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Today we have the honor of interviewingTristan Swanwick, the founder of Swanwick, a leading health optimization brand focusing on blue light management.

Swanwick is a health optimization company specializing in blue light management products designed to improve sleep, recovery, and overall well-being. Its flagship sleep glasses filter up to 99% of blue light, helping the body naturally produce melatonin even when users are exposed to artificial lighting from screens, LED lights, or stadium environments. The company also offers Focus and Relax glasses for daytime productivity and evening wind-down, as well as a growing range of circadian-friendly lighting products.

Swanwick's key competitive advantage is its strong scientific foundation, with its products validated through independent, third-party, peer-reviewed research demonstrating improvements in sleep quality and sleep onset.

Trusted by professional sports teams across the NBA, NFL, NHL, and Premier League, Swanwick's solutions provide athletes, coaches, and performance staff with a simple, non-invasive, and cost-effective way to support recovery, manage jet lag, reduce the impact of artificial light exposure, and optimize performance.

Product Portfolio Summary

Swanwick offers a range of products designed to optimize circadian health by managing blue light exposure throughout the day. Its portfolio includes Sleep, Relax, and Focus blue light blocking glasses, as well as a growing line of circadian-friendly lighting products that work together to improve sleep quality, recovery, daytime focus, and overall well-being.

• Sleep Glasses – Improve sleep quality, recovery, and melatonin production by blocking up to 99% of blue light.

• Focus Glasses – Support daytime productivity and reduce digital eye strain.

• Relax Glasses – Promote evening wind-down and prepare the body for restful sleep.

• Circadian Lighting (in development) – Lighting solutions that work alongside the glasses to optimize circadian health and overall well-being

Source: Swanwick, 2026

The Swanwick Circadian Regulation System is a 24-hour approach to managing light exposure in alignment with the body's natural circadian rhythm. By using different eyewear products at specific times of the day, the system aims to enhance daytime focus, promote evening relaxation, support natural melatonin production before bed, and improve sleep quality and recovery.

Swanwick Circadian Regulation System

• Focus Swannies (Morning to Afternoon) – Designed for productive hours during the day. They help reduce digital eye strain while maintaining a healthy balance of light exposure during working hours.

• Relax Swannies (Evening) – Worn after approximately 6:00 PM to reduce blue light exposure and help the body naturally transition into a relaxed state before bedtime.

• Sleep Swannies (1.5 Hours Before Bed) – Worn about 90 minutes before sleep to block blue light, allowing melatonin production to begin naturally and preparing the body for restful sleep.

• During Sleep – The goal is to achieve deep, restorative sleep in a cool, dark room. If users need to wake during the night, Swanwick recommends using anti-blue lighting to avoid disrupting melatonin production.

• Morning (Around 6:00 AM) – Melatonin production naturally stops, and exposure to natural sunlight helps reinforce the body’s circadian rhythm and supports alertness for the day ahead.

Overall, the system promotes a 24-hour approach to circadian health, using different products and lighting strategies at specific times of day to optimize focus, relaxation, sleep quality, and recovery.

Source: Swanwick, 2026

Sleep Benefits Validated by Scientific Research

Swanwick highlights research demonstrating that its blue light blocking glasses can significantly improve sleep quality and recovery. According to the infographic, users reported the following benefits after wearing the glasses before bedtime:

• 73% improvement in overall sleep quality

• 24% less time awake during the night

• 37% increase in waking up feeling more rested

• 14% more time spent in deep sleep

These findings support Swanwick’s position that reducing blue light exposure before bed can enhance sleep quality, promote deeper restorative sleep, and improve next-day recovery and well-being.

Source: Swanwick, 2026

Impact of Swanwick Blue Light Blocking Glasses on Athletes and teams

• Improves sleep quality and recovery by filtering up to 99% of blue light, allowing the body to naturally produce melatonin and supporting deeper, more restorative sleep.

• Helps athletes recover after evening competitions by reducing the negative effects of bright stadium lighting, screens, and other artificial light sources that can delay sleep.

• Supports travel and jet lag management, helping athletes adjust more quickly during long-haul trips and maintain better sleep routines.

• Contributes to incremental performance gains, as better sleep and recovery improve physical, mental, and cognitive readiness for training and competition.

• Backed by independent scientific research, giving professional sports organizations confidence that the glasses can meaningfully improve sleep quality and sleep onset.

Trusted by Elite Teams and Athletes

As shown in the table below, trusted by 20 professional sports teams across the NBA, NFL, NHL, and Premier League, Swanwick’s solutions provide athletes, coaches, and performance staff with a simple, non-invasive, and cost-effective way to support recovery, manage jet lag, reduce the impact of artificial light exposure, and optimize performance.

Source: Swanwick, 2026

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During our interview with Tristan Swanwick, we discussed how Swanwick has grown from a blue light blocking glasses company into a broader circadian health brand focused on improving sleep, recovery, and performance. Tristan explained the science behind managing blue light exposure, the growing adoption of Swanwick products by professional sports organizations, and the role of quality sleep in helping athletes recover, manage jet lag, and achieve incremental performance gains.

He also shared the company's competitive advantages, including its peer-reviewed scientific validation, and outlined Swanwick's plans to expand its product portfolio with circadian-friendly lighting solutions over the next 12 months.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Tristan located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Tristan:

Q1. Tell me about your background.

“Before I tried my hand at entrepreneurship, I was a longtime newspaper journalist. Journalism taught me to be skeptical, ask questions, challenge claims, verify facts, and build relationships with people from all walks of life. You also become very curious and learn how to understand complex topics and communicate them clearly. It turned out to be excellent preparation for building a business.”

“Back in 2015, my brother, who was living in Los Angeles and becoming deeply involved in the early biohacking movement, approached me with the idea of starting a blue light blocking glasses company. People were already experimenting with crude solutions, and we thought we could build something specifically designed for the purpose that was also comfortable and stylish. That’s how Swanwick was born.”

Q2. Tell me about your company and product.

“The idea behind our product is simple. Artificial light, especially blue light, delays the body’s natural production of melatonin. If you can filter out those blue wavelengths, you give your body the opportunity to produce melatonin naturally, so when you go to bed your body is actually ready for sleep instead of trying to catch up.”

“Our sleep glasses filter out up to 99% of blue light. That means people can still use their phones, computers and modern LED lighting while significantly reducing the impact those lights have on their sleep. The goal is to let people enjoy modern technology without sacrificing recovery.”

“When we launched in 2015, the idea was to build a pair of glasses specifically designed for blue light management rather than having people wear ski goggles or safety glasses. We wanted something that worked, but that people would also feel comfortable wearing every night.”

Q3. What are the main use cases you are addressing in elite sports?

“Elite sport is all about incremental gains. Sports scientists have realized that it’s not just about what happens on the field or the pitch—it’s also about the rest and recovery. Sleep is fundamental to recovery because that’s when the body recovers physically, mentally and cognitively.”

“Athletes probably have it worse than anyone. They’re playing under extremely bright stadium lights, travelling on planes, staying in hotels, looking at their phones after games and being exposed to artificial light until midnight. We can’t change the schedule or eliminate artificial light, but we can help offset those challenges so they’re in a much better position to sleep and recover.”

“Jet lag has become another major use case. We’ve supplied entire travelling parties, including Tottenham Hotspur, with sleep glasses to help players manage long-haul travel between London and Australia, where jet lag can be a huge performance factor.”

“It’s not just athletes anymore. Coaching staffs, video analysts and data analysts spend countless hours in front of screens, so we’re increasingly providing products for them as well to help reduce screen fatigue and improve sleep.”

Q4. What are the benefits for teams to use your product?

“Our role is to help mitigate one of the biggest recovery challenges modern athletes face: constant exposure to artificial light after evening competition. If players can simply put on a pair of glasses after the game and keep them on until bed, they’re giving themselves a much better opportunity to sleep well and recover.”

“At the elite level, teams are open to trying anything that’s going to give them some sort of edge. Even a one or two percent improvement matters, and sleep is one of the few areas where relatively small interventions can potentially have a meaningful impact.”

Q5. What are your thoughts on the state of the blue light blocking glasses market and what are your competitive advantages? What do the teams like the most about your glasses?

“The market has become quite saturated. Unfortunately, there’s also a lot of misinformation, disinformation and wild marketing claims. There are products with completely clear lenses claiming they’ll improve sleep, but the science simply doesn’t support that.”

“One of the first things sports scientists tell us is, ‘The reason we came to you is because you actually have science, data and validation to back up what you claim.’ That’s what really separates us from many of the other products in the market.”

“We’ve gone above and beyond by validating our products through independent, third-party, peer-reviewed research. Studies showed people wearing our glasses got to sleep faster and slept better, and another independent study ranked our glasses as the top performer among 50 brands tested.”

“The consistent feedback we receive from teams is that they trust the science behind the product. These are billion-dollar organizations investing in athletes worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, so they want confidence that there’s real evidence supporting anything they introduce.”

Q6. Tell me about your business model.

“We’re still a direct-to-consumer business. Customers can buy through Amazon, but we generally prefer they come through our website because it allows us to provide the best customer service, answer questions directly and make sure people are getting the right product for their needs. We also work directly with professional sports organizations and their performance staffs.”

Q7. Any recommendations to teams who are looking to use blue light blocking glasses?

“I’d recommend starting with your most open-minded and influential players. Let them experience the product first and, if they like it, adoption tends to spread naturally throughout the team. That’s been the most successful approach we’ve seen across professional sports.”

“Blue light is a real issue, particularly for athletes, and you can’t control the environment all the time. Putting on a pair of glasses at the right time is a simple, low-cost solution to what is actually a very significant recovery challenge.”

Q8. What are your plans for the next 12 months?

“We have a clear roadmap of new products. We’ve expanded our lens categories to support people throughout the day and evening, and we’re now building a family of circadian-friendly lighting products because controlling the lighting environment is the other important piece of the puzzle.”

“You can filter light by wearing glasses, but you can also control the lighting around you. That’s why we’re expanding into lighting products that change throughout the day to better match your natural circadian rhythm.”

Q9. Best way to reach out to you?

“If you’re in the sports world, just reach out to us through our support email and let us know you’re interested. It’ll get passed directly to me, and I’m always happy to jump on a call, answer questions, provide recommendations or send samples so teams can try the products themselves.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing a group of NCAA sports performance experts.

• Dr. John DeWitt, Director of applied sports science in the athletic department and a faculty member, Rice University (NCAA team).

• Paul Silvestri, Sr director of sports health and performance, University of Florida football (NCAA team).

• Drew Lukes, Senior PT at Duke University and the head of sports science, Duke university’s women soccer team (NCAA team).

• Elva Salcido, Director of Sports Medicine and Head Athletic Trainer, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (NCAA Team).

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the following questions and topics:

• Heat Acclimatization: During training camp, what is your approach to helping athletes adapt to the heat? Which cooling and hydration strategies have you found to be the most effective?

• Practice Progression: How do you manage the ramp-up period during training camp? What factors guide the progression of practice intensity, tempo, and workload?

• Recovery Optimization: What are your key recovery strategies during training camp to ensure athletes are prepared to perform from one day to the next?

• Nutrition: How do you optimize nutrition during training camp? What are the biggest nutritional challenges you encounter, and how do you address them?

• Working with Agents: How do you approach communication and collaboration with player agents, particularly regarding logistics, documentation, and maintaining productive relationships?

• Interdisciplinary Communication: Successful training camps require collaboration across multiple departments. How do you optimize communication and decision-making among the medical staff, performance team, coaching staff, front office, and general manager to keep everyone aligned?

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

You can leave a comment by clicking on the button below:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with them:

1. Heat Acclimatization

Elva Salcido (UNLV)

“At UNLV, we definitely try to individualize our approach rather than making blanket recommendations. Living in Las Vegas, heat is a daily challenge for us, so it’s important to distinguish prevention from emergency management because those are two completely different situations. We have conversations with coaches ahead of time about predicted wet bulb globe temperatures, practice schedules, shade opportunities, cooling strategies, and making sure cold-water immersion is always available if an emergency occurs.”

“One of the things I always say is, ‘Assess, don’t guess.’ Don’t assume you know why an athlete is cramping or struggling with the heat. We’ll use blood work, urine specific gravity testing, and work closely with nutrition to determine what’s actually causing the issue before deciding on an intervention.”

Paul Silvestri (University of Florida)

“We take a very individualized approach. Every football player completes sweat testing before training camp, and we build individualized hydration plans based on exactly what they’re losing during practice. We also use saliva testing, body-weight monitoring, refrigerated cooling trucks, cool benches, and multiple hydration strategies. The biggest priority is making sure athletes are acclimated to the heat before camp starts. If they’ve been training indoors all summer, training camp becomes a shock to the system.”

Dr. John DeWitt (Rice University)

“We use a phased approach to heat exposure. Football progresses from no pads, to shoulder pads, to full equipment while mandatory hydration testing before every outdoor session helps us identify athletes who may need additional hydration or closer monitoring before practice even begins. Much of what we do is preventative—we’re trying to stay ahead of athletes becoming overheated.”

Heat Acclimatization - Key Recommendations for Teams

• Individualize hydration using sweat testing, hydration testing, and body-weight monitoring.

• Separate heat illness prevention from emergency response protocols.

• Gradually acclimate athletes before training camp through phased exposure.

• Monitor environmental conditions (WBGT) and adjust practice schedules accordingly.

• Educate coaches and athletes before camp begins.

• Use objective testing instead of assuming dehydration or cramping causes.

• Practice Progression

Drew Lukes (Duke University)

“From the sports science side, it’s really about having a plan. We know when our first matches and scrimmages are, and then we reverse engineer the entire training camp from there. The challenge is balancing the workload with everything coaches need to accomplish technically and tactically. Ultimately, you can build the most meticulous plan in the world, but if everyone isn’t bought into it, the plan becomes meaningless.”

Elva Salcido

“Technology and sports science have significantly helped sports medicine communicate with coaches because now we have objective data to support what we’re seeing clinically. We can connect workload with fatigue, injury trends, or heat stress. Everyone may complete the same practice, but each athlete responds differently. That’s why we rely on tools like RPE to better understand the individual athlete.”

Paul Silvestri

“You have to prepare athletes during the summer for what training camp and competition are going to demand. If you’re expecting players to reach game-level speeds during camp, they need exposure to those speeds beforehand. If the first time they’re running that fast is training camp, that’s when soft tissue injuries happen.”

Dr. John DeWitt

“Sometimes coaches have to realize that an early scrimmage is simply another practice against another team. It shouldn’t cause you to abandon your progression plan. Fortunately, our athletes have already been preparing for weeks before preseason officially begins, so the ramp-up happens before the first official practice.”

Practice Progression - Key Recommendations for Teams

• Reverse engineer workload from the first competition.

• Build coach buy-in before camp starts.

• Prepare athletes during the summer for competition demands.

• Combine GPS/workload data with subjective wellness measures like RPE.

• Individualize progression for returning or rehabbing athletes.

• Don’t let early scrimmages disrupt long-term planning.

• Recovery Optimization

Paul Silvestri

“There are a ton of recovery modalities available today, but there are no better modalities than hydration, nutrition, and sleep. If those three things aren’t dialed in, athletes aren’t going to recover regardless of how many recovery tools you own. The hardest one to manage is sleep because it’s the only thing we can’t directly monitor once athletes leave the building.”

Drew Lukes

“I wholeheartedly agree. It’s not the coolest or the sexiest thing, but it’s the most effective. Sleep continues to be a struggle, especially with college athletes.”

Elva Salcido

“We’ve tried to educate athletes by gamifying recovery. Different recovery behaviors earn points, helping athletes understand that a protein shake shortly after practice may provide a greater recovery benefit than immediately getting a massage. The goal is to educate athletes on why they’re using each recovery strategy instead of simply following trends.”

Dr. John DeWitt

“There’s not one recovery modality that works for everyone. Some athletes prefer cold tubs, others massage, others naps. The important part is giving athletes options and encouraging them to consistently do something that prepares them for the next day.”

Recovery Optimization - Key Recommendations for Teams

• Prioritize sleep, hydration, and nutrition above recovery technologies.

• Individualize recovery modalities.

• Educate athletes about why recovery matters.

• Use recovery technology to complement—not replace—the fundamentals.

• Consider gamification to improve athlete adherence.

• Nutrition

Dr. John DeWitt

“The key is making nutrition available. The easier it is for athletes to grab quality food, the better chance they’ll actually eat it. We spend a lot of time educating athletes to build balanced meals, but we also have to coordinate internally because sometimes nutrition challenges are really inventory and communication challenges.”

Paul Silvestri

“Our nutrition staff are the experts, and that’s where the education should come from. There’s so much nutrition information available today that everyone has an opinion. At the end of the day, athletes need enough calories during training camp. If you’re forcing foods they won’t eat, they’ll under-fuel, lose body weight, and create bigger problems.”

Nutrition - Key Recommendations for Teams

• Make quality nutrition convenient.

• Let sports dietitians lead education.

• Prioritize calorie intake during camp.

• Individualize fueling strategies.

• Coordinate nutrition recommendations across departments.

• Working with Agents

Paul Silvestri

“Agents have a job to do just like we do. They’re trying to do what’s best for their athlete, and we’re trying to do what’s best for the athlete too. The key is maintaining open communication instead of becoming adversarial. Rather than saying ‘no,’ let’s talk through the options and build a relationship.”

Elva Salcido

“We’re focused on educating student-athletes about HIPAA, medical release forms, and what information they want shared with their agents. Sometimes agents are very involved and sometimes they’re not, but our goal is maintaining professionalism while making sure the athlete feels supported throughout the process.”

Working with Agents - Key Recommendations for Teams

• Build relationships—not conflicts—with agents.

• Communicate openly and transparently.

• Educate athletes on privacy and consent.

• Keep the athlete’s interests at the center of every discussion.

• Interdisciplinary Communication

Dr. John DeWitt

“The student-athlete should be at the center of all these groups. If nutrition, medical, strength and conditioning, mental health, and coaching aren’t talking to each other, the athlete becomes the integrator—and that’s a problem. Weekly meetings where everyone reviews each athlete help keep every department aligned.”

Drew Lukes

“This is probably the most challenging part of working in high-performance sport. The amount of communication required every day is enormous. If you can do interdisciplinary communication well, you have a good chance of being successful, but it requires constant intentionality.”

Paul Silvestri

“During training camp we meet every day—nutrition, strength, sports medicine—and review workload, hydration, body weight, and performance data before meeting with the coaches. That way we present one unified message to the coaching staff.”

Elva Salcido

“One of my mentors always said it’s about integration, not collaboration. Collaboration means people want to work together. Integration means building systems with shared reports, shared spreadsheets, alerts, and workflows that truly connect departments. That’s what ultimately improves efficiency and athlete care.”

Interdisciplinary Communication - Key Recommendations for Teams

• Put the student-athlete at the center of every decision.

• Hold regular interdisciplinary meetings.

• Share data across departments rather than operating in silos.

• Present coaches with one unified message.

• Build integrated systems—not just collaborative relationships.

• Standardize communication through shared dashboards, reports, and alerts.

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This week we have the honor to interview again a group of sports performance executives to talk about the latest trends in the world of sports performance and rehabilitation.

• Darcy Norman, the director of performance, Chicago Fire FC (MLS).

• Michael Messer, the head of rehabilitation, Nashville SC (MLS).

• Felix Proessl, Sr. Director of Sport and Data Science at the Colorado Rapids (MLS)

• Karam Al Hamdani , the director of sports medicine and head athletic therapist at CF Montreal (MLS).

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• Heat Adaptation & Cooling Strategies: As matches are increasingly played in hot and humid conditions, what are the most effective heat adaptation and cooling strategies you’ve seen or implemented? Which interventions have the strongest scientific evidence behind them, and which are more hype than reality?

• Hydration Breaks in MLS: MLS includes hydration breaks during matches. From a sports science perspective, how much do these breaks actually help with player performance, recovery, and safety? Beyond hydration, do they provide meaningful opportunities for coaches to reset tactics or influence the flow of the game?

• Cardiovascular Health in Soccer: Player cardiac health has become an increasingly important topic. How should clubs approach cardiovascular screening and heart rate monitoring throughout the season? With initiatives like MLS’s partnership with Athletic Heart, where do you see the biggest opportunities to improve player safety and performance?

• Wearable Technology & GPS Limitations: GPS systems have become standard across professional soccer, but what are their biggest limitations? Where do they fall short when it comes to understanding player workload, fatigue, or readiness?

• The Next Generation of Performance Metrics: New technologies—including solutions from companies like ADI—are aiming to provide more objective measures of performance and physiological stress. What gaps do these technologies address, and how do you see them complementing or replacing traditional GPS-based metrics over the next few years?

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Darcy, Karam, Felix and Michael:

Q1. Heat Adaptation & Cooling Strategies

Darcy Norman

“It’s really about building up your core temperature and your skin temperature so the body adapts to performing in those conditions. In team sports it’s much more challenging than in individual sports because of all the variables you have to manage. Teams that train in hot, humid environments naturally adapt, while clubs in cooler climates have to be much more intentional about creating those adaptation opportunities.”

“The preparation to play in the heat is all about cooling strategies. You’re trying to get your core temperature as low as possible before kickoff so you delay that heating effect. That could be cooling vests, cold plunges, slushies, cold towels on the neck, or cooling again at halftime. There isn’t one magic solution—it’s about combining several strategies.”

Mike Messer

“Ultimately, what’s most successful is what the player will actually do. We’re seeing much more individualization within the team environment. It’s about finding what a player actually likes—whether it’s a particular electrolyte drink, cooling strategy or recovery method—because the best intervention is the one they’ll consistently adopt.”

Felix Proessl

“There’s a tremendous amount of variability in how much athletes sweat—not just the volume, but the sodium concentration as well. Understanding each athlete’s sweat profile allows you to individualize hydration and electrolyte replacement rather than treating every player the same.”

Karam Al Hamdani

“We’re not reinventing the wheel. We take a strategic approach. Once the temperature reaches a certain threshold, our pre-cooling protocol automatically starts. The nutritionist prepares the slushies, the players know exactly what they’re expected to do, and because we practice it consistently in training, it becomes very easy to implement on match day.”

Karam Al Hamdani (On the use of Pickle Juice)

“There’s really no point taking pickle juice at halftime. You want to take it when you actually feel a cramp coming on. The science suggests it’s the vinegar that creates the sensory response, so timing is important if you’re hoping to get the benefit.”

Q2. Hydration Breaks in MLS

Darcy Norman

“Any time you can take a break from being physically active, it helps recharge your systems. It gives players an opportunity to rehydrate, refuel, recover, and reset mentally and tactically. The flip side is that if your team has momentum, it can interrupt that flow, so it’s something every team has to prepare for.”

Felix Proessl

“We’ve seen momentum shifts after hydration breaks, particularly at the World Cup, where teams have clearly used those moments to make tactical adjustments. From a sports science perspective, we also know that even as little as two percent dehydration reduces performance, so from an athlete’s perspective those breaks are only beneficial.”

Karam Al Hamdani

“Anything above about two percent dehydration starts reducing power output. For a striker who relies on explosive sprinting, that can literally be the difference between getting to the ball first or missing the opportunity entirely. That’s why hydration breaks are so important.”

Mike Messer

“Our coaches definitely appreciate the opportunity to make quick interventions. Maybe it’s not the entire team listening, but if there are two or three players who need a small tactical adjustment, it’s much easier than trying to shout instructions across the field.”

Q3. Cardiovascular Health in Soccer

Karam Al Hamdani

“The MLS has done a phenomenal job with its partnership with Athletic Heart. The league has created a very stringent decision tree that clubs have to follow before a player can be cleared. It starts with an ECG, progresses to echocardiograms if necessary, and if anything remains abnormal, additional testing is required before participation.”

“Early recognition, being prepared and practicing emergency scenarios are just as important as screening. We practice these situations regularly because the more you rehearse them, the easier it becomes if you’re ever faced with a real-life cardiac emergency.”

Darcy Norman

“Everybody would love better monitoring technology because we all want more consistent ways to measure internal load and heart rate during training. If there were better technology that worked reliably in the soccer environment, it could really help us monitor players and potentially identify issues earlier.”

Felix Proessl

“Screening is by far the most helpful way of approaching this right now. Ideally we’d have better in-training monitoring methods, but until that technology exists, continuing to improve screening protocols is the best way to evolve player safety.”

Q4. Wearable Technology & GPS Limitations

Felix Proessl

“GPS has become so common in our sport that we’re starting to mistake quantitative information for qualitative conclusions. A player might accumulate 800 meters of high-speed running, but that could come from pressing actions, recovery runs or even goal celebrations. Without context, those numbers can mean completely different things.”

Darcy Norman

“GPS is really just a proxy for work. It’s not the full picture because there are a lot of things happening that aren’t being measured. Sometimes we start treating the numbers as gospel and making hard decisions based solely on those metrics, when in reality we need to remember they’re only one piece of the puzzle.”

“Linking the mechanical workload from GPS directly to video gives you a much more holistic picture. You can actually see why a player produced a certain workload instead of just looking at a number, and that context makes much better decisions possible.”

Mike Messer

“From a rehabilitation standpoint, GPS is excellent because it gives us targets to work toward. But it’s not just about hitting a number—it’s about how the player reaches that number. We also need to better connect external load with internal load if we’re going to fully understand readiness and recovery.”

Q5. The Next Generation of Performance Metrics

Darcy Norman

“ADI is basically a better calculator of work. It takes the positional data from GPS or video and recalculates it to better account for changes of direction as well as changes in speed, giving us a more accurate picture of the mechanical work players are actually performing.”

“For me, it’s all about connecting power from the gym to the pitch. We now have measures of power in the weight room, sprint testing, force plates and on-field movement. The challenge is connecting all those pieces so we understand performance as one complete system rather than isolated metrics.”

“What question are we actually trying to answer? Go find the technology that measures that. Collecting data simply for the sake of collecting data—I’m out. There’s already more than enough information, so it’s about choosing the right technology for the right problem.”

Felix Proessl

“The technology that excites me most isn’t necessarily technology that generates more data—it’s technology that provides context. Understanding what type of runs players make, where they occur and why they occur is much more informative than simply knowing how many meters they covered.”

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This week we had the honor to interview again Dr. Ron Dick, associate professor of sports marketing at Duquesne University in the school of business. Ron also worked for 20 years in sports, including 15 years in the NBA with the Sixers and the Nets, and then five years in the NCAA.

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• MLB All Star game,

• MLB: second half of season, who win, why a lock out. Looming strike.

• NFL training camps open.

• College football: who is favorite, what is 5 in 5 years rule.

• NBA draft and trades, NBA Summer League.

• 2026 Soccer World Cup: FIFA to make $13B from the 2026 World Cup. Controversies

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ron located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Ron:

Q1. MLB All-Star Game

“Philadelphia did a great job handling the draft and also handling the All-Star Game, the Home Run Contest, the Future Game—everything they did.

Philadelphia really showcased itself well.” He also highlighted one of the biggest stories from the festivities: “Jordan Walker won the Home Run Contest and the $1 million prize. His salary this year is just under $800,000, so he actually made more money winning the Home Run Contest than he’ll make playing potentially 162 games this season.”

