HeatSense - Athlete Insights

09/14/2026

Listen to our founder Melissa Fortenberry talk about why she quit her tech career to protect athletes in the heat — and what most parents don't know about heat illness.

As of August 1, every UIL school in Texas is required to monitor We...

09/01/2026

Everybody on that field this week is reading the same WBGT number. They're not having the same practice.

It's been a hard month for programs around the country and the conditions aren't letting up. The job in front of every staff right now is the same job it's always been, done in worse conditions than usual.

A lineman and a receiver in the same session are generating different amounts of heat and shedding it at different rates. Body size, position, workload, conditioning history and hydration all move it.

The NFHS and the Korey Stringer Institute released new guidance this summer recommending linemen be kept out of mile-run testing and post-practice sprints. The heat load those drills put on that group doesn't match what the drill is trying to measure.

A few things that follow from that:

Group your work-to-rest by position and body size instead of running one whistle for everybody.

Watch the back half of a long session harder than the front. Impairment builds over a long session rather than holding steady.

Rotate the athletes carrying the most load out first.

Set your response tiers before practice instead of during it. Enhanced monitoring, then cooling and fluid support, then intensity modification, then rest.

08/28/2026

Fall practice is ramping up in a heat wave that hasn't broken all month across the Southwest and the South.

Your roster is walking into the hottest stretch of the year with the least heat tolerance they'll have all season. Adaptation takes a couple of weeks, and the schedule doesn't wait around for it. That gap between the first practice and a body that has caught up is where most exertional heat events happen.

Texas UIL's WBGT mandate took effect August 1 for outdoor athletics and marching band, and other states are watching how it goes. A WBGT reading is worth having. It describes the field, though, not the athlete standing on it.

A few things worth doing this week:

Treat early conditioning tests as heat exposure and not just fitness data. The test measures fitness. The conditions decide what it costs.

Build your work-to-rest around whoever is struggling, not the roster average.

Get cold fluids in before the session starts instead of only during it. Across published studies, cold drinks are the most effective pre-cooling method measured, averaging roughly a 15% performance improvement.

Check out HeatSense.com to learn more about our solution to deliver individual athlete insights.

08/25/2026

We agree. Heat will be the next 10 years.

Unlike much of sports medicine, there can be no ambiguity: Adverse heat stroke cases and deaths in athletics are considered entirely preventable.

08/05/2026

Team sports get a sideline. Tennis doesn't.

There is no bench to tap when a long match turns hot. If heat strain starts climbing during a tournament, the only way anyone catches it is by watching closely enough, and hoping you're looking at the right moment.

HeatSense changes what "watching closely" means. It reads rising heat strain in real time, so you, or whoever's courtside, can see it building and step in before it costs the match.

Real-time heat strain visibility, for the sports where nobody's standing on the sideline.

See how it works: https://heatsense.com

07/30/2026

HeatSense founder, Melissa Fortenberry, didn't set out to build a wearable sensor company. She set out to answer one question: why is sideline heat guidance built around the weather instead of the athlete standing in front of you?

Coach & AD sat down with her to hear how a rough day in the stands at her son's football game turned into HeatSense, a wearable that tracks core body temperature, skin temperature, and heart rate together so coaches can see how a specific athlete is responding to heat in real time instead of guessing off the forecast.

The University of Alabama signed on this summer as HeatSense's first customer, with sensors going live on the field in August. Her goal: three to five Division I programs by the end of the season.

HeatSense uses wearable sensors to monitor core body temperature and provides real-time data to help monitor heat response and safety.

07/27/2026

Don't make this mistake: treating all your athletes the same during heat training.

❌ Assuming the weather app temp applies equally to every athlete
✅ Tracking individual core temperature response during the same practice

❌ Waiting for athletes to self-report symptoms
✅ Catching elevated heat strain before they feel it

❌ Pulling entire practice when one athlete struggles
✅ Making targeted adjustments for individual athletes who need them

❌ Treating hydration as a one-size-fits-all protocol
✅ Understanding each athlete's actual fluid loss and recovery needs

❌ Guessing whether yesterday's heat session is still affecting today's performance
✅ Seeing cumulative heat load and recovery status in real time

Here's what shifts when you move from general guidelines to individual data: you gain visibility on the performance of all athletes.

You can push athletes who are ready. You can protect athletes who aren't. And you can do both at the same practice without compromising team goals or individual safety.

This is what real-time individual heat monitoring makes possible. Not just safer practices. Smarter ones.

If you're coaching or parenting outdoor athletes training in heat right now, this approach changes everything.

Follow for more ways to make proactive decisions that protect your athletes and support performance.

07/22/2026

Yaaassss

New UIL heat safety rules are changing how Texas teams practice in August, leaving coaches to balance player safety with preparation, logistics and competitive equity.

07/15/2026

Heat pulls your performance down before you ever feel spent. Your pace slips, your power drops off, and most of the time you don't realize it until the session is already slipping away from you.

HeatSense shows you how your body is handling the heat in real time, right on your screen, and puts the same view in your coach's hands, so the performance cost is something you can both see while there's still time to adjust. Sweatproof, simple, built for the conditions you actually train in.

You bring the effort. HeatSense shows you the part you couldn't see.

Learn more at https://heatsense.com

07/09/2026

Texas UIL made WBGT the standard for heat modifications starting on August 1, 2026. It's the right call. The heat index only weighs temperature and humidity. WBGT folds in solar radiation and wind, the two factors that decide how hot the field plays.

While it's more comprehensive, WBGT still gives you one number for everyone standing on the grass. And there is no universal critical core temperature. Same field, same reading, different bodies.

That's not a knock on the mandate. It's the reason a field-level rule can only take you so far. Environmental monitoring tells you what kind of day it is. It can't tell you which athlete is working hardest to keep up. Research on personal monitoring shows that combining core temperature, heart rate, and skin temperature identifies individual heat strain that a field-level index misses.²

So do both. Pull your region's WBGT class and threshold before every session this week. Then keep eyes on the athletes the number can't account for.

Check out full details: https://tinyurl.com/txuilwbgt