DEB and Firstbeat Extend Partnership Through 2021

The German Ice Hockey Federation and Firstbeat Technologies have agreed to extend their current cooperation until the end of 2021.

The leading provider of physiological analytics for sports and well-being, Firstbeat has provided equipment for heart rate measurements and the software to support managing practice since 2005. In that time, the German Ice Hockey Federation men and women national teams, as well as the U20, U18, U18 women’s and U16 national team have benefited from using the equipment and technology.

Practice intensity for players is recorded and controlled in real time using Firstbeat heartrate belts and receivers, and DEB coaching staff use the objective physiological data to control and document the practice at individual and team level.

“Firstbeat is one of the industry-leading partners in the field of internal load data and regeneration management in practice and competition management,” explains Karl Schwarzenbrunner, National Coach Science and Practice, German Ice Hockey Federation.

“The live data allows targeted and immediate intervention in the practice process. In addition, the athlete can be stressed as best as possible through previous heart rate variability measurements. With the integration to Kinexon – and, thus, the merging of internal and external load data – a comprehensive assessment of the athlete’s condition is available and the best possible control of the load is possible.”

Christoph Rottensteiner, Manager Professional Sports Europe adds: “We at Firstbeat are happy and proud to continue this long-standing and successful partnership. The close cooperation and direct feedback from the DEB enables us to set the right course for the future in development and research and, thus, also offer associations at the national level the best possible solutions in the field of athlete monitoring.”

“Given the special challenges that an association faces – e.g. athletes not available daily as with their club, high fluctuation in the respective national teams and courses – we can support this even better with innovative updates of the Firstbeat platform and database. In addition, I am really pleased that the cooperation and exchange between Firstbeat customers from DEL, NHL and DEB has become even more open with regard to player load data in recent years.”

About Firstbeat Technologies:

Firstbeat was founded in 2002 in Jyväskylä, the hub of sport science in Finland. Firstbeat Sports is a single-platform athlete monitoring solution that provides data on training load, intensity, fitness testing, performance readiness, stress, and recovery in one place. Over 23,000 athletes representing over 1,000 teams around the world rely on Firstbeat Sports for their advanced physiologial metrics.