Q2. MLB: Second Half of the Season, Playoff Race & Looming Lockout

“As we turn the page to the second half, it’s really hard to make the playoffs in the National League. We have eight teams at .500 or better, with the Dodgers, Brewers and Atlanta leading, while the Cubs, Phillies, Miami, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Arizona, San Diego and Washington are all fighting for those final playoff spots.”

Looking beyond this season, Dr. Dick warned of major labor issues: “We have a lockout looming. The players do not want a salary cap—they will not sign anything that has one. The owners will not sign anything that doesn’t have one. I don’t know that we’re going to have a season come spring training.”

He added, “The owners also want to reduce the draft from 20 rounds to 12 and eliminate drafting high school players. The players want a salary floor but they do not want a salary ceiling. Player service-time manipulation continues to frustrate players, so we’ve definitely got a major problem looming.”

Q3. NFL Training Camps Open

“Training camps begin July 28 for most NFL teams.”

Dr. Dick also pointed to the NFL’s growing global footprint: “We now have 10 countries hosting NFL regular-season games. Germany gets its first regular-season game, Australia gets its first, and for the first time the Steelers and Saints will play a regular-season game in Paris. The Eagles will also play Jacksonville in London. The NFL continues expanding internationally in a very significant way.”

He also noted the league’s soaring franchise values: “The Seattle Seahawks just sold for nearly $9.7 billion. It’s safe to say virtually every NFL franchise is worth $10 billion or will be shortly.”

Q4. College Football: Favorites & the New “5-in-5” Rule

“Ohio State is my preseason No. 1, followed by Texas, Notre Dame, Oregon and Georgia.”

Beyond the rankings, Dr. Dick believes the sport’s biggest development is the new eligibility rule: “The ‘five-and-five’ rule is a wonderful new rule. From graduation—or your 19th birthday—you have five years to play. There’s no more redshirting. If you get injured, you lose that year. I think it’s a wonderful idea. No more 27- or 28-year-old quarterbacks playing against 18-year-olds. It just doesn’t make sense.” He also observed the continued financial arms race in college athletics: “The money just keeps growing.”

Q5. NBA Draft, Trades & Summer League

“For LeBron, I’d narrow it down to four destinations: Golden State, Cleveland, Miami and Philadelphia. He wants to get on a dream team, and I think the Sixers might be the way to go.”

On Victor Wembanyama, Dr. Dick praised his decision to prioritize winning: “Wemby didn’t sign the Supermax. He saved the Spurs about $50 million by taking the max instead. It reminds me of Tom Brady taking less so the Patriots could build a better roster around him.”

He also contrasted the NBA’s labor relations with MLB’s: “The NBA has Basketball Related Income (BRI), where 51% of league revenues go to player salaries. Grow the revenues and the players get paid. MLB could learn a lot from the NBA because they seem to have much better harmony with their players.”

Regarding the surprising Jaylen Brown trade, he added: “It hasn’t bled out yet, but there has to be something personal between the coach, GM or owner. Hall of Fame-caliber players don’t usually get moved unless something significant is happening behind the scenes.”

Q6. 2026 FIFA World Cup: Record Revenue & Controversies

“FIFA has been a huge success. Stadiums have been running at about 98% capacity. Everyone talked beforehand about expensive ticket prices, but the market found its level, prices adjusted and fans showed up.”

He added that the commercial performance has been unprecedented: “The television ratings were through the roof, especially in Spain, and they shattered U.S. television records as well. The tournament generated more television and ticket revenue than ever before, surpassing even the 1994 World Cup.”

On controversies, Dr. Dick noted FIFA’s strict commercial policies: “If you don’t pay FIFA, they don’t acknowledge you. They wouldn’t call it AT&T Stadium—they simply called it Dallas Stadium.”

Addressing the political controversy involving the U.S. team, he said, “Any time politics collide with sports, we have a problem.” Referring to the overturned red card against the United States, he added, “I thought the red card was a little harsh, but once it was reversed, it got everybody fired up. In the end, Belgium won fair and square, 4-1.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Bryce Murphy, the Director of performance science and innovation, at the IMG academy, a premier sports-focused boarding school and training institution in Florida that combines college-preparatory academics with elite athletic development across multiple sports. IMG Academy also focuses on student lifestyle with leadership and character development.

Bryce Murphy is the Director of Performance Science and Innovation at IMG Academy in Florida, where he leads a team of five performance scientists, two performance analysts, and one PhD student supporting roughly 1,700 student-athletes across 12 sports. His path into sports science was nonlinear: he began college on an academic scholarship studying athletic training, pivoted to pre-med/pre-physical therapy, and ultimately found his calling in strength and conditioning, earning his CSCS and working as a personal trainer. A move to Minnesota led him into coaching, including a stint with Minnesota United in the NPSL and being named Minnesota’s competitive boys’ soccer coach of the year in 2018, while he served as a teaching assistant and pursued sports science research at the University of Minnesota under mentors including Tyler Bosch and Cal Dietz.

Pictures: Bryce Murphy with soccer legend Thierry Henry (Left) and Mo Wagner (Orlando Magic/NBA, right).

He then completed a fellowship with US Ski and Snowboard in Park City, Utah, working alongside biomechanist Bill Sands, before joining the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s performance team to help build out the early version of what became the Athlete360 monitoring system. From there, he spent three seasons as an applied sports scientist with the Orlando Magic, taking on additional strength and rehab coaching responsibilities at various points, before moving to IMG Academy to help build out its athlete management system. He stepped into his current director-level role a little over a year ago.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Bryce located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Bryce:

Q1 – His Career journey:“I’ve never been afraid to pivot, and I’ve always been really curious.”“I took a course in strength and conditioning my senior year of undergrad, and I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do — I want to train athletes.’”On his mentor in Minnesota: “He told me, ‘You need to learn how to code. You need to take all these biostatistics courses.’”On building the first athlete-monitoring systems for Team USA: “It was really just the three of us typing away in that office, piecing it together with Tableau and R scripts.”On getting the call that led to the Orlando Magic job: “Dave Tenney said to me, ‘I talked to two different people, and they both recommended you.’ We chatted for about 30 minutes, and then he asked when I could come down to Orlando for an interview.”

Q2 – His Current role at IMG Academy:“There’s no typical day, given the scale of this place — we have 12 sports now, more than 80 teams, roughly 1,700 student-athletes, and about 150 to 200 coaches.”“My team has five performance scientists, two performance analysts, and one PhD student. Together, that’s our Performance Science and Innovation Group.”“You don’t necessarily learn leadership skills in grad school — you have to go seek them out.”

Q3 – His Athlete development philosophy:“There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. It’s about asking the right question and implementing the right plan at the right time for that athlete.”“We’ve broken it down into roughly five stages an athlete can fit into, and we build their environment around learning optimally at that stage.”“The challenge can’t be too easy, but it can’t be too hard either, or the athlete gets discouraged. Finding that fine line is the goal.”

Q4 – Innovation and technology:“AI is a key unlock for everyone, in any field — the ability to build rapidly at scale.”“If you’d told me four years ago that I could describe what I wanted to an LLM and it would build it for me, I’d have said you were crazy.”“It’s the old adage: garbage in, garbage out. We’re revamping our standard operating procedures to make sure our data is clean before it ever reaches our AI models.”“At our scale, it’s nearly impossible for a human to track everything — but these systems unlock the ability to make better decisions.”

Q5 – Integrating training, rehab, nutrition, and mental prep:“It starts with the human loop — every discipline is making decisions they believe are best for their group.”“We run what we call the pod model: every week, leaders from each discipline come together, guided by shared dashboards, so everyone can see what everyone else is working on. There’s no lack of transparency.”

Q6 – Common mistakes young athletes make:“There are two main mistakes: the first is no recovery — not leaving space for your mind and body to adapt.”“The second is reps without purpose. Taking a thousand uncontested shots doesn’t help once you already have the technique down — there’s no challenge, no defender, nothing forcing you to adapt.”“Skipping recovery and doing reps without purpose — it’s almost a waste of time.”

Q7 – The future of sports science:“The age of information is coming to an end. Everything will live on the computer and be readily available.”“The traits to cultivate are open-mindedness, curiosity, elite communication, and honesty — with yourself and with the people you’re working with.”“Once we know everything about an athlete, the real question becomes: how do you build the habits that create consistency over time?”“Computers will know everything about your athletes. The real differentiator will be EQ — how well you build relationships and communicate.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Victor Bergonzoli, ceo of SportsEdTV, a leading global sports education platform that provides free, world-class instructional videos, expert-led blogs, and coaching resources to athletes, coaches, and parents.

SportsEdTV is a global sports education platform that provides free, expert-led instructional content for athletes, coaches, parents, and sports enthusiasts. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Miami, the company offers video and written instruction across more than 30 sports, covering technical skills, tactics, strength and conditioning, nutrition, and mental performance. The platform features coaching from world-class athletes and coaches, many with Olympic, world championship, and professional-level experience. SportsEdTV reports more than 1 million social media followers, content consumption in every country worldwide, and partnerships with organizations such as FIBA China and SHAPE America. Its growing library includes thousands of instructional videos and articles designed to make high-quality sports education accessible to participants of all ages and skill levels.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Victor located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Victor:

Q1. Can you tell us a little about your background and the experiences that led you to create SportsEdTV?

From Elite Performance to Mass Participation

“My first venture was Dartfish. We started that in 1999, and as you know, Dartfish has been very active in video analysis and video solutions for teams and Olympic programs. Over seventy percent of the medals won were won by people using Dartfish. In 2017, I was approached by my partner, Robert Mazzucchelli, and eventually became CEO in 2020. The reason I saw the progression from Dartfish to SportsEdTV was that I wanted to help the masses. I went from helping teams at the very high level—college, Olympic athletes, some high schools—to helping everybody: coaches, parents, and athletes. That’s the switch I made.”

A Mission Bigger Than Winning Medals

“I was helping Olympians win medals. What I really wanted to do next was help people live healthier lives. Sports education shouldn’t only be available to elite athletes. It should be available to every coach, every parent, and every athlete who wants to improve.”

Q2. What gap in the market were you trying to solve when you launched SportsEdTV, and what is the core mission of the company today?

The Lacrosse Story That Started It All

“My son came to me when he was six years old and said, ‘Dad, I want to play lacrosse.’ I’m from Switzerland—what do I know about lacrosse? So I went online looking for videos because I wanted to work with him in the backyard. I found videos with millions of views and sent them to his coach. The coach said, ‘Don’t do that. That’s really bad instruction.’ I was shocked. There were millions of views, but no way to know whether the content was actually good. That was the moment I realized there was a real problem.”

Creating a Trusted Brand in Sports Instruction

“When we started SportsEdTV, everybody with a phone had become an expert. You had people with millions of followers and people with five followers, but nobody knew what content was actually good. What surprised us most was that there wasn’t a single trusted brand leading the sports instruction market. We looked at that and said, ‘This is amazing. We are going to become the leading brand.’”

Expert-Led Content as the Foundation

“We decided that if we were going to do this, we would do it the right way. We brought in the best coaches—people who either played or coached at the highest level. If you’re teaching a crossover in basketball, why not learn from Tim Hardaway Sr., the player who invented it? Our goal was to create one place where people know that everything they watch and read is expert-driven and expert-recommended.”

Q3. What unique value does SportsEdTV provide, and what makes it different from traditional sports learning resources?

Built Around What People Actually Need

“We don’t create content in a vacuum. We started by doing extensive research on what people were actually searching for online. We looked at what parents needed, what coaches needed, and what athletes needed. Then we created content to answer those needs. We focused on solving eighty percent of the questions people had before building out the rest of the library.”

Quality and Credibility Matter

“We have more than 800 videos and more than 1,800 blogs and articles. Every video was shot in cinema quality using NBC crews, multiple cameras, scripting, and world-class coaches. We created the content from A to Z with experts. So when someone comes to SportsEdTV, they don’t have to wonder if the content is good or bad. They know it’s been created by people who have competed and coached at the highest levels.”

A Safe Platform for Families

“SportsEdTV is a very safe platform. We don’t put gambling ads, vaping ads, smoking ads, or anything inappropriate around our content. Parents know that if they send their kids to SportsEdTV, they’re going to find educational content, not distractions.”

Q4. What are the typical user personas at SportsEdTV?

Coaches, Athletes, and Parents

“The personas are coaches, athletes, parents—really any age group. Parents who want to help their kids improve use the platform. Coaches use it to discover drills and coaching methods. Athletes use it to improve their own performance. We serve all three audiences simultaneously.”

Everyday Athletes Matter Too

“We’re not only focused on kids who want athletic scholarships. If you play tennis, golf, pickleball, or any sport recreationally, you still want to improve. You want to beat your brother-in-law or your friends. People are competitive by nature, and we help those athletes improve too.”

A Truly Global Audience

“It’s global. On social media, it’s everywhere in the world. We have sports like Taekwondo where we have more than 181,000 Instagram followers. Countries like Brazil and Iran consume our content. On the website, North America is our largest audience, but on social media we truly have a worldwide community.”

Q5. What are the big brands and organizations SportsEdTV is working with?

Building Value Through Strategic Partnerships

“Today, before we create content in a new sport, we look for partners. In tennis, for example, we work with Volkl. They sponsor the content, and their products become part of the storytelling. It’s not traditional advertising. It’s authentic integration.”

Partnerships That Expand Reach

“We have a partnership with the Racket Sports Professional Association, and together we’ve brought partners like Volkl into the ecosystem. We’ve also signed an agreement with SHAPE America, which represents 200,000 physical education teachers.”

Validation from Major Organizations

“The videos we produce have been used by FIBA, i9 Sports, and Chicago Public Schools. That’s important because it validates the quality of what we’re creating and shows that leading organizations trust our content.”

Q6. Can you walk us through the business model and how you balance accessibility with sustainability?

Free Access, Long-Term Value

“First of all, SportsEdTV is free. We are not charging anything. We invested millions of dollars creating the content, building the platform, and building the community because we believed sports education should be accessible.”

Rejecting Traditional Advertising

“We didn’t want traditional advertising interrupting the learning experience. We didn’t want someone watching a sports instruction video and suddenly seeing an ad for soap or some unrelated product. Instead, we wanted partners that naturally fit within sports and education.”

Education Creates Stronger Brand Connections

“When you help a parent help their child, there is a very strong emotional connection. That’s what we provide to our partners. Educational content is incredibly powerful because you’re creating value first. If a brand helps someone become a better athlete or parent, that relationship lasts for years.”

Playing the Long Game

“We believe that if you want to build a brand for the long game, you need to create customers at a young age and help them over time. That’s why educational content works. It creates trust and loyalty in a way that traditional advertising often cannot.”

Q7. Looking ahead to the next 12 months, what are the biggest opportunities, priorities, and milestones you’re most excited about?

The SHAPE America Opportunity

“The partnership with SHAPE America is probably what excites me most right now. SHAPE represents 200,000 physical education teachers, and this partnership has the potential to put SportsEdTV in every school—or at least most schools—in the United States.”

Helping Teachers and Students at Scale

“We can really help kids become healthier while helping teachers do a better job through the content we’ve created. We’re going to put a lot of effort into making this partnership successful because the impact could be enormous.”

Becoming the Standard for Sports Education

“We want to become the reference for sports education. Whether it’s schools, coaches, athletes, or parents, we want SportsEdTV to be the trusted source people turn to when they want to learn and improve.”

Expanding Through Partnerships

“Going forward, we want to continue adding sports, curriculum, and content, but we do that through partnerships. Whether it’s schools, governing bodies, or sponsors, we want to create content that has lasting value and reaches as many people as possible.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Felix Proessl, Sr. Director of Sport and Data Science at the Colorado Rapids, an MLS team.

Felix Proessl is the Senior Director of Sport and Data Science for the Colorado Rapids (MLS), where he leads the club’s sports science, performance analytics, athlete monitoring, and data-driven decision-making initiatives across the first team, second team, and academy. Originally from Germany, Proessl played collegiate soccer in the United States before earning his Master’s degree at Colorado State University, where he conducted research in the Integrative Neurophysiology Lab focused on fatigue, performance, and human movement.

He later completed a PhD in Rehabilitation Science at the University of Pittsburgh, studying the neuromuscular and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying skill acquisition, fatigue, and athletic performance. During his time at Pittsburgh, he worked closely with the men’s soccer program and subsequently served as Director of Sports Science for the university’s athletic department, helping scale performance and sports science practices across multiple teams. His expertise spans sports science, performance analytics, athlete development, and the application of data and emerging technologies to optimize performance in elite sport.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Felix located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Felix:

Q1. Tell me about your background.

“I grew up in Germany playing soccer there. My journey really started to pick up when I decided to leave Germany and go to the U.S. to play collegiate soccer. I was fortunate to have that opportunity and really enjoyed being in the U.S. The excitement around sports and the interest in research were very attractive to me, so I decided to stay after completing my undergraduate degree.

I was always curious about the cognitive and perceptual aspects of sport just as much as the physical aspects. At Colorado State University, I joined the Integrative Neurophysiology Lab and spent two years trying to better understand the neuromuscular mechanisms of fatigue, while also working with the women’s soccer team because I never wanted to lose touch with the applied side of sport.

I then completed my PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, where our lab focused on understanding what happens both in the brain and muscle when we get better at something, and how that is impacted by factors like fatigue and sleep deprivation. Afterward, I became Director of Sports Science at the university before eventually joining the Colorado Rapids, where I’m now in my third season as Senior Director of Sport and Data Science.”

Q2. Can you tell me about your role in your club? What does your typical day look like?

“When I was first hired, my focus was creating the infrastructure—building a database, an athlete management system, dashboards, centralizing data streams, and creating processes that would allow data to become part of our decision-making process.

But it’s one thing to give people access to data and dashboards; it’s another thing to ensure that information is actually used in decision-making. Since then, my role has evolved into being more of a strategic decision-maker as part of the larger coaching and support staff.”

“A typical day starts with high-performance meetings and meetings with the coaching staff where we finalize the training session, discuss player health status, and incorporate information such as wellness reports. Then I’m out on the field collecting information through GPS, body-weight monitoring, and other performance metrics.

After training, the bulk of my work begins with processing and reporting that information, communicating it back to coaches, and helping inform how we train, how much we train, and how we design future sessions. We essentially sit between the performance and medical side of the organization and the coaching side.”

“Another important part of my role is making sure that what we do with the first team becomes the gold standard throughout the club. We apply the same profiling and testing models to the second team and academy, allowing us to project player development and better understand when young players are ready to transition into the first-team environment.”

Q3. What is your approach towards sports science, innovation, and training?

“I firmly believe that sports science is almost a high-performance philosophy more than anything else. To me, sports science is the application of the scientific method to solve problems in a professional sporting environment.

Because of that, it can’t happen in a vacuum or a silo. It touches medical, nutrition, performance, and technical areas, and it requires transdisciplinary collaboration. Everybody needs a shared understanding of the processes and workflows that ultimately lead to better decisions.”

“I think it’s important that these processes are data-informed, not data-driven. We collect information and incorporate it into the decision-making process, but we always have to weigh it in the context of uncertainty and understand what we’ve measured versus what we may not have measured.

The most important thing is context. That’s where collaboration with coaches becomes critical. Decisions shouldn’t happen in isolation.”

“Innovation, to me, is being critical of existing beliefs. It’s applying the scientific method to challenge assumptions and asking whether something is actually true in the environment where we’re applying it. That’s where innovation occurs—understanding there’s a gap, filling it with knowledge, and through collaboration nudging the field forward.”

Q4. How do you see AI impacting the work of practitioners in the coming years?

“I think AI is an extremely powerful method to enhance productivity, increase efficiency, and automate processes that occur on a day-to-day basis in our environment. AI functions best with large datasets, strong contextual information, and standardized questions that occur repeatedly over time.”

“I don’t think AI is going to replace people because many of the questions we face in sport are too variable and volatile. The human will always be needed to gauge the uncertainty of the model and apply rational thinking to it.”

“Where AI is helping practitioners right now is by adding new processing pipelines to existing technologies. Optical tracking is a great example. We’re now able to derive a whole host of new metrics from video and paint a much richer contextual picture.

We don’t just know how much players run anymore—we understand the phase of play, the location of the ball, the behavior of opponents, and other contextual factors.”

“In the end, these technologies are only a means to derive metrics. The effective incorporation and implementation of that information requires collaboration with actual decision-makers. There needs to be someone capable of digesting those outputs, understanding their uncertainty, and incorporating them into day-to-day workflows.”

Q5. If you had unlimited resources (funding, staff), which sports tech solution would you build? Why?

“Given my background and my passion for complex sports, I would want to build something that allows us to dive much deeper into the neurophysiological processes that underpin performance.

Sport is fundamentally a perception-action coupling activity. Whether you decide to move, sprint, pass, or shoot begins with recognizing an opportunity before the physical action ever takes place.”

“We have a tremendous number of tools to understand the muscular and fitness capacities of athletes, but relatively little insight into the earlier part of the process—which arguably may be even more important.

Ideally, we would develop better ways to quantify how athletes perceive information, make decisions, and recognize opportunities in an applied sporting environment.”

“If I had unlimited resources, I would pour them into understanding recognition, awareness, what the athlete actually sees, and the timing of the perceptual-motor response. I’d want to better understand that side of sport.”

Q6. Who is your favorite to win the Soccer World Cup? Why?

“Obviously, I’d like to see Germany lift the trophy. That would be the ideal scenario.”

“Realistically, though, I think France will be tough to beat. They’ve been in the final the last two times, won it in 2018, and I think they just have a really good squad right now that will be one of the challengers for sure.”

“The beauty—and the difficult part—of the World Cup is that it only takes one game where you’re off and you’re out. Ideally Germany, but realistically I think we’re more of a quarterfinal or semifinal team. From there, I think England or France.”

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Today we have the honor to interview Spencer Posey, the Military & Human Performance Lead for Garmin. Spencer will also be speaking at the Austin Peay State University Health and Performance Summit on October 17, 2026.

You can check out the agenda of the Austin Peay State University Health and Performance Summit, get your ticket for the summit by clicking on the link below and select register now:

For sponsorship information, attendees can visit the event website or contact Dr. Tim Leszczak, Chair of the APSU Health and Human Performance Department, at Leszczakt@apsu.edu.

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Spencer:

Q1. Background & Career Journey

“I clawed myself out of that hole through these principles of taking care of oneself in a holistic manner. I put effort into what I put into my body, into my mind, how I trained myself, how I slept — and that investment in those areas helped me claw out of that space.”

“As I read that historical document — Field Manual 7-22 — I realized that the program the US Army was trying to implement, essentially I had done in my own private practice in industry and academics for the better part of a decade.”

“The mission and vision of Garmin is they exist to help people beat yesterday. And that simple sentence aligns with my entire life’s work. Hands down.”

“When I came back in at the US Army, my sole goal was to give. Give whatever I could to the institution.”

Q2. Role at Garmin Health

“My role is part relationship building, part strategic vision and direction for the organization, and part translating science into real world application for different opportunities.”

“Across a week, I can work with military organizations, researchers, tactical professionals, strength and conditioning coaches, and also healthcare providers to help them understand what problems they’re actually trying to solve, what questions they’re trying to answer, and what interventions they can make based off those data points.”

Q3. Training, Recovery & Rehabilitation

“I see the biggest change in the space going from reactive decision-making to proactive.”

“The best organizations are finding which metrics — and I’m gonna say just a couple, not all of them — they zoom in on a couple metrics that they find have the strongest correlation or causation to their genre of people or population, and they focus on those.”

“Context matters. When organizations start to understand that all this data matters, but then having the individual of whose data you’re taking provide the context of what goes on the 23 hours outside of training — that’s where the magic happens.”

“With heart rate variability, there’s a lot of folks that haven’t dove into what that means over time, and they’re looking at it in a very acute sense. In reality, you need to look at the trend and then also the variation over time as the two most important variables.”

Q4. Innovation & Future Trends

“In the next three to five years I see a ton happening around individualized and contextualized decision support — the use of AI, or language models, to provide that contextualized specific intervention for the individual.”

“I think we already have more data than we need. It’s about creating a better interpretation or educating folks on how to interpret that data. Right now with the amount that we have, I would say it’s a lot of noise. So how do we create a strong signal versus so much noise with data?”

“I see a merger of many different tools that build a larger ecosystem. Wearables are absolutely an amazing tool, but they’re not the only tool for organizations to be able to implement change.”

“Imagine if you go to your doctor and he pulls up your data and says, ‘Actually, you’re moving 30% less than last year. You’re sleeping 15% less. I would say you’re not doing great.’ That’s being able to zoom out and look at some of those larger things — looking at health in a longitudinal way instead of just snapshots.”

Q5. Health & Performance Summit at Austin Peay State University

“My first goal anytime I speak is to give practical application for everybody that’s there. How to actually apply what they’ve heard is generally the gap.”

“The athlete narrative is what got human performance optimization off the ground within the United States military. But that narrative is not gonna be what’s gonna take us to the next level. It got us off the ground, but it’s not what war fighting is.”

“When you look at what a war fighter is asked to do — in the face of imminent death — it is nowhere close to what an athlete does on a field. Not only is it a higher stress environment, there are different skills required, a different cognitive approach.”

“I’m going to show what from the athlete preparatory approach has worked and will continue to work — and what will now fail us as we’ve gotten the momentum we need with these programs. We no longer need to build leader engagement around it; now we need to fund these programs, operationalize them, and focus actually on the war fighter.”

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Today we are hosting a new group podcast with Dr. Tim Leszczak and Dr Bill Burgos to discuss Austin Peay State University Health and Performance Summit that you are organizing, which will take place on Saturday, October 17, 2026, at the APSU Health Professions Building in Clarksville, Tennessee.

Participants:

• Dr. Tim Leszczak is the Department Chair and Professor in the Department of Health and Human Performance at Austin Peay State University.

• Dr Bill Burgos is an adjunct professor at Austin Peay State university. He is alsoan experienced NBA Strength & Conditioning coach. He has worked for many NBA teams (Orlando Magic, NY Knicks, Timberwolves..). He also worked in the MiLB with the Pittsburgh pirates.He is also the CEO of LONU a next generation AI based nutrition platform.

You can check out the agenda of the Austin Peay State University Health and Performance Summit, get your ticket for the summit by clicking on the link below and select register now:

For sponsorship information, attendees can visit the event website or contact Dr. Tim Leszczak, Chair of the APSU Health and Human Performance Department, at Leszczakt@apsu.edu.

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Tim and Bill:

Q1. To start, can each of you briefly share your background in sports and what led you to become involved with this summit?

Dr. Bill Burgos

“My career started at Austin Peay as a student athletic trainer, which exposed me to sports medicine and eventually strength and conditioning. That path led me from professional baseball to the NBA, where I spent more than a decade as a head strength coach. While my background is heavily rooted in basketball, I see myself as a human performance coach working with athletes across all sports. One of the experiences that had the greatest impact on my career was attending a summit, where I met a strength coach who helped open the door to my next opportunity. That experience showed me the value of networking and professional development, and it’s one of the reasons I wanted to help create this summit.”

Dr. Tim Leszczak

“My path into sports performance was somewhat unconventional. I originally studied accounting, but I eventually found my passion in fitness, wellness, and campus recreation while working at the University of Arkansas. I’ve always been interested in exercise, training, and nutrition, and that passion evolved into a deeper interest in human performance. Today, I teach foundational concepts related to sport performance and movement science at Austin Peay, helping prepare the next generation of professionals in the field.”

