Flexible wearable sensors for sports training: recent advances and future perspectives

• Advanced flexible wearable sensors enable non-invasive, continuous, multidimensional monitoring. • Recent progress in acquisition, sensing, and analysis of four key sport-related signals. • Major challenges include environmental robustness, long-term wearability, and multimodal integration. • Integration of flexible sensors in wearable devices transforms sports training into scientific, data-driven approaches. Modern sports training increasingly demands objective, continuous, and real-time monitoring of athletes’ multidimensional physiological states. Conventional technologies are constrained by invasiveness, susceptibility to motion artifacts, and limited long-term sampling, reducing their applicability in high-performance settings. Recent advances in materials science, micro- and nanofabrication, and artificial intelligence have enabled the development of flexible wearable sensors. This review systematically summarizes the sensing mechanisms, categories of sensing materials, and recent innovations for four typical signal types: biomechanical, electrophysiological, biochemical, and tissue-dynamic signals. The integration of high-performance functional materials with microstructural engineering and composite designs has improved sensitivity, detection limits, and environmental stability. Despite ongoing challenges, including environmental interference, long-term user compliance, real-time signal processing, reliable power supply, and multimodal integration, flexible sensors are rapidly evolving toward highly integrated, intelligent, and adaptive platforms. These technological advances are set to transform sports training from traditional, experience-driven approaches into a fully scientific framework characterized by real-time monitoring, closed-loop feedback, and personalized, performance-optimized interventions.