a jump, and how long I was in the air for is very beneficial information. To perform at this level you need to be going just as high on your jumps as the best guys do on theirs and this gives me a tool to quantify, compare and track progress to that effect. The HQ is the perfect companion software to the unit itself as it allows me to see all my data on my computer and even upload it to the HQ online site so that I can both access it from anywhere and allow others to see my data. Perhaps most exciting of all though is the fact that this technology is just getting started, there’s no telling where this is going to go, but it’s certainly very good for me and athletes like myself around the world.

On the other hand, as a skier I find this technology extremely exciting because it’s something I’ve always wished I had, but it’s also so much more. Being able to see how fast I’m going is great. But to be able to see how far I’ve travelled both in terms of kilometres and vertical is amazing as well. The buddy tracking system that is featured on the MODLive is also very cool, because lets face it, I am tired of my hand freezing off while I try to phone my friends on the lift. The jump stats and other data mean not only can you finally PROVE to your friends that you’re faster than them, you can also prove that you’re jumping higher and skiing farther – of course, it would be an understatement to say that I am competitive so maybe that just really appeals to me. The HQ online community allows you to connect with all the other users who are uploading their highlights so you can really get a feel for how you rank among a large sample of skiers. You can also see how your numbers compare on the same runs or check out runs from across the planet and connect with other users.

Follow Eddie and check out his highlights on HQ Community.