Q2. What inspired the creation of this summit, and what are the key goals you’re hoping to achieve for attendees?

Dr. Bill Burgos

“The summit was inspired by both my own career journey and a gap I noticed between what students learn in college and what they encounter in the workforce. While Austin Peay does an excellent job preparing students academically, I realized that many students still needed opportunities to connect with employers, understand emerging trends, and see how performance concepts are applied in the real world. Through this summit, we want to expose students and professionals to current innovations, create meaningful networking opportunities, strengthen relationships with Fort Campbell and the military community, and ultimately help attendees better understand what’s possible in their careers. More than anything, we want to make a lasting impact on students’ lives and professional development.”

Dr. Tim Leszczak

“The idea for the summit began with a desire to strengthen the connection between Austin Peay State University and Fort Campbell while creating a meaningful educational experience for a broad range of professionals. Our goal is to bring together strength and conditioning coaches, athletic trainers, physical therapists, coaches, military personnel, and students for a collaborative learning experience. We wanted to build a summit that covers the full spectrum of human performance—from mental performance and recovery to physical preparation and Olympic lifting—while providing practical information that attendees can immediately apply in their own environments.”

Q3. Can you walk us through the agenda and highlight some of the sessions, speakers, or topics that you’re most excited about?

Dr. Bill Burgos

“What excites me most about this year’s lineup is that every speaker brings a unique perspective while contributing to the broader theme of human performance. The summit blends expertise from professional sports, collegiate athletics, sports medicine, and the military, showing how these disciplines intersect and learn from one another. I’m especially excited about speakers like Dr Andy Barr, Ryan Metzger, Paul Robbins, and Sergeant Spencer Posey because each offers practical insights that can directly impact coaching, injury prevention, performance, and leadership. These are professionals I’ve learned from throughout my career, and bringing them to Austin Peay creates an incredible opportunity for attendees to gain knowledge that is both current and immediately applicable.”

Dr. Tim Leszczak

“We’ve put together what I believe is a very well-rounded and robust agenda. The day begins with Chris Dunaway of the Los Angeles Dodgers discussing innovation in performance and the importance of tailoring solutions to individual athletes rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach. From there, attendees will learn about injury prevention, recovery science, Olympic weightlifting instruction, military performance, and mental performance strategies. Personally, I’m particularly interested in the Olympic lifting and mental performance sessions because they align closely with areas where I want to continue growing professionally. Overall, the agenda was intentionally designed to provide diverse perspectives across the entire performance spectrum.”

Q4. Who is this summit designed for, and why should coaches, practitioners, students, executives, and other professionals consider attending?

Dr. Bill Burgos

“This summit is for anyone who wants to continue learning and improving, whether they’re in their first year of practice or their twentieth. Coaches, athletic trainers, sports scientists, physicians, military professionals, and students will all find value because they’ll be exposed to experts from multiple disciplines working toward the same goal: improving human performance. Throughout my career, I’ve learned that the best practitioners are constantly seeking knowledge outside their own specialty. This summit helps attendees understand how different professionals collaborate, communicate, and contribute to athlete and tactical performance, making it valuable regardless of one’s specific role.”

Dr. Tim Leszczak

“Our target audience includes strength and conditioning coaches, athletic trainers, physical therapists, coaches, students, ROTC cadets, and other professionals interested in performance and wellness. We designed the summit to be broad enough that people from different backgrounds can benefit while still being focused on practical performance topics. Whether someone is trying to expand their network, learn about new trends in the field, improve their coaching skills, or simply gain exposure to new ideas, there will be valuable takeaways throughout the day.”

Q5. There are many conferences and events in the sports industry today. What makes this summit at Austin Peay State University different, and what unique experience or value will attendees take away?

Dr. Bill Burgos

“What makes this summit unique is the combination of collegiate athletics, professional sports, and military performance all under one roof. That’s a blend you don’t often find at other events. Austin Peay’s proximity to Fort Campbell creates a natural connection between these worlds, and we’ve assembled speakers who represent some of the best expertise across those domains. The result is a highly collaborative environment where attendees can learn not only from experts in their own field, but also from professionals whose experiences may challenge their thinking and broaden their perspective on performance.”

Dr. Tim Leszczak

“Unlike many large conferences that feature hundreds of presentations spread across multiple days, our summit is intentionally smaller, more focused, and highly interactive. Everyone will be learning together in the same room, creating a shared experience and stronger opportunities for networking and discussion. Most importantly, we’ve asked our speakers to provide practical strategies that attendees can immediately take back and implement the very next day. Our goal is not simply to inspire people, but to equip them with actionable tools they can use right away in their professional practice.”

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Today we are hosting a new group podcast on muscle fatigue, the current practices to monitor muscle fatigue, the tools used, and what the future looks like.

Participants:

• Raphaël Ravet, Chief Commercial Officer, Myocene, a leading Belgian based sports tech company.

• João Ribeiro, Head of performance, SC Braga (Primeira Liga).

As a reminder, Myocene is a Belgium based sports technology company revolutionizing how muscle fatigue is measured and managed. Recognizing the need for objective and precise monitoring in athletic performance, Myocene has developed an innovative device that combines a sensor, stimulator, and proprietary algorithm to assess the loss of force and speed linked to muscle fatigue. In just two minutes, the device generates a comprehensive muscle fatigue index, offering clear insights into an athlete’s readiness, recovery, and overall physical condition.

By providing objective, data-driven feedback, Myocene empowers teams and coaches to make smarter decisions about training and recovery. Myocene helps identify muscular imbalances, optimize performance, and reduce the risk of overtraining. Trusted by leading sports organizations Myocene is setting a new standard in performance monitoring and athletic recovery.

João Ribeiro is a leading performance and sports science professional currently serving as Head of Performance for S.C. Braga in Portugal’s Primeira Liga. With a background in exercise physiology, high-performance training, and sports science research, Ribeiro has played a key role in optimizing athlete performance within one of Portugal’s top football clubs. He holds a PhD in Sports Sciences from the University of Porto and has combined elite applied practice with academia through lecturing and research in human performance, monitoring, and rehabilitation. Recognized for integrating data, sports science, and performance innovation into professional football, Ribeiro is widely respected for his expertise in athlete development, recovery, and performance optimization.

Picture: João Ribeiro (SC Braga)

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we discussed the following topics:

Q1. Current Practices

• How do you currently define and measure muscle fatigue in your environment, and how consistent is that definition across your staff?

What are the primary tools or modalities you rely on today—and which have proven most actionable?

Q2. Decision-Making & Application

• Can you walk through how fatigue data actually influences day-to-day decisions like training load, recovery protocols, or return-to-play?

Q3. Challenges & Limitations

• Where do you see the biggest gaps or limitations in current fatigue monitoring—whether that’s accuracy, cost, athlete compliance, or interpretation?

Q4. Individualization vs. Standardization

How do you balance individualized fatigue profiles for each athlete with the need for scalable systems across an entire team?

Q5. Future Outlook

• Looking ahead 3–5 years, what do you think will fundamentally change in how we monitor and manage muscle fatigue—especially with advances in technology and data integration?

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with João and Raphaël:

Q1. Current Practices

João Ribeiro:

“We face muscle fatigue as a multidimensional approach — neuromuscular, perceptual, performance decay. We cannot oversimplify the way we measure it. So we use objective data and subjective data — for external load we use GPS systems, and for internal load we use biochemical markers like CK, as well as subjective markers from wellness questionnaires.”

“We’re not measuring muscle fatigue itself, we are inferring about muscle fatigue. Imagine a player is doing more than he’s used to — we can assume he may be facing some fatigue. But we are always inferring, not measuring it directly. That’s why we also use Myocene and maximum voluntary contraction tests to get more objective measures of muscle status.”

Raphaël Ravet:

“The proper method to assess peripheral fatigue is by measuring this loss of force. The Myocene technology uses a combination of a force sensor, a specific neurostimulator, and an algorithm to calculate an index. When an athlete is in a rested state, the muscle produces a force and the system computes an index.”

“When there is muscle fatigue, the muscle responds less to a given stimulation — in this case produced by the neurostimulator of the Myocene system — and therefore the index drops. We have here a specific marker of a key aspect of performance, which is muscle fatigue, and we also address something which other methods cannot: objectivity.”

Q2. Decision-Making & Application

João Ribeiro:

“We make adjustments based on that data. The player maybe cannot train at all — he’s completely out of training according to the data we have from fatigue. Or, the most common scenario, is to adapt partially the training session — he can be present in some exercises and be out for the most demanding ones.”

“We also use this data to adapt recovery strategies. If a player is too fatigued, we promote the continuity of recovery modalities, or we adapt the recovery training session itself. If players tell us they are too fatigued, our day off can even be anticipated or changed according to that — especially if the fatigue is most demanding in a mental term.”

Raphaël Ravet:

“It’s not just about completing GPS metrics or data output. Athletes need to be able to recover, resist fatigue, and sustain repeated training in order to make sure they’re truly ready to reincorporate the team. A tool like Myocene can bring that — is the athlete able to sustain and repeat that load? That’s what really matters for return to play.”

Q3. Challenges & Limitations

João Ribeiro:

“There is no gold standard — fatigue is complex, and I think that is the biggest gap. We need to use a variety of tools, which is very, very difficult. Another issue is the data noise we obtain from these measurements”.

“The overload of data is sometimes contradictory — but it’s part of the process. If fatigue is complex, we need to analyze all the data. But this interpretation, I think, is the hardest part. And in some tests, we need athlete compliance, and that really impacts the measurements.”

Raphaël Ravet:

“Thanks to the Myocene system, the player is not involved in the measurement — which gives very actionable data, because you can take a decision right away based on that. On one side we use a specific and validated method to assess fatigue, well-described in the scientific literature. And on the other side, the player is not involved, which removes the compliance issue entirely.”

“We address a key limitation of other methods: objectivity. We don’t need the player to be compliant, and we have a baseline to compare against — which is very, very valuable. That’s something João himself has confirmed he values from the Myocene system.”

Q4. Individualization vs. Standardization

João Ribeiro:

“What we do is use the same system for everyone — the protocol is standardized. But the interpretation is individualized — it’s completely different depending on each player, his profile, his responsibility in the team. Some players can cope with high levels of fatigue, even while playing, and that’s why we need to know very well the profile of the player and the way he copes with these kinds of demands.”

“There are different responses to the same load. For instance, if a player is a midfielder and he’s 80% recovered, maybe he can cope a little with the next game. But if he’s a winger and he’s only 80% recovered, maybe we don’t want to risk it — because he will be doing a lot of high intensity running in the game. So the position and profile really matter in the interpretation.”

Raphaël Ravet:

“The common point for all players is that they need to be ready on game day. They may have different capacities to resist fatigue — some fatigue more because they play more, play less, or occupy more demanding positions. But what you want to know is: is my athlete ready to either train hard, resume a new micro cycle, or play on game day?”

“You can really put a figure on fatigue — you know if they are 100% ready, 90% ready, or 65% ready, and you know the gap. This is the real interest of a method like Myocene: you can quantify fatigue and know exactly what the athlete still needs to recover in order to be ready on game day.”

Q5. Future Outlook

João Ribeiro:

“We need more tools like this. We need to assess this internal load in the muscles and joints — we don’t have many tools for that right now. We have Myocene measuring muscle fatigue, but we need more technology that can be integrated directly into training sessions to really measure this internal load in real time. We have no device for that right now, only Myocene, but used before or after training sessions.”

“Another thing is the integration of data. AI is here, so it will help us for sure. Machine learning models and the integration of different sources of measurements will for sure help us in the near future. I believe in that strongly.”

Raphaël Ravet:

“We’ve moved a very well-known technology method used in labs for more than four decades to assess peripheral fatigue — or specific low frequency fatigue related to calcium release impairment — and we’ve moved this technology to real life. We’ve learned a lot in the last five years, and we’re going to continue to learn even more as we have more users, more feedback, more publications, and more protocols from each team using it.”

“There is a blind spot in athlete monitoring. The industry has been very focused on measuring external load — GPS, force plates — the body is very well monitored. But the new era, the room for improvement, is on the internal load side. For a given load, the physiological impact is different for every player. We’re just at the beginning of potentially a new era where internal load and objective markers are going to shape the future of sport performance.”

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This week we had the honor to interview again Dr. Ron Dick, associate professor of sports marketing at Duquesne University in the school of business. Ron also worked for 20 years in sports, including 15 years in the NBA with the Sixers and the Nets, and then five years in the NCAA.

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• The NFL draft recap, new NFL Schedule. Aaron Rodgers’ new contract with the to Pittsburgh Steelers,

• NBA draft & playoffs,

• College athletics 5 plus 5, MBB/College FB,

• NHL playoffs,

• LIV updates,

• MLS season, 2026 World Cup,

• MLB season

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ron located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Ron:

1. NFL Draft recap, new NFL schedule, Aaron Rodgers to Pittsburgh

“Pittsburgh really shined in the NFL draft. The weather was tremendous on Thursday, Friday a little bit of rain. I took my daughter on Saturday afternoon. They’ve become the model. Every city that hosts — and next year it’s going to be in Washington DC — I believe Washington will shatter the record that was set recently by Pittsburgh, beating Detroit from two years ago because of their location. People will train down from New England, New York, Philly, Baltimore, and up from Atlanta and Florida to go to this event. It was a very, very cool event. Pittsburgh pulled it off and it was great. To see 700,000 additional people in the city was overwhelming.”

“The Steelers, Aaron Rodgers signed a one-year deal more than twice what he made last year — 22 million for this one year with an accelerator that could get him to 25 million. Some people are talking about this now while organized team activities are taking place. For the first time ever it seems like the growth here is going to be in brand-new countries that have never hosted an NFL regular season game. Melbourne is going to have a game, Rio in Brazil, and Paris, France — the Steelers are going to play there.”

“The NFL has, of the 32 teams, assigned countries to certain teams. For example, the Cowboys’ only country they’re assigned to is Mexico. The Pittsburgh Steelers are assigned to Germany, Ireland, and Mexico. They’re trying to get those countries excited about and supporting those teams, so what better way than to go there and play a game? That’s where this seems like the growth is, and that was very apparent on day three of the draft.”

“Boy, it seems like the NFL loves them some Eagles. The Eagles are playing on Thanksgiving in Dallas, they’re hosting on Christmas Eve, and they’re on a lot of the radar for national games, as are the Steelers. So it’s going to be a great football year and it’s pretty exciting.”

1. NBA Draft and NBA Playoffs

“The NBA Draft Lottery took place. It looks like Washington got the first pick, Utah second, Memphis third, Chicago fourth. In no particular order, I don’t think it’s clear-cut who’s one, two, three, and four in the draft. The players are AJ from BYU, Peterson from Kansas, Boozer from Duke — of course his dad played in the NBA and was an All-Star — and Caleb Wilson from UNC Chapel Hill. They are considered to be without a clear top four. You could argue what order, and it should be interesting what Washington does. There’s a little bit of drop-off from five and down.”

“Spurs versus OKC. This is what we’ve all wanted. This is one versus two. This is going to be an awesome series. Those two teams are going to be around for a long time because they are both so young.”

“The Knicks could get to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999 with Patrick Ewing. So that’s pretty exciting in the NBA. I think OKC versus the Knicks, and OKC wins back-to-back titles.”

1. College athletics: 5 plus 5, college basketball, college football

“Brand new rule, it’s called five plus five. When you graduate high school — or when you turn 19 — you have five years you can play. They’re trying to rush this through with the NCAA and all the big conferences. There are players that are playing that are 26 or 27 years old, getting an eighth or ninth year. This is insanity, right? Let’s streamline this, let’s make it incredibly simple so everybody understands.”

“If you get injured, you don’t get that year back. You have to do it in five years. So that would cap everybody out at roughly 23 or 24 years old. The only exemptions would be pregnancy, military, and religious missions. It all kind of makes sense because we’ve got guys going in that are on second marriages, they’ve got child support, alimony — and it’s like, how do you play college sports when you’re 26 or 27 years old?”

“This will give freshmen more of an opportunity because they’re really missing out on opportunities coming out of high school. You can leave any time you want to go play professionally, but you can’t play any time past those five years. Simple as could be.”

“Ohio State, $50 million is what they’re going to pay. They have a budget of roughly $50 million. That’s above and beyond NIL — just here’s our budget for our athletic department, we’re spending $50 million this year on our football team. If you’re not going to spend 50, and you’re in the SEC or Big Ten, then can you compete with a $50 million payroll?”

“They really want to push through 24 teams in the college football tournament, up from 12. And in 2027, March Madness is going to go from 68 teams to 78. Ten additional teams will get in. But now you may see teams with three losses making the football playoff. I don’t know if that’s a good idea, but they’re going to give more opportunities to teams.”

1. NHL Playoffs

“We’ve got a Game 7 coming up, Buffalo versus Montreal. The winner takes on the Carolina Hurricanes. Then you’ve got a tremendous Colorado Avalanche team that is going to play the Golden Knights of Vegas, and the winners of those series will go to the Stanley Cup Finals.”

“No more Tampa Bay Lightning, no more Florida Panthers. They’ve won quite a few recently. Back to back, yes. So now we’re seeing a bit of a changing of the guard.”

1. LIV Golf updates

“They are on life support. They lost $6 billion in their 54-round type format. Five guys in particular want to come home and play in the PGA — Jon Rahm, Bryson, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, and Cameron Smith all saying, ‘Can we come back and play for the PGA?’”

“I believe they will take them back. I think it’s happening already. It’s forgive and forget, and probably we’ll just pretend like it never happened that they left the PGA. But for all practical purposes, LIV is dead.”

1. MLS season and World Cup ticket prices

“The MLS is going to be on a little break because the World Cup is starting on June 11. There are going to be 11 US cities hosting the World Cup. There’s been controversy about the prices going through the roof, and now it looks like the prices are finally coming down a little bit.”

“With food prices, gas prices, cost of living — for them to try to demand $5,000 a ticket or $10,000 a ticket, it’s obscene. It feels predatory, and people just won’t buy it. It’s not an inelastic product. It’s elastic. The rubber band will only stretch so far, then I just won’t go.”

“There have been lawsuits and people trying to figure out why the prices of the tickets are so high. It is very difficult, even with electronic tickets, to control the secondary market once you decide you want to go down that road. Some have argued it’s impossible to control the secondary market. But it’s something they better figure out really fast because this thing’s jumping on us June 11th.”

“They’ve got high-end facilities, they’re ready to do it, and this is probably a once-in-a-lifetime type of situation for a lot of people. I think we’re going to do a really nice job hosting it in the United States.”

1. MLB season

“We are roughly a third of the way through and a couple things jump out at you. The Rays in Tampa, their building’s been fixed after the hurricane, they’re playing there, and they have 30 wins already. That’s number one in the AL East. The Yankees are number two.”

“We had rivalry weekend, which I found very interesting. The Mets play the Yankees, the Phillies play the Pirates, Rangers and Astros — it made a lot of sense and sparked interest around the league.”

“In the Central we’ve got two teams over .500. How about the Sacramento Athletics, number one in the AL West right now. The Braves have the most wins in baseball. The Phillies got off to a horrific start, fired their manager, hired Don Mattingly, and they’ve gone on a run since then.”

“The Cubs look really good in the Central. Everybody in the NL Central is over .500. The West, it’s all Dodgers. Padres looking really good too.”

“There’s a number of brand-new Japanese players that are doing very well this year for the first time. We’re going to see more and more players coming in from the Nippon League in Japan to become stars in MLB.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Curt Truhe, VP of Health & Performance at Excel Sports Management, a leading sports agency.

Curt built his career at the intersection of strength and conditioning and sports science, beginning as an athlete before transitioning into coaching when his playing career ended. He started out as a strength and conditioning coach, gaining hands-on experience in training and athlete development while working in environments where sports science was just beginning to emerge. During this time, he effectively operated across multiple roles—blending coaching with early sports science responsibilities—which gave him a strong foundation in both performance training and data-driven decision-making.

Prior to his current position, Curt held various performance-focused roles across team and private training settings, where he worked directly with athletes on development, rehabilitation, and performance optimization. These experiences exposed him to different systems, technologies, and athlete needs, helping him build a holistic understanding of performance environments. Today, as Vice President of Health & Performance at Excel Sports Management, he leverages that background to oversee performance, medical, and sports science initiatives, ensuring athletes receive individualized, high-level support throughout their careers.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• His journey & journey.

• His role & day-to-day impact

• His philosophy on performance training

• Individualization & athlete care

• What makes Excel Sports Management unique

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Curt located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Curt:

1. Background & Journey“Growing up I would have loved to become an athlete… But at one point we fail out or the talent gets above us and we have to move on. I was more of a strength and conditioning coach by trade—that was the lens I viewed everything through. As a strength coach in that time, you kind of had to wear the hat of sports scientist before all these roles were created, and getting really good insight into the tech and what you’re looking to measure really helped me later on in my career. Having a good understanding of what those people are looking at and how those worlds come together helps create a system that sports science fuels and performance fuels.”

2. Role & Day-to-Day Impact“My role specifically is always changing. Working within the agency is kind of this middle space between the team setting and a private setting. My role now is creating the environment and making sure the team has all the resources they need to deliver. A lot of what I do is understanding the landscape of performance and what’s out there, and if our athletes are training elsewhere, it’s about knowing who the good groups are so we can make sure they have the right support system. Ultimately, we can fill in the gaps no matter what support system they already have.”

3. Philosophy on Performance Training“You have to look at this holistic picture of what the athlete is. There’s so much stuff out there—it’s easy to get lost in it—so it starts with asking, what problem are you trying to solve? The larger picture is that there’s a lot of context that goes into what makes someone perform well. With younger athletes, you’re still trying to grow those attributes, but once you’re established, it becomes about refining and maintaining performance. With vets, it’s about keeping you healthy so you can stay on the field—because if you’re still playing at that point, it’s because you’re a hell of a player, and we just want to keep you there.”

4. Individualization & Athlete Care“The biggest thing you can do is the level of understanding. You know someone better after 20 years, and our goal is to get to that level of understanding with athletes. We’re never going to get it perfect, but every experience helps us learn—whether it’s something that works or doesn’t. It’s about how we utilize the tech and the numbers, but also conversations and what we’re seeing day to day, to better understand them. The better we understand them, the better we can support them—or help others support them. Ultimately, it comes down to time—time building relationships and time with the data—and I don’t think anyone is more directly aligned with the athlete than us.”

5. What Makes Excel Unique“The differentiator for us right now is that we exist—having a performance team within an agency hasn’t really existed before. Our role is to be that internal support group for each athlete. Our North Star is on-field or on-court performance, because if you’re playing at your best, that drives contract value and opportunities. We can meet athletes at different levels, from annual checkups to fully hands-on support, but the goal is always to create a system that helps them pinpoint what’s going to move the needle. Ultimately, we’re trying to make those blurred lines less blurry when it comes to development and longevity.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Chris Moseley, the Head of Medical at the Red Bulls NY, an MLS team.

Chris Moseley is currently the Head of Medical at the New York Red Bulls, where he oversees the club’s entire medical strategy, including athletic training, physiotherapy staff, and coordination with external doctors to support both first-team and development players. He joined the club in 2024 after a long tenure at Middlesbrough FC, where he spent over two decades—progressing from First Team Physiotherapist to Head Physiotherapist in 2011 and working across more than 1,000 matches. Earlier in his career, he served as a First Team Physiotherapist at Stoke City F.C., building a strong foundation in elite football medical performance before moving into senior leadership roles

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• His background and what led him to the Red Bulls NY.

• His role at the Red Bulls NY, and what a typical day looks like.

• His approach towards injury reduction and innovation.

• How he sees the world of injury reduction in elite sports evolving in the coming years.

• Which technologies he would build if he had unlimited resources.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Chris located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Chris:

Q1. Background & Journey to the Red Bulls NY

“My journey in professional sports started 35 years ago as an apprentice footballer at Stoke City Football Club. Unfortunately, my career was ended prematurely through injury, and during that time my rehabilitation wasn’t great. That experience really inspired me—I didn’t want that to happen to anybody else. I always had ambitions of becoming a physiotherapist, so I went back to study and completed a degree in sports rehabilitation, which at the time was quite novel and focused entirely on the assessment, treatment, and rehabilitation of sports injuries.”

“From there, I gained experience working with clubs like Bolton Wanderers and Newcastle United before returning to Stoke City full-time, while also completing my physiotherapy degree. I later moved to Middlesbrough, where I spent 22 years working with the first team as head physio. It was a very forward-thinking environment—we were involved in early sports science developments, including GPS validation. Eventually, I had a conversation with a colleague working within the Red Bull system about an opportunity in New York. After discussing it with my family and doing my due diligence, I made the move. I had to validate all my qualifications in the U.S., but once that was completed, I joined the New York Red Bulls, where I’ve now been for two years.”

Q2. Role at Red Bulls NY & Typical Day

“A typical day as head of medical starts with an early meeting where we discuss injured players and their programs for the day. That’s followed by a more detailed rehabilitation and load management meeting with the performance staff, where we look at player load across the day, week, and month—identifying any spikes or red flags. After that, we report back to the head coach with any recommendations or adjustments to training, and then we begin preparing for the players’ arrival.”

“Once players arrive, a lot of our time is spent working individually with them—making sure they’re completing their activation and corrective exercises based on their pre-season screenings. We’ve moved away from traditional strength and conditioning and instead microdose it into the activation phase before training, which has improved compliance and buy-in. During training, part of the staff covers the session while others focus on rehab. At the end of the day, we come back together for a full review—discussing load, injuries, and next steps. It’s a continuous daily cycle of monitoring, communication, and adjustment.”

Q3. Approach to Injury Reduction & Innovation

“There’s no such thing as injury prevention—injury reduction is the aim. What we’re really looking for is maximum player availability. We can measure everything now, but the key is what you do with that information. You can have great data on a player and they don’t perform, or poor data and they’re your best performer—so it’s all about interpretation. At the same time, we can’t get away from the personal touch. You have to be with the players, assess them, talk to them, and understand how they’re feeling on a daily basis.”

“A big focus for us is lumbar pelvic control—we do a lot of manual work to make sure the body is functioning efficiently before reinforcing that through exercises and transferring it onto the field. Communication is probably the most important factor in injury reduction. The medical staff, sports science staff, and coaching staff all need to be aligned. It’s a risk management business—sometimes you take calculated risks to get players on the field for important games—but those decisions have to be collective, transparent, and understood by everyone, including the player.”

Q4. Future of Injury Reduction in Elite Sports

“AI is exploding in the medical world, but ultimately it still comes back to understanding the results and making the right decisions. You can have all the technology in the world, flag players at risk, and still decide to play them—it comes down to communication, trust, and alignment between staff. Technology can inform decisions, but it doesn’t replace the need for human judgment and collaboration.”

“One of the advantages we have is being part of a global Red Bull network, where we can collaborate with clubs across different countries and share knowledge on complex cases. That kind of collective intelligence is incredibly valuable. The future of injury reduction isn’t just about better technology—it’s about how you integrate that technology into a system that prioritizes communication, collaboration, and informed decision-making.”

