What does the evidence actually say?

SSMT grades the claims sports technology makes, one claim at a time, so coaches and clinicians have something defensible to say when an athlete asks. Every grade is permanent, dated, citable, and carries the specific study that would change it.

1 Supported
8 Partially supported
0 Vendor-only
2 Unevaluated
2 Contradicted
“Accurate heart rate, right from your wrist.”
Partially supported Wearables & Recovery
Accurate for steady cardio in healthy, light-skinned adults — not accurate, full stop.
“See your deep, REM and light sleep every night.”
Partially supported Wearables & Recovery
Directionally useful in aggregate, unreliable for any single night — and the accuracy that is well established is a different measurement from the one being sold.
“Train when your body is ready.”
Partially supported Wearables & Recovery
The supported finding is an efficiency one, not a superiority one.
“Your readiness score tells you when to train hard and when to back off.”
Unevaluated Wearables & Recovery
Never tested, in any design. Currently unevaluable by independent parties.
“Stay in the sweet spot.”
Grade withheld Injury Science
A correction to the source editorial exists (BJSM 2019;53(18):e6) but its text was not retrievable.
“Lab-grade biomechanics from your phone.”
Partially supported Computer Vision
Genuinely good in the sagittal plane; not usable for rotations; and 'from your phone' is the least-evidenced configuration.
“Know your injury risk before it happens.”
Partially supported Biomechanics
Force magnitude yes; the asymmetry number itself does not reproduce.
“Know your injury risk before it happens.”
Contradicted Injury Science
The best available evidence points the other way.
“Fuel smarter.”
Unevaluated Wearables & Recovery
Bordering Partially supported for the narrower claim that CGM tracks glucose trends during exercise.
“Know exactly how fast you lifted.”
Supported Biomechanics
Supported for linear transducers and camera devices. Contradicted for IMU/accelerometer devices.
“Autoregulate every set.”
Partially supported Biomechanics
Equal on strength; small real gains on jump, sprint and change of direction, often at lower volume.
“Recover faster.”
Partially supported Wearables & Recovery
Accurate about how you feel; unsupported about what you can then do.
“Blood flow restriction training can elicit profound increases in muscle size with loads as low as 20% of an individual’s 1RM.”
Partially supported Wearables & Recovery
The mechanism holds where it has been tested. The advertised load and the word "profound" are not what was tested.
Working register. These 13 cards were graded by hand from targeted literature searches, not systematic reviews. Several still carry unresolved verification items, and one grade is withheld entirely. Counts are floors, not censuses — but every number links to a source you can check.

How grading works

Three claim types. Most sports-tech claims are measurement claims wearing practice clothing. A vendor saying “validated to reduce injury risk” is usually asserting P while holding evidence for M. Where a marketed claim spans both, it gets two cards — so the false half cannot ride on the true half.

Seven drift axes. Each compares what a study tested against what the marketing says: Population · Setting · Comparator · Outcome · Magnitude · Reproducibility · Independence. drift · aligned · not assessed.

Verdicts bind to a device class, not a product category. “VBT devices are accurate” is simultaneously true for linear transducers (±0.02 m/s) and false for one IMU (CV 75.8%).

Nothing here says a product does not work. Where no evidence was found, the card says “no independent evidence located as of [date]” — a checkable statement about the search, not an unfalsifiable statement about reality.