Athletic equipment is provided including sensors to monitor the effectiveness and health of the athlete. Contact sensors identify stresses or impacts in real time, and interactively, during the training or competition. Concurrently, a health sensor, obtaining and transmitting indicia corresponding to the physical condition of the athlete (such as heart rate, blood pressure, etc.) can be communicated simultaneously and synchronously with the monitored stress or impact date for use in optimizing athlete performance or monitoring athlete physiology. Such data can be transmitted to a remote location as well. In either case, such information can provide a system for optimizing athlete performance, rather merely tracking historical information. Real time analysis and physiological-performance correlations can be achieved, thereby minimizing the need, or extend of an iterative training regime.