Q5. Dream Technology

“If I could build any technology, it would be something to regenerate spinal cord injuries—to repair nerve damage. That would obviously have massive implications in sport, but it goes far beyond that. Being able to improve or restore function in people with spinal injuries would be life-changing on a much larger scale.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Gavin Benjafield, performance director at LAFC, an MLS team.

Gavin Benjafield is the Performance Director at Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC), where he leads an integrated performance department spanning strength and conditioning, sports science, nutrition, data, and mental performance. Originally from South Africa, he has over 20 years of experience in elite football, beginning his career at Ajax Cape Town before progressing to Ajax Amsterdam in the Netherlands and later working in the Premier League. He holds a background and degree in exercise physiology, with expertise in final-phase rehabilitation and sports science, having developed his career during a time when practitioners were more generalist before the field became highly specialized. In 2018, he joined LAFC at its inception, drawn by the rare opportunity to build a high-performance model from the ground up, and has since played a key role in shaping the club’s performance philosophy and interdisciplinary approach.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• His background and what led him to LAFC.

• His role at LAFC, and what a typical day looks like.

• His approach towards performance training, S&C, rehab and innovation.

• How he sees the world of performance training in elite sports evolving in the coming years.

• Which technologies he would build if he had unlimited resources.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Gavin located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Gavin:

Q1. Background & path to LAFC

“I’ve been involved in football for close on 20 years. I’m South African, I started with Ajax Cape Town, then moved to the Netherlands with Ajax Amsterdam, and later worked in the Premier League before landing in Los Angeles in 2018. My background is exercise physiology, final phase rehabilitation, sports science—at that time we were still pretty generalists, and the industry has since become much more specialized. The big attraction for me coming to LAFC was that I’d never been in a club where I had the opportunity to build something from the ground up. In 2017 the club didn’t really exist at first-team level, so it was like having a piece of land and saying, ‘this is how we’re going to build the house.’ That opportunity was unique, and I felt this may be the only time in my career where I could do something like that.”

Q2. Role at LAFC & typical day

“My role as Performance Director is primarily overseeing areas like strength and conditioning, sports science, data science, nutrition, and mental performance coaching. It’s very much a managerial role—I’m the connector between all those disciplines, the players, the coaching staff, and the leadership. I’ve stepped away from being a specialist; instead, I hire experts in each field and make sure everything is aligned. There isn’t really a ‘normal’ day, but we do fall into a rhythm. We start early—around 7:45 the medical and performance teams meet to align on the day, then smaller staff meetings follow, and by 9:00 we meet with coaches. From nine to ten is really important for player interaction, maintaining those relationships. Training starts mid-morning, and the rest of the day flows from there. The challenge is that it becomes very cyclical, so you have to deliberately create moments to reflect, sit down with staff, and think about how to improve—because that’s really where the gold is found.”

Q3. Approach to performance, S&C, rehab & innovation

“For me, performance is a singular unit—everyone’s role is ultimately pointed toward improving team performance. Whether you’re in nutrition, strength and conditioning, or data, the question is always: how are you enhancing the player and the team? We are one team with different specializations. I often use analogies like Formula One, where even one person’s role is critical—if they don’t execute, the whole system is impacted. Or like an orchestra, where everyone plays a different instrument but must be aligned. I really emphasize teamwork, collaboration, and communication. My philosophy is not rigid—it’s fluid, because every season presents a different challenge. Whether it’s schedule congestion, injuries, or travel, you need a unique approach each time. Ultimately, our goal is to maximize player potential, maximize availability, and navigate the season as effectively as possible.”

Q4. Future of performance training

“I think we now have so much information at our fingertips that we’re actually becoming distracted. It’s very easy to keep adding new tools, new technologies, new ideas, thinking they will enhance performance—but often we’re just diluting what was already working. If we look back five years, we have to ask whether all these additions have really produced better outcomes. Distraction is becoming one of our biggest enemies. We can’t create more time with athletes, so if we keep adding more tasks, we’re just overloading both staff and players. I use the analogy of a backpack—if we keep adding more, we just end up tiring ourselves out. I believe the future is about simplification and consistency. If we reduce the number of ‘new’ inputs, we can apply things more consistently, and that’s what actually allows athletes to adapt and improve over time.”

Q5. Dream technology

“If I had unlimited resources, I would build a single, discreet device that captures everything—something like a continuous monitoring system that combines all the functions we currently separate across multiple tools. I want to see how an athlete moves from fatigue back to readiness, how travel impacts them, how they respond to both physical and mental stress over time. Right now, a lot of what we do is still a best guess, especially early in the training week. Ideally, we’d have continuous physiological data that helps us make better decisions day by day. The key is that it has to be simple—players don’t want to wear more technology, they want to wear less. At the moment, we risk turning athletes into robots by asking them to wear multiple devices. The goal should be one solution that gives us richer insights while staying completely in the background and allowing athletes to perform naturally.”

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This week we have the honor to interview again a group of sports executives to discuss the future of injury reduction and rehabilitation.

• Devan McConnell, the High performance director at Utah Mammoth (NHL).

• Raphaël Ravet, the Chief Commercial Officer of Myocene, a leading Belgium based sports technology company revolutionizing how muscle fatigue is measured and managed.

• Frederick Donnell, the Head Football Athletic Trainer at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV / NCAA).

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Devan, Raphaël and Frederick:

Q1. From Data to Decisions

🔹 Frederick Donnell

“We can get all the data we want, but at the end of the day, the real challenge isn’t on the practitioner side—it’s getting buy-in from the athletes. We can lead a horse to water, but we can’t make them drink it. You can show a player that their recovery score is low or their sleep is poor, but that doesn’t guarantee they’ll change their behavior. So for us, the missing piece in translating data into injury reduction isn’t necessarily better technology—it’s actually getting athletes to engage with and act on the information we’re giving them.”

🔹 Devan McConnell

“I think we’ve reached a point where we can measure almost everything in isolation—force plate metrics, HRV, sleep, workload—but what we still haven’t figured out is how all of these variables interact together. One metric might be down while another is up, and the workload might be stable, so how do we actually interpret that collectively? The real challenge is building a system that connects all these data points into something meaningful, rather than just looking at them separately. That ability to understand how the pieces of the puzzle interact is what’s still missing when it comes to truly driving injury reduction.”

🔹 Raphaël Ravet

“Today, most technologies are very good at quantifying outputs and external load—we can measure movement and workload extremely well. But where we still have a gap is in understanding the physiological response to that load, the internal side. Many of the tools we use are still influenced by athlete perception, motivation, or emotion, which introduces bias. What we really need are fully objective markers that track internal load reliably, without being affected by those factors. Improving that aspect—getting closer to true physiological response—is where I see the biggest opportunity to better support injury risk reduction and rehabilitation.”

Q2. Individualization vs. Scalability

🔹 Frederick Donnell

“When you’re managing large rosters, it really comes down to trusting your staff and making sure everyone is aligned. There are very few opportunities to truly work one-on-one with an athlete, especially during rehab, so you have to rely on your team to execute the plan properly. That means constant communication, making sure everyone understands the goals for each athlete, and staying organized across a large group. There’s no textbook that teaches you how to build that kind of trust—it comes from experience and ongoing collaboration. At scale, individualization isn’t about doing everything yourself, it’s about building a system where your staff can deliver it consistently.”

🔹 Devan McConnell

“For us, it starts with building structured systems and processes. We begin with a broad program based on key physiological principles and then segment players into groups using their data. From there, it progressively becomes more individualized—factoring in injury history, preferences, and performance needs. Eventually, especially in rehab or return-to-play, it becomes extremely specific to the individual and their situation. So the balance comes from layering—starting broad for efficiency, and then filtering down into deeper levels of individualization where it matters most.”

🔹 Raphaël Ravet

“From a product development standpoint, we have to design tools that respect the reality practitioners face—limited time and large groups of athletes. That’s why we focused on creating a single, actionable metric that provides immediate insight. It’s not meant to replace decision-making, but to support it quickly and efficiently. When you’re managing many athletes, you don’t have time to interpret complex datasets, so the information has to be simple, reliable, and individualized. The goal is to make it easier for practitioners to act in real time, without adding complexity to their workflow.”

Q3. Return-to-Play: Art vs. Science

🔹 Frederick Donnell

“In the past, a lot of return-to-play decisions were based on observation and judgment, but that’s not something I’m comfortable relying on alone. The last thing I want is to look at how someone is moving and make a call without objective data, because if that athlete gets reinjured, the consequences are real. What we’ve done is build protocols using sports science—force plates, testing, and data tracking—so we’re covering every base. That allows us to go to coaches with confidence and say whether a player is ready or not. For me, the goal is to reduce guesswork as much as possible by grounding decisions in measurable data.”

🔹 Devan McConnell

“I see return-to-play as a true combination of art and science. Data and technology are incredibly valuable for identifying red flags, quantifying progress, and supporting decisions, but the experience and intuition of skilled practitioners are just as important. We have clinicians with decades of experience whose ability to assess athletes is exceptional, and combining that with objective data creates the best outcomes. If you rely only on one side, you’re missing something critical. The balance may shift depending on the situation, but both elements need to be present to make the most informed decisions possible.”

🔹 Raphaël Ravet

“One key gap in return-to-play has been the ability to assess fatigue resistance, especially in comparing an injured limb to a healthy one. It’s not enough to restore maximum strength—fatigue resistance is often still compromised after injury. By measuring this, we can identify imbalances that weren’t previously visible and better understand whether an athlete is truly ready. Technology won’t replace the expertise or intuition of practitioners, but it adds another important dimension to the decision-making process. It’s essentially a new box to tick, helping make return-to-play more complete and more objective.”

Q4. The Next 3–5 Years of Innovation

🔹 Devan McConnell

“We’re already collecting more data than ever before, but the real question is how we make sense of it. Right now, we still struggle to connect the dots between different physiological systems and performance indicators. I’m interested to see whether AI can help us process that complexity—whether it can identify patterns, relationships, or even new questions that we haven’t considered yet. The potential is there, but it will depend on how effectively it can turn large amounts of data into meaningful insights.”

🔹 Frederick Donnell

“As new technologies emerge, we’re going to keep getting more data, but the real challenge is how we use it in a practical way. For me, it comes down to shifting from being reactive to proactive. Instead of responding after an injury happens, we need to use data to identify issues early and intervene before they become problems. For example, if we see asymmetries or changes in movement patterns, we can act immediately and start a conversation with the athlete. That’s where technology becomes valuable—when it helps us prevent issues rather than just manage them after the fact.”

🔹 Raphaël Ravet

“AI has strong potential not only in injury risk reduction but also in optimizing performance. Beyond identifying risks, it could help predict when an athlete will reach their peak performance within a training cycle, allowing practitioners to better plan and periodize training. This shifts the focus from just avoiding injury to maximizing performance outcomes. In the coming years, the biggest impact will likely come from tools that can integrate data and provide predictive insights that are both actionable and reliable.”

Q5. Alignment Between Practitioners and Vendors

🔹 Frederick Donnell

“One of the biggest challenges with new technologies is time. If a tool requires 10 or 15 minutes per athlete, it’s just not realistic in our environment. We’re managing large numbers of athletes, and there’s very little opportunity for extended one-on-one sessions. That means tools need to be efficient and allow athletes to be somewhat self-sufficient, while we still oversee the process. If it doesn’t fit into our daily workflow, no matter how good it is, it’s not going to be used.”

🔹 Devan McConnell

“From a practitioner standpoint, time constraints and athlete motivation are major factors. Athletes have limited time and are focused primarily on performance and competition, so if a tool doesn’t clearly impact their ability to perform, it’s difficult to get consistent engagement. Even if we believe strongly in the value of a technology, adoption becomes a challenge if it doesn’t align with the athlete’s priorities or fit seamlessly into their routine. That’s something vendors really need to understand when designing solutions.”

🔹 Raphaël Ravet

“From the vendor side, it’s critical to design products that fit real-world conditions and workflows. Early on, we worked very closely with practitioners and early adopters to refine both the technology and the protocols around it. Having a scientifically valid tool isn’t enough—it has to be usable and actionable in daily practice. That’s why collaboration is essential. By putting the product directly in the hands of practitioners and learning from their feedback, we were able to build something that aligns with their needs and constraints.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Dhia Amara, the lead S&C coach of CF Montreal, an MLS team.

Dhia Amara is a Tunisian-born strength and conditioning specialist who grew up in Montreal, where he developed an extensive academic and professional foundation in exercise physiology. After earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, he spent five years working with varsity teams and Team Canada basketball, while also gaining experience in research at local hospitals. His career took an international turn in 2020 when his online presentations caught the attention of a professional football team in Saudi Arabia. He spent several years in Saudi Arabia’s top division and later worked with the Saudi Olympics to help athletes prepare for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

Currently serving as the Lead Strength and Conditioning Coach for CF Montreal, Amara returned to his hometown after being recruited for his specialized philosophy on player development. His approach is heavily rooted in an “outcome approach,” focusing on high-performance metrics such as deceleration capacity, isometric work, and eccentric strength to ensure athletes are robust enough to handle the demands of elite soccer. Beyond physical training, he acts as a central figure in the performance department, bridging the gap between medical, nutritional, and coaching staff while advocating for the increased individualization of player loads through the integration of wearable technology and data analysis.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• His background and what led him to CF Montreal.

• His role at CF Montreal, and what a typical day looks like.

• His approach towards S&C, and innovation.

• How he sees the world S&C in elite sports evolving in the coming years.

• Which technologies he would build if he had unlimited resources.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Dhia located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Dhia:

Q1. Tell me about your background and what led you to CF Montreal?

“I was born in Tunisia and then I grew up in Montreal... I did all my school and internships here. I did a bachelor degree and a master degree in exercise physiology... I touched base on many things like rehab, management, and performance... I even worked in a hospital to work with researchers. I worked for five years with the varsity team... and I did a couple of camps with Team Canada basketball. In 2020, during COVID, I started to do conferences online. A person responsible from a team in Saudi Arabia attended the online conference... He liked my philosophy and he offered me a contract in Saudi Arabia. I went to Saudi Arabia to work for a football division one team for two years, then I got an offer from the Saudi Olympics to prepare for the Olympic Games in Paris. Then CF Montreal contacted me... they were looking for someone who can help them to develop the physical qualities of the players... Jill Gagan, who was the first person with whom I did my internship, knew me and we stayed in contact. After four years and a half in Saudi Arabia, I decided to come back home.”

Q2. What is your role at CF Montreal? What does your typical day look like?

“Basically, we don’t have a typical day, but the days they sometimes look alike a bit. We start in the morning around 7:30 or 8:00 AM with the staff... I start to see my planning for the day. Slowly the players start to come, so we start to check their readiness—who is sick, who is overloaded. The medical team tells us about the players who are in or out, and I change my plan if I have to. In the gym, I help the guys prepare; some have individual work, some have core work for the team. We have a meeting with the coaching staff, then we do our practice. Some training we do before or after practice, depending on the quality we would like to work, like speed or hypertrophy. By 2:00 PM we are done with the players... then we have another meeting with the medical staff to see what happened during the day and talk about the next day. When we don’t have big training sessions, we have more time to analyze and talk about what we want to do next month.”

Q3. What is your approach towards S&C and innovation?

“I don’t have a magical recipe... I call it an outcome approach. I have something I want to improve, I know I need to put this amount of dose for that athlete, and I manage through the week to give them that dose. We focus a lot on deceleration work... we use a lot of work on the field to improve these qualities. For example, we have a big downhill at the club that we use for overspeed because gravity pulls you, so you use less energy to reach high speeds. We expose the athlete to something bigger than what they can get in training or a game... so when they are exposed to it, they feel it is normal. Regarding innovation, the goal is not to collect as many useful tools as we can, but to select what fits our philosophy. I am sticking to my philosophy and always look for tools that can improve it. If it is not solving a problem, then what is it for? I don’t want to buy something I’m going to use only once; I want something I need every week or every two weeks.”

Q4. How do you see the world of S&C in elite sports evolving in the coming years?

“Many football players now have their personal coaches, and it’s going to become more and more [common], so I feel we have to collaborate with them. The goal is to establish trust between me, his coach, and him because I am the only one who knows the total load he underwent. We will reach a state where we have a lot of importance because we are the ones who understand the language of the coach, the nutritionist, and the medical staff—we are the connective tissue of all the departments. Our department will become big, maybe five people minimum in every organization, because to individualize all the work and respond to all the duties, you need more people. We are getting into an era where everything is individualized—even collective football training—because some players exceed their capacity during games and need to be managed. It’s going to be individualized every day, everywhere, and this is the new era of S&C.”

Q5. If you could build any new technologies and had unlimited resources, what would you build? Why?

“What I would do is something that I was thinking about for one year now... many athletes now wear Whoop. I wish we had a tool where Whoop is connected to the GPS. Now we have different data from everywhere—wellness questionnaires, HRV, GPS, force plates—and we have to interpret all this and convince the coach. I feel with AI, it could take the GPS load, gym load, sleep, and everything, and in the morning give me a number that says ‘this player is 70% ready for today’s training.’ It would take all the data, summarize it, and give me a score with recommendations so I can decide quickly. It’s not about adding more; it’s about making sense of what we have already. I have already a lot; I just need something that helps me to decide faster.”

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This week we had the honor to interview again Dr. Ron Dick, associate professor of sports marketing at Duquesne University in the school of business. Ron also worked for 20 years in sports, including 15 years in the NBA with the Sixers and the Nets, and then five years in the NCAA.

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• The NFL draft in Pittsburgh April 23-25 with 750,000 additional people expected.

• NCAA updates: The transfer portal, March Madness.

• WNBA updates.

• NBA & NHL playoffs,

• MLB season debut.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ron located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Ron:

🏈 NFL Draft in Pittsburgh

“It is going to be the new Woodstock. The original Woodstock had around 400,000 to 500,000 people, and when you look at what happened in Detroit with about 750,000 people and over $200 million in new revenue, I expect all of that here in Pittsburgh. There will be more people here than at any point in the city’s history, so just brace for impact. This has really become a pilgrimage—people just show up to be part of it—and because the NFL is a 12-month-a-year league, there’s really no offseason, which is why the draft has exploded into something none of us have ever seen before.”

🎓 NCAA (Transfer Portal & March Madness)

“The transfer portal has really turned into free agency—there’s a lot of movement, and players can go to the highest bidder without sitting out, which is a huge shift from how college sports used to operate. The challenge right now is that there still doesn’t seem to be much structure or formal contracts, so it’s evolving in real time and changing the entire landscape. And with March Madness, when you have situations where emotions run high, especially with Hall of Fame coaches, it’s important to handle things the right way—if you’re going to apologize, use the person’s name, because at that level, everyone should know better.”

🏀 WNBA

“The new financial structure in the WNBA is a major step forward. You’re looking at a minimum salary now at $300,000, up from $66,000, and the average salary jumping from about $120,000 to $600,000. There’s a $7 million salary cap, super max deals at $1.4 million, and even systems like a core player designation, similar to a franchise tag. I don’t see how this is a bad thing—the players are happy, the revenue is clearly there, and after nearly 30 years, the league’s growth and team valuations are finally catching up with where they should be.”

🏀🏒 NBA & NHL Playoffs

“Late March and early April is always one of the most exciting times in sports because everything is coming together at once—the regular seasons are wrapping up, playoff spots are being decided, and you’ve got a lot of strong teams across both the NBA and NHL. Injuries, momentum, and matchups are all playing a role, so there’s a lot of uncertainty about who’s going to make a run. That’s what makes it such a fun and exciting time to be a sports fan.”

⚾ MLB Season Debut

“You’ve got a 19-year-old signing a $140 million contract for nine years without ever playing a major league game, and that’s what makes this so risky. Seven teams passed on him in the draft, so clearly there were questions, and this kind of deal is very uncharacteristic, especially for a team like Pittsburgh. It caught the league and a lot of fans off guard, but at the same time there’s real excitement about his potential, so now the spotlight is on him to see if he can actually live up to that investment.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Frederick Donnell, the Head Football Athletic Trainer at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV), an NCAA team.

Frederick Donnell is the Head Football Athletic Trainer at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), where he oversees all aspects of sports medicine, rehabilitation, and return-to-play decision-making for student-athletes. He began his career after discovering a passion for athletic training during an internship at Florida Atlantic University, before earning his master’s degree from the University of South Florida. Donnell gained valuable experience across both collegiate and professional sports, including roles with the Atlanta Falcons, Coastal Carolina, and the University of Central Florida.

Known for his evidence-based approach and emphasis on collaboration, he works closely with strength and conditioning staff, coaches, and sports science teams to ensure athlete health, performance, and long-term development, with the ultimate goal of helping players safely reach the next level.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• His journey to the NCAA.

• His role at UNLV.

• His approach towards training, S&C and innovation.

• How he sees the world of S&C evolving in the next 5 years.

• How sports medicine and S&C tend to intertwine.

• The impact of AI in the world of elite sports.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Frederick located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Frederick:

Q1. His Background

“Back in undergrad at FAU, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I had about a year left and was trying to figure it out, so I ended up interning with the sports medicine staff—and that’s where everything changed. I fell in love with the profession.”

“After FAU, I went to the University of South Florida for my master’s, then spent time with the Atlanta Falcons as a seasonal assistant, Coastal Carolina covering football and baseball, and then four years at UCF before coming here to UNLV.”

“It’s funny because the people I interned under back then are now in top roles in the NFL, and to see everyone grow together in this profession has been really special.”

Q2. His Role at UNLV

“You can almost call me a medical supervisor for the program—I tend to have the final say on whether a student-athlete can participate in practices, games, or workouts.”

“I’m essentially their voice when communicating with the strength staff and coaching staff about what they can and can’t do.”

“I oversee all rehab and treatment, and you can almost consider me the medical director of the staff, especially when it comes to return-to-play decisions.”

“My ultimate goal is to get these guys back on the field in a safe but timely manner—and hopefully help them reach the next level and play on Sundays.”

Q3. His Approach to Training, S&C, and Innovation

“I teach my staff four key points: inhibit, lengthen, activate, and integrate—that’s the foundation of how we approach rehab and training.”

“We want to calm down overactive muscles, improve range of motion, then activate and finally integrate movements that are specific to their sport and position.”

“I’m not going to have a defensive back doing offensive line drills—everything we do is tailored to the individual because that creates purpose and buy-in.”

“Everything we do here is evidence-based—we’re not going to do something the same way for 20 years without adapting to new research.”

“We’re constantly looking at data and using tools like force plates and force frames to make informed decisions instead of just guessing when an athlete is ready.”

Q4. The Future of S&C (Next 5 Years)

“There’s a lot more research now being done in the weight room compared to 20 years ago—back then, people were just repeating the same methods without much data.”

“Now strength and conditioning is becoming much more evidence-based, with smarter programming that avoids overtraining and looks at long-term development.”

“The best programs today are built by professionals who are actually developing structured plans—not just pushing athletes harder for the sake of it.”

“One concern I have is athletes having too much say in their programming—they should have input, but ultimately the experts in the weight room should lead.”

Q5. The Interplay Between Sports Medicine and S&C

“The triangle of communication between sports medicine, strength and conditioning, and coaching staff is absolutely essential.”

“What I communicate to the strength staff and coaches has to be identical—everyone needs to be on the same page.”

“If the strength staff sees progress in the weight room, that needs to be communicated so we can progress the athlete safely.”

“We never want a student-athlete to be confused about what they can or can’t do—that’s why communication is everything.”

Q6. The Impact of AI in Elite Sports

“AI definitely has a role in healthcare, but I’m not worried about a robot taking over my job—it’s more about how it can assist us.”

“If you didn’t write a note, it never happened—so using AI for note-taking and documentation can save a huge amount of time.”

“There are also opportunities to use AI for building rehab programs, which can be very time-consuming.”

“If AI can help us manage our time better—especially in a hands-on profession like ours—that’s where it becomes really valuable.”

“We need to put our egos aside and ask, ‘How can we use AI to be more efficient and better at our jobs?’”

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This week we have the honor to interview again a group of MLS sports performance executives to talk about the latest trends in the MLS, the world of sports performance and rehabilitation.

• Michael Messer, the head of rehabilitation at Nashville SC (MLS).

• Darcy Norman, the Director of Performance at Chicago Fire FC (MLS).

• Karam Al-Hamdani, the Director of Sports Medicine and Head Athletic Trainer at the CF Montreal (MLS).

• Jason Han, the former head of rehabilitation at LAFC (MLS). Jason is also the head of business development in North America at OneBase health.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Michael, Darcy, Jason and Karam:

🧠 Q1. The Next Competitive Edge in the MLS

Darcy Norman

“I think it’s data and information systems. The groups that are willing to take on the challenge of implementing technology — and more importantly, building the systems and processes around it — are going to have a serious advantage. It’s a ton of work, but if you can get good data and turn it into meaningful information, it allows you to adapt faster to trends, league demands, and the global game. Ultimately, better information leads to better decisions and faster progress.”

“From a pure resourcing standpoint, MLS is still behind Europe. Some clubs here have very small or even non-existent departments compared to what you see overseas. But the teams that recognize this gap and embrace data and technology as a way to create an edge are the ones that will benefit the most.”

Jason Han

“The data is incredible, especially now with AI — you can process information from your own team and across the world at light speed. But we’re in this in-between stage. You can have all the data in the world, but if you don’t have enough people to implement it and build relationships with players, it doesn’t matter. The real competitive edge will come from combining data with the human side — and that requires investment in people.”

Karam Al Hamdani

“I really think the next competitive advantage is the creation of true R&D departments within clubs. You can have the best technology and AI systems, but if you don’t have dedicated people whose job is to interpret that data and turn it into meaningful, actionable insights for players and staff, then data is just data. The value comes from translating it into something usable.”

Michael Messer

“I’m really interested to see what happens after the World Cup in the U.S. It could shift resources, interest, and even the talent pipeline. In the U.S., we’re competing with other sports for top athletes, unlike many European countries. So the next edge might also come from improving our academy systems and attracting better athletes into soccer earlier.”

🤝 Q2. Collaboration Between Departments

Karam Al Hamdani

“Collaboration has evolved massively. When I started, it was basically one trainer, one assistant, and one fitness coach doing everything. Now you have full departments — medical, performance, analytics — all with strong opinions and ideas. The key is constant communication and having meaningful meetings with clear agendas and actionable outcomes. That’s what creates true synergy.”

“You have to be prepared, but also flexible. No matter how much planning you do, there will always be curveballs. So best-in-class collaboration is about preparation, communication, and the ability to adapt in real time.”

Darcy Norman

“As clubs grow, it becomes harder to keep everyone aligned. You might have more expertise, but also more complexity. So you need a really clear mission, vision, and values. Otherwise, you waste time and create friction. Collaboration today is about being interdisciplinary, efficient, and respectful of time — because if not, burnout becomes a real risk.”

Jason Han

“It really comes down to leadership. You can have five or ten smart people in a room, but if no one is truly leading and creating structure, things fall apart. You need clear processes, accountability, and clarity on who is responsible for what. At the same time, you have to stay flexible because in sport, things change instantly.”

Michael Messer

“What you’re starting to see is a better understanding across departments of how each role contributes to the bigger picture. But that only works if there’s strong leadership at the top to align everyone toward a common goal. Whether it’s rehab, performance, coaching, or analytics, everyone needs to be working toward the same vision.”

⚡ Q3. Athlete Fatigue (Physical & Psychological)

Darcy Norman

“Fatigue is a massive question — and I don’t think it’s ever fully solvable. It starts with leadership, culture, and good planning. Monitoring tools help, but they all have limitations. For example, with GPS, we thought we understood workload, but then realized we were missing 30–40% of what players were actually doing.”

“At the end of the day, the most important tool is still communication. Having honest conversations with players — ‘How are you feeling? Are you ready today?’ — is often more valuable than any piece of technology. The data helps guide you, but it doesn’t replace that human interaction.”

Jason Han

“What players do outside the facility is a huge, often untapped part of fatigue management. You can control training, recovery, and protocols inside the building, but you also need to educate players on their choices outside — sleep, activity, lifestyle. Ultimately, it comes down to helping them understand what they truly want and aligning their behaviors with that.”

Karam Al Hamdani

“You can have all the tools — Oura rings, Whoop, questionnaires — but it always comes back to honest conversations. You combine how the player feels physically, how they feel mentally, what the data says, and what you see clinically, and then you make a decision.”

“Fatigue today isn’t just physical — it’s travel, time zones, emotional stress, performance outcomes. You take all of that, mix it together, and try to make the best possible call. But communication is always the key.”

Michael Messer

“For me, communication is always the first line. A simple daily RPE or honest conversation can be incredibly powerful. The challenge is taking all the available data and turning it into a simple, confident decision — especially when that decision might impact training or game selection.”

“There’s so much technology out there, but the real challenge is using it consistently and meaningfully. And ultimately, you need the coach to trust the information you’re presenting if it’s going to influence decisions.”

🔮 Q4. Future of the MLS Athlete

Darcy Norman

“As academies improve and the talent pool grows, the overall quality of the MLS athlete will continue to rise. From a performance standpoint, I’d like to see players become more ‘pound-for-pound’ strong — not necessarily bigger, but more powerful and efficient relative to their body weight.”

“With better players and increased competition, everything speeds up — decision-making, intensity, execution. Players adapt to that environment, and it elevates the entire level of the game.”

Karam Al Hamdani

“I think the future MLS athlete will be smarter and more educated. With better academy systems and more resources in areas like performance and nutrition, players will develop stronger decision-making skills and a deeper understanding of the game.”

Jason Han

“As the quality of teammates and competition improves, the overall level rises. But I think a big shift will be players treating their bodies like precision-managed systems — combining objective data with their internal drive and passion for the sport. That balance will create better athletes.”

Michael Messer

“The level of the athlete will continue to improve across physical, technical, and cognitive areas. Physically, MLS players are not far off globally, but where you see the gap is at the very top end — the elite of the elite.”

“The biggest opportunity for growth is probably on the technical and tactical side — developing smarter players, stronger identities, and more refined styles of play through better academy development.”

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This week we had the honor to interview a group of NCAA sports performance experts.

• Dr. John DeWitt, Director of applied sports science in the athletic department and a faculty member, Rice University (NCAA team).

• Paul Silvestri, Sr director of sports health and performance, University of Florida football (NCAA team).

• Drew Lukes, Senior PT at Duke University and the head of sports science, Duke university’s women soccer team (NCAA team).

• Tyler Friedrich, Associate Athletics Director, Applied Performance at Stanford University (NCAA team).

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the following questions:

Q1. Time Management

In a high-performance NCAA environment where demands are constant, how do you personally and professionally manage your time? Are there specific systems, tools, or habits that help you stay effective and avoid burnout?

Q2. Athlete Fatigue (Physical & Psychological)

Fatigue management is becoming increasingly complex. What methods or technologies do you rely on to monitor both physical and psychological fatigue in your athletes? And how do those insights actually influence your day-to-day decision-making?

Q3. Lessons Learned

Looking back on your career so far, what are some of the most important lessons you’ve learned? And if you had the opportunity to do something differently earlier on, what would it be—and why?

Q4. March Madness Predictions

With March Madness around the corner, who do you see as the team to beat this year? What stands out to you about their performance, preparation, or overall structure?

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

You can leave a comment by clicking on the button below:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with them:

Q1. Time Management

Dr. John DeWitt

“In our environment, there’s always another question to answer or another dataset to explore, and if you’re not careful, you can spend all your time chasing analysis. What I’ve learned is that you have to weigh the value of the question against the time it will take to answer it. If the insight isn’t going to directly help improve performance or reduce injury risk, then it’s okay to say no. That discipline is critical—otherwise, you’ll find yourself stuck behind a computer all day without actually moving the needle for your athletes.”

Paul Silvestri

“One of the biggest lessons for me in managing time has been empowering my staff. I don’t set their schedules—one of my assistants handles that for the entire group. It gives them ownership, it builds trust, and it helps them create balance in their own lives. And that balance is huge, because when people feel good outside of work, they’re much more effective inside of it. For me personally, I try to recognize that there are going to be really busy stretches, but when things slow down, I make it a priority to invest that time back into my family and reset.”

Tyler Friedrich

“A huge key to managing time effectively is being extremely diligent with your front-end work. How you collect your data, how you store it, how clean and organized it is—those things determine how efficient you’ll be later. If you build strong systems and dashboards upfront, you can answer a lot of questions almost instantly instead of digging through hours of data. At the same time, we really emphasize taking advantage of downtime. In college athletics, there are moments—like breaks in the schedule—where you actually can step away, and we encourage our staff to use those moments because they don’t always come around.”

Drew Lukes

“One of the realities of working in this setting is that your time is not always your own. You can have a perfectly planned day, and within seconds, something urgent comes up and everything changes. So for me, it’s about being what I’d call ‘rigidly flexible.’ I try to block off time for things that matter—like working out or taking care of myself—because I know that directly impacts how well I can take care of others. It doesn’t always go as planned, but having that structure in place gives me a better chance to stay consistent.”

Q2. Athlete Fatigue (Physical & Psychological)

Paul Silvestri

“We use a lot of tools—GPS, force plates, different monitoring systems—but one of the biggest changes we’ve made recently was simply adjusting our schedule. Moving to morning practices gave our athletes more time during the day to recover, handle school, and just live their lives. The feedback has been incredible. Guys are telling us they feel more normal, less rushed, and more in control of their day. That psychological piece is huge. You can measure everything in the world, but if athletes don’t have the time and space to manage their lives, those tools only go so far.”

Drew Lukes

“For us, monitoring fatigue is really about building a complete picture. We use wellness questionnaires, but we fully understand their limitations. So we combine that subjective data with objective measures like force plate outputs, GPS data, and other performance markers. It’s not about relying on one metric—it’s about layering them together to create a profile of where the athlete is at. And beyond the data, a big part of it is education and trust. Athletes need to understand why we’re asking these questions and believe that being honest won’t negatively impact them.”

Tyler Friedrich

“We have more data than ever—force plates, GPS, wellness surveys—all feeding into our daily decision-making. But without strong relationships and proper education, that data doesn’t mean much. Sometimes the most valuable insight still comes from simply asking an athlete how they feel. And what’s interesting is that performance doesn’t always align with the numbers. You can have an athlete put up the best performance of their career on a day when their metrics aren’t great. That’s why our job is to use the data to inform decisions, not dictate them, and to always keep the bigger picture in mind.”

Dr. John DeWitt

“When we talk about fatigue, I think it’s important to distinguish between acute fatigue—what an athlete is feeling from recent activity—and chronic fatigue that builds over time across a season. The same data can help us identify both, but the interpretation changes depending on the question we’re asking. Ultimately, though, the data is just the starting point. When we see something change, that should trigger a deeper investigation—talking to the athlete, understanding context, and figuring out what’s really going on. And when it comes to psychological fatigue, we’re still largely relying on subjective tools like questionnaires. We don’t yet have a truly objective way to measure that piece.”

Q3. Lessons Learned

Dr. John DeWitt

“One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that coaches and athletes aren’t interested in the complexity of your analysis—they want to know what it means for them. Early on, I would get excited about the process and want to walk people through all the technical steps. But over time, I realized that what really matters is delivering a clear, actionable recommendation. The process is important for us, but the outcome is what drives impact.”

Drew Lukes

“We have a saying that really stuck with me: we take what we do very seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Earlier in my career, I would take things very personally when something didn’t go as planned, and it would affect how I showed up day to day. Learning to separate those things—to still care deeply about the work but not let it define me—has been a huge shift and has made me a better practitioner.”

Paul Silvestri

“Early in my career, when something went wrong—whether it was an injury or a rehab setback—I would internalize it and take it very personally. Over time, you realize that even when you do everything right, things can still go wrong. That’s just part of the profession. The key is learning how to respond, how to adapt, and how to keep moving forward without letting those moments define you.”

Tyler Friedrich

“One concept that’s really shaped my approach is having strong convictions, but holding them loosely. I believe in what I do, and I’m confident in our systems, but I’m always open to evolving those beliefs based on new research, new experiences, or new perspectives. As you grow in your career, that mindset helps reduce pressure and allows you to be more adaptable, which ultimately leads to better outcomes.”

Q4. March Madness Predictions

Paul Silvestri

“If you had asked me before last night, I would’ve confidently said Florida—but after that loss, I think Arizona really stands out. They’re one of the most complete teams I’ve seen this year. They have a great mix of experienced players and young talent, and they seem to be playing really well together at the right time.”

Dr. John DeWitt

“I haven’t followed every team closely, but I’ll go out on a limb and say Houston. They’re playing in a familiar environment for this next stretch, which can be a big advantage, and they seem to be well-positioned to make a deep run.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Luis Justiniano, a Sales Director - elite sports at Qualisys, a leading provider of precision motion capture and 3D positioning tracking systems. Luis is also joined by Oskar Lindh, Product manager at Qualisys.

Qualisys is the maker of OnTraq by Qualisys, which brings lab-quality, video-based biomechanical analysis to elite sports teams without complexity, helping teams establish and monitor consistent athlete baselines. Built on Qualisys’ proven foundation of biomechanical accuracy, OnTraq makes research-grade movement analysis accessible to any staff member while fitting naturally into regular training routines.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here is a look at OnTraq software:

Here is below a picture of the OnTraq’s dashboard:

Here is a video explaining how OnTraq works:

📝Show Notes: During the interview with Luis Justiniano and Oskar Lindh, we discussed their backgrounds and the evolution of their work at Qualisys, a company with more than 30 years of expertise in motion capture and biomechanics. They explained how their product, OnTrack, translates this legacy into a practical solution for elite sports by combining high-accuracy data with ease of use. Designed to fit seamlessly into training environments, OnTraq enables teams to quickly collect baseline biomechanical data, monitor athletes over time, and generate actionable insights without disrupting workflows. The platform addresses key use cases such as return-to-play decision-making, performance tracking, and even scouting, allowing practitioners to identify movement deviations, track progress, and support data-driven decisions.

We also explored the core benefits and differentiation of their solution, including its speed, accuracy, and ability to deliver immediate feedback, as well as its subscription-based business model that lowers adoption barriers by bundling hardware, software, and support. Luis and Oskar highlighted the rapid growth of the sports biomechanics and markerless tracking market, driven by increasing demand for athlete data and broader adoption beyond academia. Looking ahead, they emphasized their ambition to become the standard for baseline testing in team sports, with a strong focus on continuous product development, deeper integrations, and expanding partnerships with professional teams to scale globally and refine the platform based on real-world feedback.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Luis and Oskar:

Q1. Tell me about your background

Luis Justiniano explains:

“I’m the Sales Director for Elite Sports in the Americas, where I lead the team responsible for driving adoption of our OnTraq solution across North America. My role focuses on working closely with professional teams and organizations to understand their needs and help them integrate motion capture technology into their performance workflows.”

Oskar Lindh adds:

“I come from a background as a UX designer, where my focus has been on translating user needs and requirements into valuable, intuitive products. Over time, I transitioned into a broader role as product manager, where I now oversee the full lifecycle of the product—from design and development to launch—ensuring everything fits together and delivers real value to users.”

Q2. Tell me about your company and product

“Qualisys has more than 30 years of experience in motion capture technology, particularly within biomechanics, where we’ve built a strong reputation for delivering highly accurate systems. With OnTraq, we’ve taken that deep expertise and transformed it into a product designed specifically for sports environments.”

“OnTraq is built to provide a flexible, practical way to collect baseline biomechanical data and deliver immediate feedback to coaches and practitioners. It allows teams to capture data quickly, accurately, and reliably, while monitoring athletes throughout the season.”

“What we’re really doing is combining the ease of use you’d expect from consumer-grade tools with the high-quality data and precision of advanced motion capture systems. The goal is to make it simple to generate actionable insights without the complexity that traditionally comes with motion capture.”

Q3. What are the main use cases you are addressing in elite sports?

“One of the primary use cases is supporting return-to-play decisions. Teams can use the system to collect objective movement data during rehabilitation, helping them define clearer protocols and make more informed decisions about when an athlete is ready to return.”

“Another major use case is performance tracking—monitoring how athletes progress against their baseline over time. By testing more frequently, teams can identify trends, detect deviations, and better understand how training is impacting performance.”

“We also see applications in scouting and player development, where teams can evaluate athletes across different levels and use the data to help them improve. Ultimately, the goal is to enable regular, efficient testing that provides both immediate feedback and long-term insights.”

Q4. What are the benefits for teams to use your product?

“One of the biggest benefits is speed and efficiency. Teams can test athletes in less than five minutes, often in under a minute per player, without disrupting their regular training workflow.”

“At the same time, they’re getting high-quality, accurate data along with actionable insights. Coaches and practitioners can immediately access key metrics and use them to make faster, more informed decisions.”

“By building baselines and tracking changes over time, teams gain a much clearer understanding of athlete performance and movement patterns. This is particularly valuable for both performance optimization and injury management, as it allows them to detect asymmetries or deviations early and respond accordingly.”

Q5. What are your competitive advantages?

“Our competitive advantage comes from the combination of speed, ease of use, and data quality. We’re able to deliver high-precision biomechanical insights in a way that’s fast and practical for everyday use.”

“We also bring more than 35 years of experience in biomechanics, which gives us a strong foundation in accuracy and credibility. This isn’t just a standalone tool—we provide a complete ecosystem that includes hardware, software, data processing, and trend analysis dashboards.”

“What really differentiates us is our ability to simplify complex motion capture workflows without compromising on quality. We’re making advanced biomechanics accessible to teams in a way that hasn’t been possible before.”

Q6. Tell me about your business model

“Our goal is to make motion capture technology more accessible, which is why we use a subscription-based model. This allows teams to get started without the large upfront investment typically associated with these systems.”

“The subscription includes everything—hardware, software, installation, training, and ongoing support—so teams have a complete solution from day one.”

“We offer different tiers, such as bronze, silver, and gold, depending on the organization’s needs. It’s typically structured as a two-year commitment, but we’ve built flexibility into the model. If circumstances change, teams can return the system, which reduces the risk and makes adoption easier.”

Q7. What is your take on the state of the sports markerless market?

“The market is clearly growing, driven by an increasing demand for player data and a deeper understanding of how athletes move. Biomechanics, in particular, has expanded significantly—it’s no longer limited to academic research but is now widely adopted across sports organizations.”

“We’re seeing a broader trend where data is being collected across the entire athlete lifecycle—from games to training sessions and rehabilitation. This reflects a shift toward more data-driven decision-making in sports.”

“At the same time, there’s a strong need to make these technologies more accessible and practical for coaches and practitioners. That’s where solutions like ours come in—bridging the gap between advanced biomechanics and everyday usability.”

Q8. What are your plans for the next 12 months?

“Over the next 12 months, our focus is on continuing to develop and improve the product by incorporating feedback from teams and users. We want to ensure that what we’re building truly aligns with the needs of different sports and organizations.”

“Our broader ambition is to become the standard for baseline testing in team sports. While we’ve already built a strong foundation by simplifying workflows and maintaining accuracy, there are still many features in development.”

“This includes deeper integrations, enhanced data insights, and expanded capabilities that will further improve usability and value. At the same time, we’re looking to scale through partnerships and build more case studies with professional teams, helping us demonstrate impact and grow adoption globally.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing again Brijesh Patel, Associate Athletic Director, Director of Athletic Performance at Quinnipiac University (NCAA).

Brijesh Patel is the Associate Athletic Director and Director of Athletic Performance at Quinnipiac University, where he built and now leads the school’s comprehensive strength and conditioning program after becoming its first full-time strength coach in 2008. A University of Connecticut graduate, Patel began his career with early hands-on mentorship under respected strength coaches and gained experience at both major Division I and mid-major programs, shaping a philosophy centered on reducing injury risk, developing better overall athletes, and educating them for long-term growth.

At Quinnipiac, he oversees basketball and ice hockey while managing staff, budget, return-to-play protocols, and department culture. Known for his movement-based training approach, emphasis on stress adaptation and durability, and balance of qualitative coaching with practical performance metrics, Patel has established himself as a respected leader in collegiate athletic performance.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During the interview with Brijesh we discussed his journey into athletic performance and the experiences that shaped his philosophy as a coach and leader. He shared how he discovered his passion for strength and conditioning in high school, created his own pathway through internships and mentorship at the University of Connecticut and Holy Cross, and ultimately became the first full-time strength coach at Quinnipiac University. Over time, he built the program from the ground up and developed a clear performance philosophy centered on three pillars: reducing injury risk, developing better overall athletes, and educating them. He also explained how his role today balances hands-on coaching with department leadership, emphasizing accountability, respect, and work ethic as cultural non-negotiables for both athletes and staff.

We also discussed his movement-based approach to training, his focus on building durable athletes by progressively dosing stress in the offseason, and why he believes resilience comes from systematically increasing an athlete’s capacity to tolerate workload. In the return-to-play process, he highlighted the importance of matching team workload to avoid deconditioning and addressing the psychological component of injury recovery. On the topic of technology, Brijesh shared that while he values data and tools, he prioritizes coaching instincts, relationship-building, and simple volume tracking—such as “time on feet”—to guide decisions. Overall, the conversation highlighted his practical, disciplined, and athlete-centered approach to long-term performance development.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Brijesh located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Brijesh:

1️⃣ Background & Career Path

On discovering his passion early:

“I knew I wanted to be a strength coach when I was a senior in high school. Not a lot of people know what they want to do at 17 or 18 years old, but I had a fascination for training. I loved athletics, I loved sports, and I loved the mindset that you can improve — that you can get better. I saw how manipulating exercises and variables throughout an offseason could lead to completely different results, and that just fascinated me.”

On choosing impact over playing:

“I realized I wasn’t the best athlete and probably wasn’t going to compete at the next level. But what I really wanted to do was impact other people — help them reach their dreams. That realization shaped everything for me. If I couldn’t compete at the highest level as an athlete, I could still contribute at a high level by developing others.”

On creating his own path:

“Back then there weren’t formal internships everywhere like there are today. So I had to create my own journey. I would ask questions, observe, look things up if I didn’t know them, and come back with answers. I think the coaches were testing whether I was truly committed. That process built my foundation — not just technically, but mentally.”

On forming his philosophy:

“Through those experiences I started to formulate my philosophy: number one, reduce the chance of injury. Number two, make better athletes. And number three, educate them. How we do that can vary — it depends on the sport, the research, the resources, the technology — but those three pillars stay the same.”

On persistence and leadership mindset:

“If you want to be successful, that’s not normal. You’ve got to be able to do things in an uncommon way if you want to accomplish uncommon things. I don’t think I’m normal in how I think or operate — and I try to teach my athletes that. If you want uncommon results, you have to behave differently.”

2️⃣ Role at Quinnipiac

On building the program:

“I was Quinnipiac’s first full-time strength and conditioning coach. When I started in 2008, I essentially built the program from scratch. It was just me at first. Now we have a staff of four full-time coaches, two weight rooms, and we oversee every team year-round.”

On balancing performance and administration:

“My coaching responsibilities haven’t really changed over time. I still program for basketball and hockey, I’m involved in every return-to-play process, and I work with them offseason and in season. From an administrative standpoint, I manage the staff and the budget, but I’ve built systems in place so that I can still coach at a high level.”

On culture and non-negotiables:

“We talk about having non-negotiables. Our three non-negotiables are accountability, respect, and work ethic. That’s what we expect from student-athletes, but I expect the exact same thing from my staff. If we’re going to hold athletes to a standard, we have to hold ourselves to that same standard first.”

On eliminating excuses:

“We don’t make excuses. We don’t complain about lack of funding, lack of technology, or limitations. If we as leaders start making excuses, it gives the athlete permission to make excuses. And that’s something we can’t allow culturally.”

3️⃣ Training Philosophy & Durability

On movement-based development:

“We take a movement-based approach. Everything we do is designed to enhance the athlete’s ability to move more efficiently. We work primarily with skill-based sports like basketball and hockey, where you can be very skilled without being physically developed. Our job is to enhance their movement capacity so their skill can express itself at a higher level.”

On driving capacity instead of minimal dose:

“I’m not a big fan of the term ‘minimal effective dose,’ especially in the offseason. In the offseason we have to drive stress. We have to raise the athlete’s capacity to tolerate stress so that when the season comes — with school stress, social stress, financial stress, and physical stress — they can handle it.”

On stress and adaptation:

“You can’t tolerate stress unless you dose stress. That’s one of the biggest principles we operate under. We progressively and systematically apply stress in the offseason so athletes can adapt, recover, and build resilience. That way, when it’s time to perform, the physical capacity is already there.”

On resilience during the season:

“Our goal is to drive their capacity to do more work more frequently, so they can perform their skills harder, faster, and longer. If capacity is high enough, durability improves. Resilience improves. And performance improves.”

4️⃣ Rehab & Return-to-Play

On psychological readiness:

“Looking at the research, the biggest component of return to play is psychological. Physically you might be recovered, but being able to get over that mental hurdle — to let yourself compete at the level you were at before — that’s the most challenging part.”

On maintaining workload during rehab:

“Our first goal is making sure that their total overall workload matches what the team is doing — if not more. If the team practices for an hour and a half and lifts for 45 minutes, we want that injured athlete accumulating similar total volume between rehab and training. That way when they return, they’re not deconditioned.”

On performance benchmarks before clearance:

“Before they return to play, ideally we want them within at least 90 percent of their previous speed and power numbers. From a strength standpoint, they’re often stronger because we’ve invested more focused time. But speed and power need to be within that range.”

On multidisciplinary collaboration:

“It’s a multifactor approach. Athletic trainers, sports psychologists, sports nutritionists — everybody is involved. Return to play is not just a strength decision. It’s a coordinated effort.”

5️⃣ Technology & Innovation

On budget realities:

“From a budgetary standpoint, we don’t have an expansive budget. So we have to be smart with what we use.”

On moving away from excessive tech:

“At one point I realized I was spending more time looking at a computer than building relationships with athletes. And my strength is connection and communication. So I leaned into that. I’m much more of a qualitative coach than a quantitative coach.”

On reading fatigue without tech:

“You can sense their energy and fatigue level just by watching them — by their eyes, by their foot strike, by how long they spend on the ground. You can see when legs look heavy. Coaching instincts matter.”

On volume as the primary stress metric:

“Volume is our key indicator to stress. We simply time practice — time on feet. Acute-to-chronic workload ratios, total weekly volume — those matter. Just because practice doesn’t look intense doesn’t mean they’re not accumulating stress.”

On a key learning moment:

“We had a team practicing for three hours a day. Coaches thought it wasn’t intense because they were teaching and standing around. But they were still accumulating volume on their feet. We shortened practice, slightly increased intensity, and a week later everyone was out of the training room.”

On individualized power profiling:

“We use jump mats, Excel formulas, bodyweight, squat max — we calculate a power quotient to determine whether an athlete needs more strength work or more velocity work. Even without force plates, you can still individualize effectively if you understand what you’re looking at.”

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This week we had the honor to interview again Dr. Ron Dick, associate professor of sports marketing at Duquesne University in the school of business. Ron also worked for 20 years in sports, including 15 years in the NBA with the Sixers and the Nets, and then five years in the NCAA.

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• 2026 Super Bowl recap,

• NFL draft in Pittsburgh on April 23-25,

• 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy,

• NBA update,

• NHL update and standings,

• MLB spring training & World Baseball Classic,

• College sports: Football, Basketball March madness coming

• Potential WNBA lockout

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ron located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Ron:

1. Super Bowl Recap

“It did over 124.9 million views, which makes it the second most viewed TV event in history. Only last year’s Super Bowl did better. Obviously it went really well from a ratings standpoint, even if some people thought the game itself was a little boring. From a business perspective, it continues to show the dominance of the NFL.”

“There were 40 brands that advertised, and 32-second ads cost between eight to ten million dollars each — that’s an all-time high. We saw a lot of artificial intelligence commercials, and we saw a lot of pharmaceutical ads. It really highlights how massive the advertising ecosystem around the Super Bowl has become. It’s not just a football game anymore — it’s the biggest marketing platform in America.”

“From player one to player 53, that’s one of the most solid rosters I’ve ever seen. They’re built to be a little bit of a legacy team. I think they’ve got legs — they’ll be competitive again next year and the year after. When you look at how quickly the Patriots turned things around from the fall of ’24 to the fall of ’25, you have to give that coaching staff a lot of credit.”

1. NFL Draft in Pittsburgh (April 23–25)

“The NFL is the number one sport in ratings and number one in revenue in this country — and it’s 12 months a year. The draft coming to Pittsburgh on April 23rd, 24th, and 25th is going to be enormous. We are anticipating over 750,000 people in the city who are normally not here.”

“These are what we call ‘heads in beds.’ Where are these people going to eat? Where are they going to sleep? That’s where the economic impact really comes from. Two years ago, Detroit generated $213 million from hosting the draft. Last year in Green Bay, it created about a $100 million economic impact, even with limited hotel capacity.”

“You do have to pay a hosting fee — anywhere from one to three million dollars — and the NFL takes a portion on top of that. But obviously for the cities, it’s well worth it to pay that money upfront to get that kind of exposure and additional revenue.”

1. Winter Olympics (Milan & Cortina)

“TV ratings have been incredibly strong. NBC and Peacock are killing it. They’re up 60% compared to 2022 when we were coming out of COVID. That’s a significant bounce-back for the Winter Games.”

“To have five million people and lead the medal count — that’s stunning to me. Norway has about five million residents, roughly the size of a major U.S. city, and yet they’re dominating the medal table. That speaks to how deeply winter sports are embedded in their culture.”

“We have to think about athlete longevity too. We worry about pitchers’ arms, we worry about CTE in the NFL — we hope these athletes live into their seventies, eighties, nineties and above. The long-term health conversation is becoming just as important as the medals.”

1. NBA Update & Standings

“I believe Wemby could potentially be your first $100 million-a-year athlete. We’re already seeing players in the $60 million range annually, and when you look at his talent, his size, and his global appeal, he might be the one to break that barrier.”

“He is incredible. A person that size shouldn’t be that agile. He’s seven-foot-four like Ralph Sampson was, but far more polished offensively at a young age. He’s generational.”

“This is most likely going to be the last year for LeBron. I wouldn’t be surprised if he closes the door behind him after one more run. He’s had an unbelievable career, but the league is clearly transitioning into the next era.”

“All six of those top teams are over a 60% winning percentage. The depth and parity across both conferences is impressive right now.”

1. Potential WNBA Lockout

“I think there’s the Grand Canyon between where the owners are as far as salary and salary cap, and what the players are thinking. That gap is real, and it’s significant.”

“We definitely saw a bump with Caitlin Clark and other star players coming into the league. There’s more visibility, more ticket sales, more media coverage. The league is showing progress in revenue streams.”

“They now don’t have to fly commercial — they can fly charter. That’s a big step forward in professionalism and player treatment, but it’s also much more expensive.”

“I’m all for paying the players. The question is how much — and that’s up for debate. But there’s no doubt the salaries need to reflect the growth we’re seeing.”

1. NHL Season Update

“The best division in the East right now is the Atlantic, and in the West it’s the Central. The Avalanche, at 83 points at this point in the season, are by far the best team in the NHL.”

“What’s stunning to me is the Florida Panthers. They’ve won back-to-back Stanley Cups, beating Edmonton both times, and now they’re sitting right on the precipice of missing the playoffs. That’s a massive swing year-over-year.”

“They have enough talent left from those championship runs, but they’re going to have to make up a lot of ground between now and the end of the season.”

1. MLB Spring Training & World Baseball Classic

“There’s no better time in the world — pitchers and catchers reporting, the smell of the grass, the sound of the ball hitting the glove. Late February, early March — it’s one of the greatest times of the sports calendar.”

“Most people are calling this the best USA baseball team in history. When you look at the pitching depth and the coaching staff they’ve assembled, it’s incredibly impressive.”

“But I want to offer a dark horse — I believe the Dominican Republic could steal this thing. Many of their players have been playing winter ball, and they’re already in Miami for the later rounds. If the U.S. doesn’t win it, people are going to ask: how did the greatest team in history not win it?”

“I hate when politics collide with sports. The fact that Venezuela has a team competing despite everything going on in their country — that in itself is amazing.”

1. College Sports (Football & March Madness)

“Houston has very little NIL money, and it’s amazing how well they’re doing. Meanwhile, some programs that are spending heavily on name, image, and likeness are running $70 million-a-year deficits. That’s not sustainable long term.”

“There are no guardrails in place. I’m all for paying the players, but is the contract enforceable, and who’s enforcing it? Courts are getting involved, judges are making eligibility decisions — and the NCAA seems unsure what to do.”

“Sometimes they don’t necessarily want you at 18. But they’d love to have you at 22 or 23, when you’re physically more mature. The transfer portal has completely changed roster construction.”

“As for March Madness, it’s wide open. I’m not ready to make predictions yet — I’d like to see a few more games — but it feels like one of those years where anything can happen.”

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Dear Colleagues,

This week we are profiling Elevate Ventures, a leading early stage venture capital firm. Elevate Ventures has invested in over 600 startups, backing more than 402 active portfolio companies and deploying $184 million+ in capital since its founding to fuel early-stage innovation and growth across Indiana and beyond, with a robust ecosystem that has supported thousands of entrepreneurs and helped elevate emerging companies toward success. Elevate Ventures is the #1 most active early-stage VC in the Great Lakes Region and top 10 in the United States.

Upside VC profile of the month:

VC name: Elevate VenturesHeadquartered: Indianapolis, Indiana, USAFounded: 2010 (active since 2011 as part of Indiana Economic Development initiatives)

Managing Partners: Christopher “Toph” Day (CEO).

Website: https://elevateventures.com/

Sectors: Cross-sector innovation (software, life sciences, hardtech, healthcare, consumer, and more)

VC type: Venture Capital / Innovation Ecosystem Builder / Venture Development Organization

Typical investment range: ~$350k per round.

Total number of investments: 600+ startups funded since inception (602 funded as of 2024)

Total number of exits: At least ~41+ exits (according to industry data sources)

Elevate Ventures is one of the most active early-stage venture capital investors in the Great Lakes region, focused on investing in high-potential, innovation-driven companies primarily based in Indiana. Alongside providing capital, Elevate supports founders with strategic guidance, network connections, acceleration resources, and community development to help startups grow and scale. Its portfolio spans diverse sectors including technology, life sciences, and hardtech across pre-seed, seed, and Series A stages, with a strong commitment to building a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Midwest and beyond.

For more information visit https://elevateventures.com/

As part of that we interviewed Myles Grote, partner at Elevate Ventures.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on Myles’ background and his role at Elevate Ventures, what Elevate Ventures is. We also touched on his investment philosophy, the favorite startups he invested in, and so on.

🚀Best Quotes: Here’s some of the key discussion points and best quotes from our conversation with Myles:

Q1. Background & Career Path

“I started in entrepreneurship. Before college, I witnessed my parents start companies — third generation entrepreneur. Building is in the DNA, if you will. But I was super passionate about finance. I started doing public investing when I was 14 years old — and mind you, this is when we had dial-up internet. We didn’t even really have easy ways to execute on investing in public markets at that point.”

“In college, I started to build a not-for-profit with my future business partner, Kevin McCauley. We created the first ever collegiate-hosted half marathon in the country, which was a fundraising vehicle for the largest scholarship for cancer survivors in the country. That was really like my first actual thing that we built — and we had a lot of success with it.”

“Eventually, I left and started a company with Kevin — one of the early sports tech companies back in 2011–2012 called Book a Coach. We pivoted to a more sustainable business model, rebranded to Upper Hand, and became the first cloud-based software in sports facilities around 2013–14. We exited in 2019, and I stayed on for a couple more years.”

“At that point, I always knew I wanted to get into early-stage investing. I was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Techstars Sports, started my own syndicate, closed on 11 different companies across 15 deals, and then ultimately joined Elevate Ventures as a partner and chair of the investment committee.”

Q2. Role at Elevate Ventures

“My main focus is due diligence. From the time that we say, ‘Yes, let’s take a closer look at this company,’ I oversee that process until we move into closing.”

“Elevate Ventures is a unique beast. We are a venture development organization — not your standard VC. We have kind of a dual mandate: economic development in the state of Indiana and returns. So we have to balance those, similar to how the Fed balances job stability and inflation.”

“We’re super active — historically eclipsing over 100 deals per year and deploying approximately $20 million annually. That’s a unique element.”

“Because of our dual mandate, we’re encouraged by our LPs to spend more time with founders — especially if they have messy situations, messy cap tables, or mistakes that have compounded. We’re able to spend the time to help them clean that up, right-size their structure, and get ready to raise a strong round.”

Q3. Investment Philosophy

“My personal investing philosophy is really around, first and foremost, there has to be some sort of secular growth story — some sort of multi-decade tailwind, some new technology that’s been introduced.”

“Secondarily — and probably equally as important — is just an amazing founder building on top of that technology.”

“The thing I always notice with amazing founders is that they consistently stay on your radar. They’re super effective at creating momentum and using that momentum to engage investors and keep them excited about what they’re building.”

“Whenever they’re pinned in the corner, they always find a way out. They’re super scrappy and always right in front of your face.”

“At Elevate, we also look closely at market sizing dynamics and competitive moats — which is a really hot topic right now, especially as it relates to artificial intelligence.”

Q4. What He Looks for in Startups

“Founders who can really see around corners — they’re always a couple steps ahead.”

“The most impressive ones are really effective at communicating how they’re going to execute on the opportunities they’re seeing around the corner.”

“Really describing the big vision and doing it in a very simple and effective way — that’s a really hard skill set to have.”

“For us, it’s got to be a big TAM — over a $500 million addressable market — and a really tight founding team that has really clear swim lanes in terms of what they’re focused on.”

Q5. Advice for Entrepreneurs Raising Capital

“Especially with AI tools these days, you don’t really have to raise that much capital to get a working prototype to validate or invalidate your concept.”

“Be as efficient as possible. Leverage a hell out of AI tools. It’s to the point where even if you’re not technical, you can still contribute to the code base in a meaningful way.”

“Be scrappy and get something to market as quickly as possible. Don’t be afraid that your baby’s ugly when it goes out there. I’ve launched some pretty ugly products that turned into something really beautiful.”

“Validate the demand for the product first before making it pretty. You don’t want to waste too much money or too much time until you really know you have something.”

“Have a great story. Start with the outline, move to some doodles — that’s what I typically do — and then pay a designer $500 to make it look respectable so you have a great storyline to anchor investors around the big vision.”

Q6. Fund Size

“We have about $225 million AUM.”

“We kind of operate more like an evergreen fund — we’re constantly deploying.”

Q7. Average Investment Size

“Typical investment size is around $350,000 from our seed and seed-plus fund.”

“With our pre-seed fund, we can invest as low as $20,000 and up to $100K — usually milestone-based and tranched.”

Q8. Favorite / Notable Portfolio Companies

“Lessonly was a pretty big win for us — they sold to Seismic for around $300 million. We were a seed investor in that company.”

“Sochi is another one — that was a big exit for us.”

“Endur purchased a company that spun out of Purdue — that was a really meaningful exit, and we still have a stake.”

“In sports tech, Upper Hand was a good exit for Elevate back in 2019.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing again Ciara Burgi, the director of health and performance at the Las Vegas Aces, a top WNBA team.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During this interview with Ciara, we discussed how true athlete-centered performance starts with intentional individualization. She explained that in a WNBA environment, where roster sizes are small, individualization should be the standard—not a luxury. That means deeply understanding each athlete’s history, goals, recovery preferences, and role within the team, then aligning that with coaching objectives. Ciara emphasized adapting structure to environment, breaking down silos, and continually refining plans as relationships deepen over time. The conversation also explored the evolution of rehab and return-to-play, highlighting the shift from time-based protocols to more criteria-driven approaches that balance objective data with the human side of performance—confidence, fear, and function.

We also discussed innovation, technology, and leadership in high-performance environments. Ciara stressed that technology should enhance clearly defined values and systems—not replace them—and that teams must first identify the key questions they are trying to answer before collecting data. She underscored the importance of honest off-season reflection, resisting hype, and adopting solutions aligned with long-term goals. From a leadership perspective, she described curiosity as the foundation of trust—serving athletes and coaches through open dialogue, vulnerability, and follow-through. Ultimately, she highlighted that sustained success requires accountability and self-awareness, noting that “winning masks everything and losing magnifies everything,” and that elite organizations must remain honest even in victory.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ciara located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Ciara:

Q1. Individualization & Athlete-Centered Performance

• “When we have 11 or 12 women, individualization should be the expectation—and if we’re not meeting that, I think that’s way below the bar.”

• “Taking each athlete as an individual—getting to know them, their needs, what’s worked for them in the past, their goals, and the coach’s goals for them.”

• “Us as practitioners taking what we know, combining that with what they know about themselves, and coming up with an individualized plan based on individual and team goals.”

• “You just have to adapt the shape of your structure to the needs of your environment—and roster size plays a big factor in that.”

• “Each year we should be dialing down and individualizing things better… because we know them better.”

• “During the playoffs, we did a phenomenal job individualizing recovery recommendations during the most important time of the year.”

Q2. Rehab, Return-to-Play & Long-Term Athlete Health

• “When I first started my career… I’m not sure I knew what a force plate was back then. I didn’t know what load management was back then.”

• “We don’t want to go all objective and only based on data and forget about the human being in front of us.”

• “At the same time, we can’t fully go based on feeling and ignore the technology.”

• “What are our questions that we’re trying to answer? Not just collecting a bunch of data and then creating the question after.”

• “ACL return to sport used to just be time-based… but time and quad strength measure impairment, not necessarily function on the field.”

• “We need to define our values, define our principles, and figure out how to objectively evaluate those.”

• “Those conversations are challenging because they require vulnerability—and not all staffs have safe spaces for vulnerability.”

Q3. Innovation, Technology & Smarter Decision-Making

• “We can’t ignore creating values, principles, and systems—and then using technology to enhance and inform those systems as opposed to starting with technology to create the system.”

• “If you don’t have your values strongly defined, you can look at a bunch of data and get overwhelmed.”

• “What’s our biggest question? What’s our lowest hanging fruit that’s going to lead to the highest yield improvement?”

• “Just because another team adopts something doesn’t mean it fits what we need.”

• “Explore new technologies with a broad lens… maybe it doesn’t fit now, but three years from now it might be our lowest hanging fruit.”

• “It’s taking an honest look at everything—does this align with our values?”

• “The off-season is about reflection, being open to new things, and then dialing back into what you really need to make a big impact.”

Q4. Leadership, Communication & Trust

• “Curiosity is at the foundation of everything.”

• “We don’t know how to best serve if we don’t know how to serve.”

• “If I’m just pushing my own agenda because that’s what I think is best, that’s honestly a pretty self-centered way to go about leadership.”

• “As a leader, we’re here to serve.”

• “How do I know how to serve you best if you and I can’t have an honest relationship and conversation about what your needs are?”

• “There’s a lot of trust built up in following through with what you heard—because that means you’re listening.”

• “Winning masks everything and losing magnifies everything—and neither are fully honest.”

• “We’ll sit in victory and feel proud, and then we’re also going to have an honest look at what can be better.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewingKevin Wu, Co-founder & Chief Business Officer at Fitasy, a leading Personalized 3D Printed footwear company.

Today, as illustrated in the graph below, the footwear industry is facing a number of challenges:

• Footwear sizing has remained largely unchanged since the 1800s. We still rely on standardized measurements that overlook the true diversity of human feet. Not surprisingly, 68% of people still wear ill-fitted shoes.

• Incorrectly fitted footwear is uncomfortable, costly, and contributes to pain, deformity, and poor foot mechanics. As a result of that, 20% of people suffer from foot problems.

• While we have personalized our physical training, nutrition, and sleep through technology for more optimal well being, our shoes remain mass-produced and standard-fit. But 77% of people expect customizable products in general, according to McKinsey.

Fitasy, which aims at addressing those challenges, is a personalized footwear company focused on redefining how shoes are designed, fitted, and manufactured through data-driven customization and 3D printing. By combining mobile foot scanning technology with advanced software and engineering, Fitasy creates footwear tailored to each individual’s unique foot profile rather than relying on traditional, one-dimensional sizing systems. The brand places a strong emphasis on comfort, performance, and foot health, making its products particularly relevant for athletes and active consumers. Through a direct-to-consumer model and rapid iteration enabled by 3D printing, Fitasy aims to make high-quality, custom-fitted footwear more accessible while continuously improving fit, recovery, and long-term wearability. The company is rolling out its scan-to-print app this spring, with standard-size footwear already available for purchase via its website

Picture: Fitasy’ 3D printed shoes

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here is an interview at CES explaining their technology and product:

📝Show Notes: During the interview with Kevin, we discussed his background as a lifelong athlete and how years of frustration with ill-fitting footwear led him to co-found Fitasy, a personalized 3D-printed footwear company. Kevin shared how his experience in finance and venture capital, combined with exposure to cutting-edge research from his MIT-trained co-founder, shaped his belief that footwear should be custom-fitted for every individual. He explained how Fitasy uses mobile foot scanning and data-driven 3D printing to create shoes tailored to each person’s unique foot profile, addressing long-standing limitations in traditional footwear sizing and manufacturing.

During the interview with Kevin, we also explored Fitasy’s application in elite sports, particularly as a recovery solution for athletes. Kevin highlighted the benefits of 3D-printed footwear for teams and practitioners, including improved cushioning, shock absorption, arch support, and breathability, all of which contribute to recovery, comfort, and long-term foot health. He outlined Fitasy’s competitive advantages in software, scanning accuracy, and rapid iteration, as well as its direct-to-consumer business model and current pricing. Looking ahead, Kevin shared his plans to deepen engagement with professional athletes and teams, expand product offerings, and continue refining customization through fast, athlete-driven innovation.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Kevin located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Kevin:

1. Your background and what led you to your company

“I grew up playing a lot of sports, so I’ve always considered myself an athlete. I played national-level soccer growing up, university-level basketball, and nowadays it’s mostly club-level tennis. Over the past two decades of playing sports, footwear has always been something that troubled me. Finding the right shoe has always been difficult—different sizing systems, different brands, styles going out of line—and I think that challenge may have even hindered my ability to progress as an athlete.”

“Outside of sports, I studied finance and computer science and later worked in finance and venture capital. I saw a lot of examples where technology was reshaping very traditional industries, and that really stuck with me. When I met my co-founder Yujun, who comes from a team of research scientists at MIT, he pitched the idea of using a phone as a scanner to reduce online footwear returns caused by poor fit. That was the moment I realized that in the future, every shoe should be custom-fitted for the customer.”

1. Overview of the product

“At its core, Fitasy is a 3D-printed footwear company. We use 3D printing because it allows for a much more data-driven approach and a much higher level of customization. On paper, we make footwear that can come in standard sizes, but more importantly, it can also be custom-fitted for each individual based on their unique foot profile.”

“The process starts with mobile scanning. Any user with an iPhone can scan their foot using our app, and the whole process takes about two minutes. We analyze that data to create a foot profile, feed those parameters into our system, and then send it to production. The printing itself takes about four to five hours, and with post-processing and packaging, the shoe is typically ready to ship within three to four days.”

1. Main use cases for elite sports

“The fundamental philosophy behind our brand is that the foot is incredibly unique and very complex, but in today’s world it’s mostly treated as a single factor—length. That’s essentially how footwear sizing has worked since the 19th century. In elite sports, athletes exert so much energy on the court or on the field, but off the court we often neglect how they treat their feet.”

“What we’ve found is that 3D printing allows us to create an excellent recovery shoe. We can design superior cushioning compared to traditional foam materials, while also embedding breathability and arch support directly into the structure of the shoe. That combination is particularly valuable for elite athletes.”

1. Benefits for practitioners and teams

“A good recovery shoe needs a few core features. First is cushioning, because all the impact from the ground shouldn’t transfer directly into the muscles and joints. Then there’s arch support, which helps create a more balanced pressure distribution across the foot so muscles don’t fatigue as quickly.”

“Breathability is also critical. Feet sweat a lot, and in unbreathable environments fungus can grow, which is why problems like athlete’s foot are so common. Because of the 3D-printed structure, our shoes naturally provide excellent shock absorption, airflow, and support, making them especially effective for recovery in high-performance environments.”

1. Competitive advantages

“3D printing itself isn’t proprietary—anyone with a printer can print something. Our competitive advantage really comes down to two things. The first is mobile scanning. Customization only works if the foot data is accurate. If you can’t scan the foot accurately, everything else becomes pointless.”

“We developed our own scanning solution and algorithms to ensure high accuracy, currently within about two to four millimeters. The second advantage is what we do once we have that data—how we build the 3D model, design the lattice structure, and customize the shoe specifically for each foot profile. That software-first approach is what really sets us apart.”

1. Current business and pricing model

“Our business model is direct-to-consumer. Everything happens through our website. Customers choose a product, select the custom-fit option, and once they place an order, we send them an invitation link to download the app and submit their foot scan. After that, they just wait for their shoes to be produced and delivered.”

“Right now, our pricing is just over $200, typically around $210 to $220. It’s not a cheap shoe by any means, but from a customization perspective, it’s a strong value proposition. As printing efficiency improves and material costs come down, we expect to be able to lower prices over time.”

1. Plans and aspirations for the next 12 months

“Over the next 12 months, we’re really focused on engaging more with athletes and communities that care deeply about foot health, longevity, and quality of life after their playing careers. We’re currently working with an MLS team and have received very positive feedback, which tells us we’re solving a real problem.”

“One of the biggest advantages of 3D printing is speed. Compared to traditional mold-based manufacturing, which is slow and expensive, we can iterate very quickly. If athletes tell us they need better arch placement or a different shape, we can bring those changes to life fast. This year, we’re planning to release several new products so people can experience different levels of customization.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewingMauricio Elizondo, the director of sports medicine, at Austin FC, an MLS team. Mauricio discussed his background, approach towards training, rehab and how he uses a cutting edge technology such as ThermoHuman.

Mauricio Elizondo, DPT, ATC, CSCS, CPSS, is the Director of Sports Medicine for Austin FC, the Major League Soccer club based in Austin, Texas, where he leads the team’s medical and performance support for the first team. With more than 15 years of experience in elite sports medicine and athletic training, Mauricio’s background includes work with professional organizations such as the Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, Toronto Blue Jays, and the ATP tennis tour, as well as owning a high-performance clinic prior to joining Austin FC.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Athletic Training from Oregon State University, a Master’s in Exercise Science from the University of Idaho, and a Doctorate in Physical Therapy from the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences, and is certified in strength and conditioning and performance sports science. In his role, Mauricio integrates injury prevention, rehabilitation, and advanced monitoring strategies to optimize athlete health and performance throughout the MLS season.

Picture: Mauricio Elizondo

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During the interview with Mauricio, we discussed his background and path to becoming Director of Sports Medicine at Austin FC, including his experience in professional baseball, tennis, and private practice. He explained how working daily within a team environment allows for a more structured and proactive approach to injury prevention, with consistent monitoring, preseason testing, and long-term athlete management throughout the MLS season.

Picture: ThermoHuman

During the interview with Mauricio, we also discussed how Austin FC uses ThermoHuman as part of its injury prevention and load management strategy. He emphasized the importance of establishing individual baselines, monitoring temperature changes weekly, and interpreting results within context. Mauricio highlighted that thermography is a practical and efficient tool that provides actionable insights to guide recovery, adjust training loads, and help reduce injury risk.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Mauricio located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Mauricio:

Q1. His Background

“I’m the Director of Sports Medicine here at Austin FC, and this is my third full season with the club. Before this, I had a pretty eclectic background. I owned a private practice in Florida for six years, traveled on the tennis tour for six years, and spent 11 seasons in professional baseball with organizations like the Red Sox, Dodgers, and Blue Jays. I’ve been fortunate to learn from a lot of great people along the way, but soccer has always been my passion. When the opportunity came with Austin FC, it was a no-brainer.”

“Injury prevention becomes much more effective when you’re with a team every single day. When you’re embedded with a team for 10 or 11 months straight, you can manage an injury from beginning to end. You can establish preseason testing, create protocols, monitor progress, adjust treatments, and truly build a philosophy around prevention. That daily consistency makes a big difference compared to more episodic environments like tennis.”

Q2. How He Has Been Using ThermoHuman

“We’ve been using ThermoHuman for two years now, and it’s been a great tool for us. From an injury prevention standpoint, we already measure the external side — strength, range of motion, movement patterns — but we also need to understand what’s happening internally. Thermography allows us to look at temperature changes, which give us insight into inflammation and fatigue that we otherwise can’t see.”

“We establish baseline measurements during preseason because every player is different. Even though we think everyone has the same core temperature, there are variations — especially in specific muscles or joints that may have had prior injuries. Once we know what’s normal for each athlete, we monitor them weekly and compare new data to their baseline.”

“If a player’s temperature is higher than normal after a game, we interpret that as an inflammatory response and shift toward anti-inflammatory treatments and recovery strategies. If the temperature is lower than normal, that usually indicates fatigue, and we may adjust load, reduce intensity, or modify training sessions. It gives us direction for decision-making.”

“Context is everything. ThermoHuman doesn’t tell you what the problem is — it tells you there’s a temperature change. It’s our job to interpret why that change is happening and connect it to training load, injury history, or match demands.”

“It’s also very practical. It takes about a minute per player. We can run the whole team through in 30 to 60 minutes, usually first thing in the morning before any treatments that could affect temperature. That makes it easy to integrate into our weekly routine.”

Q3. Why He Likes Thermography

“What I value most about ThermoHuman is that it’s practical and it gives you a treatment direction. It’s not just data for the sake of data — it helps guide interventions. You still have to interpret it properly, but it provides meaningful information that we can act on.”

“The biggest advantage is that it shows you something you can’t see. Players don’t know if their right hamstring is warmer than their left. They don’t feel small asymmetries in temperature. We can test strength and flexibility, but we can’t visually assess internal temperature without technology like this.”

“It adds another layer to our clinical evaluation. We can see tightness, weakness, or movement deficits with other tools, but temperature gives us insight into inflammation and tissue readiness in a way that complements everything else.”

“There really isn’t another tool that gives you this type of global thermal perspective. It fills a gap that other monitoring systems don’t address.”

Q4. Why He Would Recommend Thermography

“I think it’s worth the investment. There are many monitoring tools and wearables on the market, but when you look at the amount of information you get relative to the cost, ThermoHuman provides significant value. It gives you insight that you simply can’t obtain through other methods.”

“We often assume that after a hard session or a game, a player’s body temperature and inflammation return to normal by the next day. In reality, that’s not always the case. Thermography helps you see that objectively, and it allows you to educate coaches and staff on what’s actually happening internally.”

“There’s growing research around temperature changes and injury potential, and I think the field is continuing to evolve. From my experience, if you’re willing to interpret the data properly and apply it in context, it can be a very powerful tool for reducing injury risk and managing load.”

Q5. Advice for Teams Looking to Adopt Thermography

“My biggest advice is: don’t just look at the results and blindly follow what the system says. In today’s AI world, we sometimes rely too much on automated outputs. That’s a mistake. You have to interpret the data in context — the athlete’s history, their workload, their baseline profile.”

“Create strong baselines in preseason and be consistent with your measurements. The more consistent you are — same time of day, same conditions, same weekly routine — the more meaningful your data becomes.”

“Understand that players are different. For example, we have some Northern European players whose normal body temperature runs lower than others. If you don’t establish that baseline and interpret the context, you could misread the data.”

“If you implement it properly, analyze it carefully, and apply the results thoughtfully, it can absolutely help reduce injuries. And because it’s fast and practical — about one minute per player — it’s very doable within a professional team environment.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewingBram Swinnen, the founder of Integrated Performance Training and a renowned expert in sports science, performance training and rehabilitation. Bram discussed his background, approach towards training, rehab and how he uses a cutting edge technology such as Myocene.

With over 25 years of experience working with elite athletes, Bram has collaborated with some of the most prestigious sports teams and organizations around the world in the NBA, EuroLeague, and European soccer. His innovative approach blends velocity-based training, neuromuscular control and neuroscience into the training process, ensuring optimal performance while minimizing injury risks.

Bram is the author of the international bestseller “Strength Training for Soccer,” which is widely recognized for its practical insights on enhancing athletic performance. He has also authored several scientific publications and is regularly invited as a speaker at international conferences.

Bram earned a master’s degree in kinesiology and a master’s degree in physical therapy, and he highly values continuing education to stay at the forefront of his field.

Pictures: Bram Swinnen

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During the interview with Bram, we discussed his background in sports science and rehabilitation and his belief that there should be no clear separation between rehab and performance. He shared his experience working across elite sports, including basketball, football, and track and field, and explained how this integrated approach led him to focus on return-to-play, injury prevention, and long-term performance development. Bram also outlined how his work at Integrated Performance Training supports professional teams and federations through consulting, education, and applied sports science.

Picture: Myocene solution

During the interview with Bram, we also explored how he uses Myocene in both performance and rehabilitation settings to objectively assess neuromuscular fatigue. He explained how daily microdosing allows him to embed testing into training, adapt workloads in real time, and avoid the accumulation of unmanaged fatigue. A key theme of the discussion was Myocene’s value in rehabilitation, particularly after serious injuries such as ACL reconstruction, where neuromuscular inhibition can limit progress. Bram emphasized that having an objective, motivation-independent measure helps ensure training and rehab sessions are truly effective and better aligned with the athlete’s underlying neuromuscular needs.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Bram located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Bram:

Q1. Can you briefly introduce yourself, your background, and the work your company does in performance and recovery?

“My background is in sports science and rehabilitation. I studied a Master’s in Sports Science and also a Master’s in Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation because I really wanted to understand everything about the body. Over time, I realized that I love rehab, I love performance, and especially blending the two. For me, there is no clear separation between rehab and performance — it’s all about return to play, prevention, and long-term development.”

“I started my career in professional basketball, working with several EuroLeague teams and NBA players during the off-season. Later I moved into professional football, as well as track and field, cycling, and other sports. About four years ago, we founded Integrated Performance Training, where we provide consulting, education, and in-house courses for professional teams and Olympic federations around the world.”

Q2. How and when did you start using Myocene, and what role does it play in your training and rehabilitation today?

“I’ve been using Myocene for almost a year now, both in performance and in rehabilitation. In performance, its value is quite obvious — it’s widely used to monitor neuromuscular fatigue, which is a major limiter of performance and also increases the risk of injury.”

“In rehabilitation, it’s less commonly used, but for me it has a lot of value. After serious injuries like ACL reconstruction, there is often a corticospinal inhibition, meaning the brain is no longer able to activate the muscles the way it used to. With Myocene, I can measure before and after rehab sessions and see whether the exercises are actually effective in activating the muscles.”

Q3. You regularly use Myocene through microdosing—can you explain how you apply this during training sessions and why this approach works for you?

“One of the biggest advantages of microdosing is that you gather data on a daily basis. Everything we do in training becomes testing — we don’t need to schedule separate testing sessions. That means the data is always current and always relevant.”

“Athletes or patients come into my facility, and before they even get dressed, I run a Myocene test. It takes about one and a half minutes, and it already gives me a clear idea of their neuromuscular status. I then use that information as part of an autoregulated periodization approach, where the plan can be adapted based on recovery and fatigue from previous days.”

Q4. How does Myocene support neuromuscular performance and help reduce or prevent neuromuscular fatigue from your experience?

“Because neuromuscular fatigue is measured on a regular basis, you can detect it earlier and adjust training or rehabilitation loads accordingly. This allows you to prevent the athlete or patient from going deeper and deeper into neuromuscular fatigue.”

“What I see very often, especially in rehab, is that fatigue accumulates over weeks without being noticed. At a certain point, you lose control of the situation. Myocene gives me a clear overview and helps me decide when it’s necessary to adapt the training plan or periodization to stay in control.”

Q5. What makes Myocene different or unique compared to other supplements or recovery strategies you’ve used?

“The method behind Myocene is based on decades of scientific research, so it’s reliable and accurate. That’s extremely important when you’re making decisions about load management and rehabilitation.”

“What really makes it stand out for me is that it’s fast, simple, and objective. It takes one and a half minutes, requires no warm-up, and it doesn’t rely on motivation or intent from the athlete. That makes it a very strong complement to other performance metrics, which often depend on how motivated or fresh the athlete feels that day.”

Q6. Who do you think Myocene is most useful for, and how would you recommend athletes or practitioners start using it?

“We see more and more evidence that after injuries like ACL reconstruction, tendinopathies, or muscle injuries, there is a significant inhibition from the nervous system. Even two years after an ACL reconstruction, many professional athletes are still unable to fully activate the quadriceps, which compromises strength and rate of force development.”

“For me, the biggest value of Myocene is that it allows me to evaluate whether a rehab workout is actually effective — whether it truly activates the muscles and addresses the underlying problem. That’s why it’s extremely useful in rehabilitation, but also for athletes where load management and neuromuscular fatigue are critical.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewingBrian Windell, President of Falcon Pursuit, a leading company scanning elite athletes for use in digital analytics.

Falcon Pursuit is a human performance optimization technology company that uses patented, advanced anthropometric infrared scanning and 3D avatar technology to capture highly detailed digital representations of the human body, enabling precise measurement of biomechanics, movement patterns, and physical form for real-time performance analysis and improvement. The platform delivers actionable data to optimize athletic performance, track progress, and inform personalized training and health decisions, and its technology has been applied with professional athletes, world-class companies, and elite sports organizations.

Picture: Falcon Pursuit’s AVA, body scan machine.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During this interview with Brian, we discussed his background and the experiences that led him to Falcon Pursuit, including his early work in custom equipment fitting and motion capture, as well as the foundational role of the company’s patented technology. Brian provided an overview of Falcon Pursuit’s core product, the AVA system, explaining how its rapid full-body scanning creates fully rigged, anatomically accurate digital avatars. We explored how these avatars are used in elite sports to support motion analysis, real-time simulation, and performance evaluation across a wide range of sports and organizations.

We also covered the benefits Falcon Pursuit delivers to practitioners and teams, particularly through more precise, repeatable, and longitudinal athlete data that supports individualized training and development. Brian highlighted the company’s competitive advantages, including real-world simulation capabilities and career-long athlete tracking, before outlining Falcon Pursuit’s business model centered on hardware, platform access, and collaborative innovation. The conversation concluded with a look ahead at the company’s plans for the next 12 months, including scaling the AVA platform, launching new products, and expanding applications such as equilibrium testing and on-site 3D-printed performance solutions.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Brian located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Brian:

His background and what led him to Falcon Pursuit

“What really led me to the company begins with our CTO, Jay White. This is all his brainchild. He’s been in custom-fitting equipment like shoes and helmets for decades, and his first patent actually goes back to 1982. What drew me in personally was my background working with a group at TaylorMade Golf in the early 2000s, where we were custom-fitting golf clubs using motion capture. That was really my first exposure to the avatar world, and it became clear that this technology could fundamentally change how we understand athletes and performance.”

Overview of their product

“Our main product is the avatar, and while that’s a term that gets thrown around a lot, ours is very different from what people usually think of. We scan athletes using our AVA kiosk, and that scanning session takes about 27 seconds. When it’s complete, you don’t just get a lifelike image—you get a fully rigged avatar that moves just like the human body. That’s where our patents sit, in the ability to automatically create a movable, anatomically accurate digital human.”

“We’re taking 360-degree dimensional measurements every millimeter from head to toe—each leg, each arm, every phalange, even facial structure. All of that data is captured in one-millimeter slices and converted into a rigged point cloud, which gives us a digital human that’s ready to be used in real-world simulations.”

Main use cases for elite sports

“We’ve been doing this for many years and have worked with hundreds of elite athletes across a wide range of sports—swimming, soccer, football, cycling, skiing. We’ve worked with organizations like the U.S. Ski Team, Auburn Football, and Red Bull. What’s powerful is that once you have the avatar, you can place that athlete into any digital environment—wind tunnels, aerodynamic testing, hydrodynamic testing—whatever parameters a coach or performance staff needs to evaluate in real time.”

Benefits for practitioners and teams

“When you really start to think about what you can do with a digital human being, it opens up a lot of possibilities. Teams can build databases of their athletes and use that information to optimize training on a daily basis. Strength and conditioning coaches can track very small changes in body shape, growth, and adaptation over time, which helps them make better, more individualized decisions for each athlete.”

“With our motion capture human tracker module, you’re not guessing where joints are based on AI assumptions. We already know exactly what that body looks like in motion, so we can calculate force, rotation, speed, and other key metrics with much higher accuracy. That’s qualitative data that practitioners can trust.”

Their competitive advantages

“Our main competitive advantage is the ability to place an athlete in real-world situations and get data in real time. This is head-to-toe, repeatable analytics that allow teams to track body changes across seasons and even entire careers. If an athlete joins a program as a freshman, you can follow their development all the way through to a professional level.”

“Programs like Auburn have had the system for several years, which means they can go back in time and compare incoming recruits to past high performers at the same position. That kind of historical context is incredibly valuable for evaluation and development.”

Current business model

“Our business model really wraps around the athlete avatar and the AVA system. We don’t just sell hardware—we provide simulation services, platform access, database building, training, and ongoing collaboration. All of the hardware is designed and built by us, and we work closely with teams to continue evolving the product based on how they’re using it in real performance environments.”

Plans and aspirations for the next 12 months

“The next year is a pretty exciting one for us. We’re launching AVA and scaling it to a much broader audience, and we also have new products that have been in beta testing for several years. One of those is our Equilibrium Protocol Program, where we take baseline data on an athlete and can identify whether their equilibrium has been affected after a significant hit.”

“We’re also already doing foot analysis and 3D-printing insoles on site for athletes, which saves teams both time and money. We’ve done this in soccer and skiing, and we’re expanding into braces and other equipment that can be customized and printed directly for the athlete.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewingBarry Slotnick, owner of Varisport, a fitness equipment business, which manufactures and distributes the UltraSlide brand of products.

UltraSlide is a performance and rehabilitation equipment company best known for its handcrafted slideboards—a versatile training tool designed to improve lateral movement, agility, balance, and core strength for athletes, fitness enthusiasts, and physical therapy patients alike. Its core product line includes adjustable slideboards in various sizes, made sustainably in the USA with reclaimed hardwood bumpers and recycled materials, and complemented by accessories like slide slippers and polish to enhance training outcomes. Trusted by professional and collegiate teams, strength coaches, therapists, and home gyms worldwide, UltraSlide moves beyond conventional fitness gear to offer a durable, low-impact solution that supports dynamic conditioning, sport-specific drills, and rehabilitative routines in one integrated tool.

Picture: UltraSlide product.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here is a video explaining how the product works:

📝Show Notes: During this interview with Barry, we discussed his background and how UltraSlide began more than 30 years ago as a simple cross-training solution while he was a competitive cyclist in college. He shared how the slide board’s skating-based, lateral movement evolved into a versatile training and rehabilitation tool now used across professional sports, fitness, and physical therapy for full-body, functional movement and core stability.

During this interview with Barry, we also discussed UltraSlide’s benefits for practitioners, its competitive advantages—including USA manufacturing, sustainability, durability, and customization—and the company’s business model driven by direct sales and repeat customers. Barry closed by outlining plans for international growth and the development of a smart bumper system that will add performance tracking and data to elevate the product’s impact.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Barry located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Barry:

His background and what led you to your company

“UltraSlide really almost happened by accident. About 33 years ago when I was in college, I made a slide board to use when I couldn’t ride my bike. I was a competitive bike racer at the time, and having grown up around speed skaters—who really invented and used slide boards—I knew it was an effective cross-training tool. Cycling and speed skating are very complementary sports, quad-dominant and using many of the same muscles, so I knew it would help my cycling during Midwest winters when I couldn’t ride outside.”

“After graduation in the fall of 1993, the men’s tennis coach at my university reached out and said he’d heard I made a slide board and that they really could use one for the team. I made him one, and then a few days later another call came in from someone else connected to the university who wanted one as well. At that point, I thought, maybe we’re onto something—and here we are all these years later.”

Overview of their product

“A slide board, as the name implies, is a rectangular, slippery surface with a bumper on each end that you push off of. The fundamental movement mimics skating—you’re moving laterally side to side—which is where it originated, but over time it’s proven beneficial for virtually every sport imaginable.”

“It’s really a core stability tool at its foundation. It engages the core, works the quads, glutes, abductors, adductors, hamstrings, and over the last 15 to 20 years it’s evolved into a full-body functional training device. That’s why it’s used not just by athletes, but by fitness users and people simply looking for a unique, effective workout.”

Benefits they’re seeing for practitioners

“One of the unique things about UltraSlide is that it’s used not only for conditioning but also for rehabilitation, and that makes it very valuable for practitioners. It engages the core and lower body in a way that directly translates to real-world movement, balance, and stability.”

“If you think about general population or even older adults, extended use of the slide board improves stability. I’m sitting here in Chicago where it’s icy outside—using our product can help people maintain control when they hit a slippery surface. That lateral stability is something you just don’t train with traditional straight-line exercises.”

Your competitive advantages

“We’ve been around for 33 years, and that longevity really matters. The reputation of the brand is strong, and I’m very proud that all of our products are made entirely in the USA using sustainable materials—recycled rubber, reclaimed wood, recycled plastics, and sustainable packaging.”

“We’re really the only true slide board on a large scale. A lot of products you see online are roll-ups, and while they’re convenient, they don’t provide the same effectiveness, stability, or safety. We believe a slide board should actually be a board, and that philosophy has guided everything we make.”

“Customization is another advantage. We can add team or clinic logos, even for a single unit, and that personal touch really resonates with professional organizations and practitioners.”

Their current business model

“We sell through a combination of direct sales on our website, distributors, and Amazon, where we offer our smaller boards and accessories. Amazon has really opened up a consumer market for us that we weren’t fully accessing until a couple of years ago.”

“A big part of our business comes from repeat customers—coaches, trainers, and practitioners who move teams and reorder our products because they trust them and know the value they bring. That kind of loyalty means everything to us.”

“We focus on value, not being the cheapest option. When someone buys from us, the relationship doesn’t end when the product arrives—we want it to be ongoing.”

Their plans and aspirations for the next 12 months, and taking the product to the next level

“The biggest development we have coming is a smart bumper that retrofits onto our existing boards. Through an app, it will track reps, timing, number of laps, and bumper contact time, which is a very important metric for teams measuring quickness and performance.”

“This is a way to finally take a product that’s been analog for decades and make it smart—adding measurement, engagement, and even competition—without forcing existing customers to buy an entirely new board.”

“We’re also focused on expanding internationally, particularly in Europe, by improving access through Amazon. The demand is there; we just need to remove the friction and make it easier for people to get the product.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewingWaldi Hoon, CEO & Co-Founder of Yōjō, a nervous system wellness ecosystem.

Yōjō is a nervous system wellness company that has developed an integrated ecosystem designed to make daily autonomic rebalancing simple, measurable, and habit-forming. Its core offering combines a non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation wearable with real-time biofeedback, wearable data integration, face-scan health metrics, personalized coaching, and behavior-change technology within a single app. By showing users the physiological impact of nervous system stimulation in real time—such as improvements in stress, HRV, sleep, and recovery—yōjō moves beyond passive tracking to actively helping individuals rebalance their nervous system, supporting both preventative health and long-term performance in everyday life.

Picture: Yōjō device and app.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here is a video explaining how the device works:

📝Show Notes: During the interview with Waldi Hoon, CEO and co-founder of yōjō, we discussed how his background in behavior-change technology and work with clinicians led to the creation of a nervous system wellness ecosystem designed to solve the challenge of long-term adherence in health and wellness. Waldi explained how yōjō combines non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation with real-time biofeedback, wearable data, face-scan health metrics, and human coaching to actively rebalance the autonomic nervous system rather than simply track it.

We explored the benefits yōjō is delivering for both individuals—such as improved sleep, reduced stress, higher HRV, better mood, and recovery—and practitioners, who gain greater visibility and consistency in user engagement. The conversation also covered yōjō’s competitive advantages as an ecosystem focused on habit formation and measurable efficacy, its subscription-based business model, and the company’s ambitions over the next 12 months, including launching a next-generation device, deepening data validation, and expanding into the US market.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Waldi located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Waldi:

Q1. Her background and what led her to yōjō

“I’ve spent my career building learning and behavior-change platforms, really focused on figuring out how to help people actually stick to new habits. In wellness especially, you see the same pattern over and over again—people buy tools, they feel inspired for a week, and then life takes over.”

“When we were working more closely with clinicians and helping people with chronic pain conditions, we kept running into this issue of adherence. People would start a treatment, feel a bit better, and then stop doing it. That gap between intention and consistency is really where yōjō was born.”

“Yōjō comes from a passion for helping people adopt new, healthy habits in a way that balances their lives—without adding more mental load or forcing them to figure everything out on their own.”

Q2. Overview of the product

“At yōjō, our vision is to unlock people’s potential through autonomic balance. We’re a nervous system wellness ecosystem that makes daily autonomic rebalancing simple and accessible.”

“We combine a non-invasive vagus nerve stimulator with real-time biofeedback in our app, integrating wearable data, face-scan health metrics, personalized coaching, and habit-building technology all in one place.”

“What’s important to us is that people can see the difference the stimulation is making in their body in the moment. We don’t just tell people it works—we show them through data and measurable change.”

Q3. Benefits for both individuals and practitioners

For Individuals

“For individuals, the benefits are quite clear—better sleep, less stress, improved focus, and more stable moods. We’re also starting to see really strong recovery outcomes, particularly with highly active people.”

“HRV is where we see the biggest change. Most users experience around a 40% increase within the first month, alongside reduced stress index, increased parasympathetic activity, and improvements in deep sleep and sleep latency.”

“What we’re seeing is that people feel better, but they also have the data to understand why they feel better, which makes a huge difference in long-term engagement.”

For Practitioners

“For practitioners, the biggest benefit is adherence. It’s a way to make a treatment protocol actually stick without constantly worrying about whether someone is following through.”

“You can prescribe or recommend something to a client, but knowing whether they’re actually doing it—and whether it’s working—is always the challenge. This gives practitioners real visibility and confidence.”

Q4. yōjō’s competitive advantages

“We’re not just a gadget—we’re an ecosystem. You can buy a treadmill, but it doesn’t make you a runner. Our focus is on making sure people actually use the technology consistently.”

“Most wearables are great at tracking data, but they don’t really tell you what to do about it. We’re positioned as the wearable that actually does something and actively helps rebalance the nervous system.”

“By integrating wearable data and health metrics, we can prove our efficacy and show people how the technology is working for them, which massively increases trust and long-term use.”

“We’re also very intentional about being shame-free. Instead of adding pressure, we give people something tangible they can do to support their nervous system every day.”

Q5. Their current business model

“Yōjō operates on a subscription model that bundles the device with access to the app, biofeedback insights, and ongoing human coaching.”

“The annual subscription is currently £399, and we’re serving the UK, Europe, and the Middle East, with plans to expand into the US as soon as possible.”

“While yōjō is a wellness product, it’s built on the same clinical technology used in medical settings—we’ve chosen a preventative and longevity-focused approach so we can support people earlier.”

Q6. Their plans and aspirations for the next 12 months

“Our first priority over the next year is to continue proving that what we’re doing works by leaning heavily into data and learning as much as possible from our users.”

“We’re also launching a new device, the yōjō Stone, which is smaller, more powerful, has longer battery life, and allows us to personalize stimulation protocols based on how each individual responds.”

“At a bigger-picture level, our goal is to make nervous system care a daily norm—something as simple and habitual as brushing your teeth, even though achieving that requires a lot of thoughtful behavior-change work.”

“Expanding into the US market is absolutely part of our plans for this year, and we’re actively working toward that.”

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This week we had the honor to interview a group of NCAA sports performance experts.

• Dr. John DeWitt, Director of applied sports science in the athletic department and a faculty member, Rice University (NCAA team).

• Paul Silvestri, Sr director of sports health and performance, University of Florida football (NCAA team).

• Drew Lukes, Senior PT at Duke University and the head of sports science, Duke university’s women soccer team (NCAA team).

• Tyler Friedrich, Associate Athletics Director, Applied Performance at Stanford University (NCAA team).

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the following questions related to the NIL:

Q1. With the NIL, the transfer portal, are we actually developing NCAA athletes anymore, or are we mostly managing them—and how has that changed your daily job?

Q2. How has NIL changed the power dynamics around injury, rehab, and performance—and what boundaries are hardest to protect right now?

Q3. Have you changed how you document, communicate, or educate athletes because of NIL?

Q4. If the NCAA landscape keeps evolving the way it is, what does the ‘ideal performance staff’ look like in 5 years—and what skills will matter more than certifications?

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

You can leave a comment by clicking on the button below:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with them:

Q1: Development vs. Management with NIL/Transfer Portal

Dr. John DeWitt:

“The best source of data on an individual is their own data. And when people are leaving, we become more about managing than developing... The model of getting a guy when he is 17 years old and focusing on getting him to where he needs to be when he is 21 or 22—I think for a lot of places, that’s going out the window.”

“We’re looking at more of a professional model where you get someone and you’re trying to keep them for as long as you can until they walk out the door.”

Tyler Friedrich:

“There is a little bit of development if we’re getting kids after their freshman year, but even then, it’s all about where are they now... The kicker is they don’t get the benefit of those processes in place for four years where we can really get a good sense of who they are and train them up and develop them. They only get that benefit for one, two, three seasons at most.”

Paul Silvestri (University of Florida Football):

“We’re trying to get as much data as humanly possible prior to them even setting foot on campus for the visit... There’s a lot of money going out to these individuals, and if you don’t know what you’re paying for and what you’re going to get back in return—at least from an injury history and performance standpoint—you can make some huge misses.”

Q2: Power Dynamics Around Injury, Rehab, and Performance

Paul Silvestri:

“The biggest thing that’s changed drastically in the last couple years is that every one of these athletes I deal with at Florida now has an agent, and we’re going through that process of navigating second opinions. Our team doctors are fantastic—I’d put them up against anybody in the country—but we’re still navigating that process just like a lot of the pros do.”

Drew Lukes:

“I still try to keep the important thing at the forefront, and that is: do what’s best for the kid. I think it’s really easy to lose sight of what’s important when money starts flowing around. For me, I just have to continue to remind myself of that mantra: do what’s best for the kid.”

Tyler Friedrich:

“It’s really easy to get caught up trying to do the thing that makes the athlete happy or what they think they want, because you have an agent chirping or they’re a big money guy coming in. But we need to do what we think is best and utilize our skill sets and training to provide the best training, recovery, nutrition—whatever it is.”

“The draw of ‘we can develop you for professional or Olympic level’ isn’t quite as much as it was five or ten years ago. Now, you can have all those things and we’re still making those sales pitches when recruiting. But if someone’s going to offer a hundred thousand dollars more to a softball player, for example, it’s probably hard for that kid to turn that down.”

Question 3: Documentation, Communication, and Education Changes

Tyler Friedrich:

“We’re trying to centralize and standardize everything we’re doing—whether it be the tests we’re running, how we’re running them, how often we’re running them, how we’re programming... literally everything. We’re taking a more critical eye to all of our processes.”

“The last thing you want is to have an athlete sign an NIL agreement—a financial agreement with the university—and then claim negligence or improper training and documentation... We want to make sure we’re buttoned up and doing things at a professional level.”

Paul Silvestri:

“Before, if a kid transferred, people would call and you would just talk to them about their injury history, kind of off the cuff. Now it’s ‘give me a release from that kid,’ because there’s just too much money involved. If I say something about their medical information and they didn’t sign off on it, there’s the possibility of lawsuits... Everything just has to be dialed in now. There’s really little margin for error.”

Drew Lukes:

“We should already be documenting well, communicating well, and educating our athletes. Maybe what NIL has done more than anything is give us another kick in the butt to make sure our T’s are crossed and our I’s are dotted... It adds a magnifying glass to keep us on our toes and make sure we don’t lose sight of the importance of those things that aren’t as fun in our job.”

Q4: The Ideal Performance Staff in 5 Years

Dr. John DeWitt:

“Because the NCAA landscape is becoming more like a professional landscape, there has to be recognition from the university or leadership that people in these positions are fulfilling a major role... which means you have to rethink how you compensate these people.”

“The ideal performance staff may have to start branching out into specialists... maybe you have a sprinting specialist or a baseball technique specialist... The idea of a strength and conditioning coach doing five things—I think that’s got to stop.”

“I’m wondering how many of these athletes are coming in with their own trainers, just like in the pros. Now you’re going to have a situation where you have a team coach and then 17 guys with 17 different coaches. There has to be a way to integrate all these things.”

Paul Silvestri:

“This is still a personal business. It’s still a relationship business. At the end of the day, you have to be able to build trust with your athletes, and that takes communication and relationship building. That’s the core of it all. You can collect all the data you want, but if you don’t have trust from the athlete, it really doesn’t matter.”

Tyler Friedrich:

“Athletes, if they’re transferring year over year, will have several opportunities in front of them. They’re like free agents in professional sports. It’s about showing them our organization can help you reach your short and long-term goals... I don’t see NFL teams reducing staff. They’re adding staff because they want to become an attractive destination.”

“I would like it to go to the point where we see an increase of practitioners... Yes, work on the money and have the money for the athletes, but the flip side is: look, athlete, not only can we pay you, but we can also take care of you.”

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This week we had the honor to interview again Dr. Ron Dick, associate professor of sports marketing at Duquesne University in the school of business. Ron also worked for 20 years in sports, including 15 years in the NBA with the Sixers and the Nets, and then five years in the NCAA.

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• NFL playoff update,

• College football update,

• MLB FA signings,

• NBA update halfway through season,

• College basketball and G league and International players playing in college,

• NHL update,

• Potential WNBA lockout

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ron located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Ron:

1. NFL Playoff Update

“Here in Pittsburgh, they flexed the Ravens–Steelers game into the Sunday night slot at 8:25, and it turned out to be the right decision. The ratings were absolutely off the chart — there were an additional 17 to 18 million people watching that game. The league office really nailed it by putting that matchup in prime time, and it shows how powerful the NFL product still is.”

“It’s easy to just pick the top seeds like Seattle or Denver, but I don’t count the Eagles out at all. And honestly, could you imagine a Keystone Super Bowl — Steelers versus Eagles? That would be unbelievable. Seattle looks really good despite their quarterback situation, and while Denver is strong, I’m not convinced they’ll come out of the AFC.”

1. College Football Update

“What’s really interesting about college football this year is that only one of the four teams that earned a bye actually made it to the next round. That long four- or five-week layoff is not good for athletes. Players are very habitual — they like rhythm and consistency — and getting one of those top four seeds might actually be a disadvantage.”

“That Mississippi versus Georgia game was one of the greatest college football games I’ve ever seen. It was the final game on New Year’s Day, the eight o’clock kickoff, and it was absolutely worth staying up late for. The other games that day were blowouts, but that one had everything you want as a fan.”

“I’ll give you an early prediction right now — Archie Manning at the University of Texas is going to be your Heisman Trophy winner next year. He’s named after his grandfather, he’s got the pedigree, and more importantly, he’s peaking at the right time. He’s going to get every opportunity this fall, and I think he stays in college one more year and makes a huge jump.”

1. MLB Free Agent Signings

“The Japanese pipeline in Major League Baseball right now is absolutely smoking. These players aren’t drafted the way American players are — they’re already professionals in Japan. If an MLB team wants them, you not only negotiate a salary, but you also pay a posting fee to their Japanese club, very similar to international soccer.”

“To even be posted, you have to dominate the Japanese league. All three of the players who signed — with the White Sox, Astros, and Blue Jays — are expected to be high-impact guys right away. These aren’t projects. These are players who have proven themselves at a very high professional level.”

1. NBA Update (Halfway Through the Season)

“As we’re recording this, OKC is still number one in the Western Conference at 30–6, and they were off to an unbelievable start. They’re still playing very well, but their kryptonite might be the San Antonio Spurs — especially with Wembanyama. We saw that on Christmas Day, and that matchup could be trouble for them.”

“The Pistons at 26–9 are number one in the East, which is incredible. The Knicks are doing well, the Celtics, the Raptors — even the Sixers have really turned the corner. This is the time of year when the NBA starts to get really intense, and every single game carries more weight.”

“The big question, as always, is LeBron James. We don’t know if this is his last season or not. He already announced that he’s not playing in the 2028 Olympics, and like Aaron Rodgers, he’ll probably wait until the end of the year to decide what’s next.”

1. College Basketball, G League & International Pros Playing in College

“We are absolutely blurring the lines between amateur and professional sports. I honestly don’t think there’s anything left called amateur anymore. You can pay kids in seventh and eighth grade, you can pay high school players, and now you have former G League players coming back to college basketball.”

“No player who has actually played in the NBA has gone back to college, but we now have players who were drafted, played in the G League, and didn’t pan out — and they’re going back to college. Coaches like Scott Drew are saying, ‘These are the mechanisms that are in place, and I’m just playing by the rules.’”

“A lot of college basketball fans don’t realize that many international players who come to play Division I basketball were already professionals overseas. So when you ask why G League players coming back to college is controversial, my question is: how is that any different from Europe?”

1. NHL Update

“The NHL, like the NBA, is really in full bloom right now. Locally, the Penguins won five in a row, the Flyers are doing better, and both teams are in solid playoff position. But the outlier in the league is the Colorado Avalanche — they already have 69 points and are by far the best team in the NHL.”

“When you look at Ovechkin breaking Gretzky’s record with Gretzky in the building, and then Crosby passing Mario Lemieux in Penguins history, those are iconic moments that remind you how strong the league is right now.”

1. Potential WNBA Lockout

“The WNBA players are clearly underpaid when you look at the data. Revenue is up, TV ratings are up, attendance is up, ticket sales are up, merchandise is up, and global interest is up. So for players to be making $200,000 to $250,000 in this environment just doesn’t make sense anymore.”

“They’re not asking to make $40 million like LeBron James, and nobody thinks that’s realistic. But the gap between where they are and where they should be is still far too big. The players are very outspoken, they don’t believe their representation is strong enough, and that’s why this situation could get very ugly as early as March or April.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewingManfredi San Germano, Founder of Beyond Blood Diagnostics, a spinout of Imperial College in the UK. Beyond Blood Diagnostics is a deep tech startup specialized in blood sensor diagnostics.

Beyond Blood Diagnostics is a deep-tech company that has developed a portable, lab-grade blood analysis device designed to bring routine blood testing out of centralized labs and into everyday environments such as homes, training facilities, and remote settings. Its core product miniaturizes a standard blood count test into a rugged, handheld system that uses a simple finger-prick sample and delivers results in minutes, without the need for clinical supervision or sample shipping.

Picture: HypoXcell, Beyond Blood Diagnostics’ solution

By measuring key biomarkers such as red blood cells, hemoglobin, mean cell volume, and related indicators of oxygen-carrying capacity and physiological adaptation, the platform enables more frequent, decentralized monitoring for athletes, teams, and individuals. The system is built for real-world use—portable, precise, and robust enough to travel—making it particularly valuable for elite sports, endurance training, and other performance or readiness use cases where fast, reliable blood insights can directly inform decisions.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here is a video explaining how the technology works:

📝Show Notes: During this interview with Manfredi, we discussed his background in biomedical engineering and how his clinical experience led to the creation of Beyond Blood Diagnostics and its portable, finger-prick blood testing device. He explained how the product enables lab-grade blood analysis outside of traditional hospitals, allowing athletes and teams to monitor training adaptation, oxygen-carrying capacity, and potential overtraining more frequently. We also covered key trends and gaps in the blood analysis market, the main benefits teams see from faster and more decentralized decision-making, Beyond Blood’s competitive advantages in precision and portability, and the company’s near-term focus on regulatory approval, new biomarkers, and partnerships.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Manfedi located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Manfredi:

1. Your Background

“I started my work in the hospital at Hammersmith in London, one of the biggest hospitals for surgery, working at the National Heart and Lung Institute together with Imperial College on new cell detection technologies. While I was working there, I began to realize how dependent blood diagnostics were on centralized hospitals and labs, and how difficult it was for people to access frequent testing.”

“That’s when it became clear to me that there was a real need for a way of testing blood outside of the clinic and into people’s homes, without needing to be under constant clinical supervision.”

1. Your Company & Product

“What we’ve developed is essentially what happens every single day in the lab—a routine blood test called the blood count—but we’ve miniaturized it so that you can perform this test in your own home without supervision from a clinician.”

“You don’t have to send the blood sample to a lab like most companies do today. You place the sample into the device, and the results are right in front of you in a matter of minutes, directly on your desk.”

1. Main Use Cases

“The biggest use case for professional athletes is understanding whether their training is actually doing what it’s supposed to do. A lot of athletes are training hard, but they don’t always have direct insight into how their physiology is adapting.”

“Monitoring oxygen-carrying capacity is not easy to do routinely, especially when athletes are traveling or training at altitude. We provide a simple finger-prick blood test that measures hemoglobin mass, red blood cell count, mean cell volume, and reticulocytes, all of which are key markers for performance.”

1. Blood Analysis Market & Trends

“One of the biggest problems for teams today is the inability to do blood testing in a decentralized way and at scale. Many athletes train alone or are coached remotely, and it’s just not practical to send them to hospitals for intravenous blood draws on a regular basis.”

“There’s also a regulatory and logistical challenge. Having a needle in your arm before a race isn’t always easy to justify, whereas finger-prick testing removes a lot of that friction and paperwork.”

1. Benefits for Teams

“The biggest payoff is faster decision-making for the coach, the athlete, and the team doctor. You get clear proof of whether the athlete is adapting to altitude or training, rather than relying on assumptions or delayed lab results.”

“When you test more frequently—every few days instead of once every few weeks—you get a much clearer picture of what’s really happening inside the athlete and whether they’re adapting or potentially overtraining.”

1. Competitive Advantages

“Usability is a key differentiator for us. Being able to perform lab-grade diagnostics without a trained healthcare professional taking blood is extremely difficult, and that’s something we’ve focused on from the very beginning.”

“Another major advantage is ruggedness. Traditional blood analyzers rely on optics, lenses, and cameras, and if you drop them, they break. Our device is built to be carried in suitcases and used in the field, which is why it attracted interest and funding from NATO.”

1. What Teams Like About the Product

“Precision is always the most important thing. Teams will consistently choose precision over other factors if they have to make that trade-off.”

“Portability also matters a lot because teams travel constantly. The device doesn’t need to be ultra-small, but it needs to be easy to carry, reliable, and accurate when it’s used in different environments.”

“The finger-prick method is another thing teams really appreciate because it removes many of the barriers associated with traditional blood draws.”

1. Business Model

“We operate through several channels, including affiliate programs, distribution partners, and direct-to-consumer sales, but for teams we usually work on highly customized plans because each organization has different requirements.”

“We also provide an app and web platform where users can track their metrics over time, understand trends, and get insights based on factors like age, weight, and physiology.”

“Our tests cost around £30 per test, which is significantly cheaper and much faster than most hospital-based blood tests.”

1. Plans for the Next 12 Months

“Over the next 12 months, our main focus is completing our clinical trials in the UK and moving toward CE certification, as well as progressing with FDA approval in the United States.”

“We’re also working on adding additional biomarkers through partnerships, particularly around nutrition and supplements, to better understand how different interventions impact blood health and performance.”

“We’re still very early in our journey, but we’re actively looking to partner with teams across different sports and performance environments.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Nick Hool, CEO of Hoolest, a leading Nervus system recovery technology company.

Hoolest is a neurostimulation company focused on improving recovery, stress regulation, and overall performance by targeting the autonomic nervous system, with a particular emphasis on vagus nerve stimulation. Its flagship product, Hoolest Pro, is a wearable, non-invasive device designed for elite and professional athletes that delivers personalized neuromodulation protocols to support recovery, sleep quality, pain management, and mental readiness. By combining hardware, software, and physiological data, Hoolest enables teams and practitioners to integrate nervous system regulation into daily training, rehab, and return-to-play workflows. The company positions itself at the intersection of neuroscience, performance, and recovery, offering a scalable solution that complements existing physical training and recovery modalities used by high-performance organizations.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here are some pictures of the Hoolest pro:

Here is a video featuring Nick Hool, CEO of Hoolest, explaining how the Hoolest pro works. This video also includes some video testimonials.

Here are the studies published by Hoolest:

Here is the current white paper Hoolest has put together that highlights the relevant foundational studies that led to the development of Hoolest, and the current studies that they completed on their own products.

📝Show Notes: During the interview with Nick, we discussed his personal journey as a former competitive golfer whose experience with performance-related stress and anxiety led him to pursue a PhD in biomedical engineering and ultimately build Hoolest Pro. Nick explained how the product was designed to address a major gap in modern performance and recovery programs: nervous system recovery, particularly the ability for athletes and high-stress professionals to downregulate quickly after intense competition or work demands.

We explored how Hoolest Pro uses targeted, high-potency vagus nerve stimulation to deliver fast, noticeable effects in real-world environments, with teams seeing benefits in sleep quality, stress reduction, mental focus, and pain management. Nick also shared his perspective on the rapidly growing vagus nerve stimulation market, highlighting how Hoolest Pro differentiates itself through precise anatomical targeting, higher energy delivery, and a wearable form factor built for elite use. Finally, we covered Hoolest’s business model, its alignment with professional teams, and Nick’s priorities for the next 12 months, which include increasing awareness, refining the user experience without adding complexity, and expanding adoption among athletes, practitioners, and other high-stress populations.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Nick:

Q1. Background & What Led Him to Build Hoolest Pro

“I started the company entirely from my own personal experience dealing with stress and anxiety. When I was a teenager, I was a competitive golfer and, like most young athletes, I had dreams of going pro. I was practicing every day, traveling across the country, playing in the biggest tournaments I could, and doing well enough that I earned a verbal commitment to play golf at Arizona State when I was 16. For a kid from Arizona, that was the dream—Phil Mickelson, Jon Rahm, Paul Casey all went there.”

“A year later, the coach got fired, the new coach wiped the roster, and suddenly I lost that path. That’s when my anxiety really started, and what was confusing is that it wasn’t mental—it was physical. My heart rate would spike, my shoulders would lock up, my body would feel tense every time I stepped onto the course. Golf is a sport where you have to be calm and controlled, and my body just wouldn’t cooperate.”

“I tried everything—sports psychology, medication—but nothing truly solved the problem. The medication worked, but it sedated me, and that’s not acceptable in a performance environment. Eventually, I realized there had to be something physical happening inside the nervous system that wasn’t being addressed, and that’s what pushed me into biomedical engineering and eventually a PhD. I wanted to quantify the problem so I could actually solve it.”

Q2. What Hoolest Pro Does & Where It Fits in Performance and Recovery

“Recovery in professional sports has mostly been about the body—muscles, joints, soft tissue, inflammation. Those things matter, but the nervous system is what controls everything. If the nervous system is stuck in a stressed, overactivated state, you’re never going to fully recover physically, no matter how many recovery tools you use.”

“What we see with elite athletes is that it’s not always anxiety before games—it’s the inability to shut down afterward. They’re dealing with adrenaline, stimulants, lights, noise, pressure, and then the game ends and their nervous system stays elevated. That carries into sleep, travel, and the next day. Hoolest Pro is designed to actively bring the nervous system down in those real-world moments.”

“This isn’t something that requires 30 minutes in a quiet room. You put it on for about 10 minutes, whether you’re in the locker room, on the plane, or at home, and it helps the nervous system shift out of fight-or-flight and into a recovery state.”

Q3. Main Benefits & Highest-Impact Use Cases

“The first thing most athletes notice is sleep. When you calm the nervous system, they fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. That alone has a massive impact on recovery, consistency, and how they feel day to day during the season.”

“The long-term benefit is mental performance. At the professional level, everyone is physically gifted. What separates athletes is focus—the ability to lock into the moment, filter out distractions, and perform under pressure. That’s not a muscle issue; that’s a nervous system issue.”

“Pain is another important use case. Pain is just a signal traveling through the nervous system. By changing how that signal is processed, athletes often feel an immediate reduction in pain perception, especially when this is combined with physical rehab or other recovery modalities.”

Q4. Vagus Nerve Stimulation Market & Differentiation

“To my knowledge, I’m the only PhD in vagus nerve stimulation who is actually building a commercial product. But beyond that, I’m very outcomes-focused. Most companies are limited by what’s already published in the research, and that research points to long, low-intensity protocols—20 to 30 minutes a day for weeks before people feel anything.”

“That doesn’t work for high-performance environments. Athletes and high-stress professionals don’t want to wait weeks—they need to calm down now. So we built the most potent vagus nerve stimulator on the market, not to be aggressive for no reason, but to create fast, noticeable results when it actually matters.”

“A lot of products claim vagus nerve stimulation but don’t even reach the nerve. They might help people relax, but not through the mechanism they’re advertising. Our differentiation is precise targeting, higher energy delivery, and a wearable form factor that fits seamlessly into real performance settings.”

Q5. Business Model & Working With Elite Teams

“Our model is straightforward. You buy the device, and the recurring component is the gel electrodes. We had to create a new water-based material so we could deliver higher power comfortably. Permanent electrodes just weren’t tolerable at that intensity.”

“Because teams and athletes use it at different frequencies, we built flexible replacement options—from very light use to aggressive daily use. Even at the high end, it’s still far less expensive than many supplements that sedate the nervous system instead of training it.”

“The key difference is that electrical stimulation promotes neuroplasticity. Over time, the nervous system becomes stronger and more resilient, so athletes often need the device less frequently. That’s very different from drugs, which create dependency rather than adaptation.”

Q6. Priorities & Next 12 Months

“Our biggest priority is awareness. People are confused about vagus nerve stimulation, and there’s a lot of noise in the market. We want people to experience what real nervous system regulation feels like and understand how powerful it can be when it’s done correctly.”

“We’re continuing to refine the experience—things like audio-synced stimulation and a companion app with guided content—but we’re very careful not to overcomplicate it. Simplicity is core to our philosophy.”

“The product itself is already strong. Over the next year, it’s less about reinventing it and more about getting it into the hands of athletes, practitioners, and high-stress professionals who genuinely need better tools to regulate their nervous systems.”

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This week we had the honor to interview again Athanase Kollias, CEO of KINVENT, a company that helps sports and rehab professionals assess progress and build engagement and motivation. Athan is joined by Paul Silvestri, Sr director of sports health and performance at the University of Florida football (NCAA team). Paul, who has been using the Kinvent 3D Deltas force plates for some time, gave us his feedback on the product.

Founded in 2017, KINVENT is a leading player in the fields of physical rehabilitation and sports biomechanics producing innovative measuring and training devices for the facilitation of every day and athletic movements. Of note, Raphaël Varane, who is a defender on the French national soccer team, 2018 World Cup Champion, and current Manchester United player, is one of their investors.

Here is the video interview with Athan Kollias and Paul Silvestri. You can also listen to the audio interview located at the top of this page.

Here is a video showcasing KINVENT’s 3D Deltas Force plates, which are3 Dimensional force plates combined with MOCAP bringing lab-level precision directly to the field. Unlike traditional force plates that only capture vertical force, 3D Deltas measure movement in all directions, providing a complete picture of an athlete’s or patient’s biomechanics. By combining 3D force plate technology with motion capture, it allows for real-time insights into (1) Change of direction efficiency, (2) Lateral movement & performance metrics (3) Injury risk assessment & rehab progress and (4) Sport-specific movement analysis.

Here is a picture of the KINVENT’s 3D Deltas used by Florida Football and customized using the team’s logo.

Best Quotes: Here’s some of the key discussion points and best quotes from our conversation with Athan and Paul:

Q1. What are the Kinvent 3D Delta force plates and how do they work?

Athan Kollias

“Kinvent is now eight years old, and we’ve been working with force plates for five to seven years. This year was really a turning point for us because we decided to move toward capturing the full picture of human movement. Until now, most force plates on the market focused almost exclusively on the vertical component of force. With the 3D Deltas, we now calculate forces across all three axes—X, Y, and Z—which allows us to assess vertical, horizontal, and lateral forces. That means we can analyze not just simple movements like vertical jumps, but also complex movements such as changes of direction, lateral jumps, and broad jumps, which are much closer to what athletes actually do in sport.”

Q2. Decision to Adopt: What led you to adopt the 3D Deltas system?

Paul Silvestri

“The biggest reason for adopting the 3D Deltas was exactly what Athan just described. It was the first force plate system I had seen that could capture vertical, horizontal, and lateral forces all together. Traditional force plates give you vertical data, and that’s valuable, but it’s incomplete. When you’re looking at return to play, preseason screenings, or real on-field demands, athletes aren’t just moving straight up and down. The 3D Deltas were a game changer because they gave us a much more realistic picture of how athletes produce and absorb force in the movements they actually perform.”

Q3. Primary Use Cases: How are you using the 3D Deltas?

Paul Silvestri

“Right now, we’re using it heavily in rehab and return-to-play, and it’s becoming part of our daily workflow. We adopted the technology over the summer, so starting in January we’re rolling it into preseason screenings to establish baselines. A good example was an athlete coming off a meniscectomy—we’re at the stage where he’s returning to running and cutting. Using the 3D Deltas, we were able to analyze his lateral movements and cutting mechanics, overlaying markerless video with force vectors. We could immediately show him how valgus collapse during landings was altering his force output and where he was losing power. That immediate visual and data-driven feedback created a coachable moment you simply can’t get with any other force plate system I’ve used.”

Q4. Standout Features: What stands out most in daily use?

Paul Silvestri

“The combination of markerless video and force data is incredibly valuable. Being able to show athletes exactly what they’re doing, how their movement patterns affect force production, and where power is being lost is huge for both rehab and performance. Another major feature is Smart Mode. I can run an athlete through an entire battery of tests without clicking between protocols—the force plates automatically recognize what test is being performed. That saves a significant amount of time. On top of that, if we want to create a custom test for a specific athlete, Kinvent is incredibly responsive. I can explain what I want, and within 10 to 15 minutes it’s built and uploaded into our system. That’s a new standard for me.”

Athan Kollias

“For me, what really stands out is the combination of 3D motion capture with force vectors. Motion capture alone shows joint positions, but when you combine that with force direction and magnitude, you can truly work on technique. You can see if the athlete is pushing at the right moment, placing their knee correctly, and applying force in the right direction. This combination allows practitioners to move beyond just measurement and actually coach movement quality.”

Q5. Value & Key Data Insights: What metrics matter most?

Paul Silvestri

“The force vectors are the biggest value for us. These are strong, powerful athletes, but strength alone doesn’t guarantee performance. If they’re not applying force at the right angles, they’re not maximizing their ability. With the 3D Deltas, we can immediately identify those issues, make coachable corrections, and then retest to see if performance actually improves. That applies not only to rehab, but also to healthy athletes who may not be using their strength and speed efficiently on the field.”

Athan Kollias

“A great example is lateral force application during jumps. Everyone naturally pushes slightly to the sides for stability, but if an athlete pushes too much laterally, they lose force that should be directed forward. This directly affects acceleration, especially the first step, which can represent nearly one-third of an athlete’s maximum speed. With three-axis force analysis, practitioners can identify these inefficiencies and help athletes use their muscular system in a much more effective way.”

Q6. Why should other college or pro teams consider using it?

Paul Silvestri

“I’ll be very direct—we have a competitive advantage because we have this system. You simply cannot capture this level of three-axis movement data with any other force plate. Athletes move in all three planes, and this technology reflects that reality. Whether you’re assessing return to play or optimizing healthy athletes, the value of this data is enormous. In my opinion, it should be in every program.”

Paul Silvestri

“There’s also a major mental component. Athletes don’t just see numbers—they see visuals, they see progress, and they feel improvement. That builds confidence, which is often the final barrier in return to play. The 3D Deltas help restore trust in movement while we’re rebuilding physical capacity, and that’s been eye-opening for me.”

Athan Kollias

“Lateral movements often reveal compensations athletes try to hide when they want to return quickly. Being able to see those compensations helps practitioners make better decisions. At the same time, from a performance standpoint, improving explosiveness, acceleration, and efficiency directly reduces injury risk. That’s why we believe the 3D Deltas have a strong role in both health and performance.”

Q7. Product Improvements: What would you enhance?

Paul Silvestri

“Honestly, it’s hard for me to say what I would improve. The system is flexible, progressive, and constantly evolving. The fact that Smart Mode exists alone changed our workflow. And when we want to explore a very specific movement pattern, Kinvent can build that test quickly. That level of adaptability makes it hard to ask for much more.”

Athan Kollias

“What we’re currently working on is multi-angle video capture. Right now, practitioners often rely on a single camera view. Soon, they’ll be able to analyze movements from the front, side, and back simultaneously. This will be especially valuable for complex tasks like change of direction, allowing coaches to evaluate joint angles, trunk position, and timing from every perspective.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing David McHugh, the Director of mental performance at the Washington Spirit an NWSL team.

David McHugh is the Director of Mental Performance for the Washington Spirit (NWSL), where he supports players and staff through applied sports psychology, mental skills development, and performance planning. Originally an academy soccer player in Ireland, McHugh’s career in mental performance began after a significant injury sparked his interest in the psychology of recovery, resilience, and player development. He went on to earn advanced degrees in psychology, including a doctorate in sports psychology, and completed his UEFA coaching badge.

Before joining the Spirit, David held roles across Irish football as a coach, lecturer, and sports psychology practitioner, working with underage national teams, League of Ireland women’s programs, and academy environments. His blend of on-field coaching experience and psychological expertise allows him to integrate seamlessly with technical staff while supporting athletes across all phases of their development. At the Spirit, he plays a key role in shaping the club’s mental performance strategy, helping players build confidence, navigate pressure, and perform consistently at the highest level.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• His background & journey to the NWSL.

• His role at the Washington Spirit.

• His mental preparation philosophy

• The use of technology

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with David located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with David:

1. Background & Journey to the NWSL

David McHugh

“Like a lot of people who end up working in sport, I started off as an athlete myself. I was playing academy soccer in Ireland, and when I was 16 I broke my leg and was out for about nine months — I didn’t get back on the pitch for a full year. That injury was a defining moment for me. It raised so many psychological questions: Why didn’t I fully recover? Why didn’t I reach my potential? Why wasn’t there support for the mental side of injury?

I went on to study psychology, and halfway through my degree I realized sports psychology was even a thing. Those early experiences — being injured, being sidelined, questioning everything — pushed me toward wanting to understand how to better support athletes. I did my master’s, then became a coach, did all of my UEFA coaching badges, worked in the League of Ireland, and coached both boys’ and women’s academy teams. Eventually, I went back and did my doctorate in sports psychology because I saw a gap — everyone focused on the physical, not the mental.

Over about 10 years those skill sets — coaching, psychology, understanding environments — all came together. When the role opened at Washington Spirit, I had experience in the women’s game, the coaching background to support the head coach, and the perspective to work with players individually. That combination is what ultimately led me to the Spirit, and now I’m finishing my third season with the club.”

2. Role in the Club

David McHugh

“Day-to-day, my role is a mix of being in the performance meetings, medical meetings, coaching meetings — really understanding what’s happening with every individual and every unit in the team. I’m looking at what players need this week, what the team needs, what messaging the head coach wants to set for the week, and then how we carry that into training.

I’m observing sessions, helping players debrief, meeting with them before or after training, and building mental-development plans. But I also zoom out and look at the entire performance system, because it’s not just individuals — it’s the international players, the rookies, the veterans, injured players, the staff, subgroups within staff, and even external influences like fans or media. Sometimes the issue for an athlete isn’t at the individual level — it’s at a higher layer of the system, so the solution might involve adjusting the coaching environment or shifting group messaging.

I also try to work two or three weeks ahead. Coaches focus on the immediate weekend — understandably — but I’m looking at what’s coming. For example, before playoffs, we might build penalty routines, or earlier in the season we plan for predictable moments like going ahead, going behind, or returning to level. So the job is part day-to-day support, part long-term planning, part environmental shaping. Everything is about helping the players and staff navigate the system in a way that supports performance and wellbeing.”

3. Mental Preparation Philosophy

David McHugh

“My philosophy is to keep things simple and tied directly to the demands of the game. A lot of sports psychology can get overly academic, but players need things that make sense on the field. So I always come back to three processes: the ability to be present, the ability to accept your emotions, and the ability to do what matters.

When players aren’t present, they usually can’t accept their emotions, and if they can’t accept their emotions, they struggle to act in line with their values. Those three pieces interact, and when a player explains what’s going on for them, I’ll put those three concepts on a whiteboard and ask which one will help them most right now. Then we build the session around that.

Confidence is a big one. Athletes often say, ‘I need to feel confident to perform,’ but the quickest way to feel confident is to go play at a lower level. You’ll be better technically, faster, more experienced — of course you’ll feel confident. But that’s not what they want. They want to be challenged. So instead of chasing a feeling, we redefine confidence around trust. The root of the word confidence is fidere, meaning to trust. So the real question becomes: What do you trust about yourself to cope with the challenge? What do you trust about the people around you?

It’s the same with pressure. Athletes say ‘I have to’ or ‘I need to,’ and that creates pressure. Those are closed goals — you either achieve them or you don’t. Instead, I help them shift toward open goals: How good can I be today? How many times can I get on the ball? How can I explore my potential in this moment? It moves players from pressure to exploration, which is usually why they fell in love with the game in the first place.”

4. Use of Technology

David McHugh

“The mental performance space is very education-heavy, so technology first helps us communicate and teach — Zoom, Google Meet, video tools. We can now educate athletes and even other mental-performance coaches at scale.

When it comes to specific tools, I’m a bit old-school. Relationships matter most. But one technology I rely on heavily is video. Analysts use tools like Sportscode to break down physical performance, but we can use the same tools to evaluate mental performance — comparing body language in different game states, examining behaviors when players are chasing closed goals versus open goals, and understanding emotional responses in context.

Right now that work is very manual, but AI will change everything. In sports like baseball, they’re already doing biomechanics analysis at a very high level. When that scales to soccer — tracking 22 players through video, capturing posture, movement, interactions — we’ll gain massive insight into team coordination, emotional regulation, and mental responses. People in tech tell me we’re heading there soon.

I’ve also seen vagus nerve techniques used — even simple ones like athletes putting their face in ice water to activate the diving reflex and regulate HRV and anxiety. I’ve shown athletes videos of divers using the technique, explained the theory, and helped them apply it at home. That’s where technology has power: when it educates, simplifies, and becomes something practical the athlete can use.”

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This week we have the honor to interview a group of NHL sports performance executives to talk about the latest trends in the world of sports performance.

• Alexi Pianosi, Head S&C coach, Colorado avalanche (NHL Team).

• Adam Douglas, Hockey Product Manager, Sportslogiq. Adam is also the former S&C coach for the Pittsburgh Penguins (NHL Team).

• Chris Stackpole, VP Athlete Care, NJ Devils (NHL Team).

• Devan McConnell, High performance director, Utah Mammoth (NHL Team).

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the best practices related to:

• Humans’ Intuition and technology: As technology rapidly accelerates, what performance or rehab decision today is still made largely by intuition or experience — and what would you want technology to solve or objectify in the next 3–5 years?

• Important metrics: In a data-rich environment, what metric do you wish you had that does not exist yet — but would change how teams monitor readiness or performance?

• Return to play: What part of the return-to-play process do you believe will look completely different 5–10 years from now?

• NHL player profile: What’s one profile of player you think the NHL will produce more of in the next decade (faster, stronger, smaller, smarter, better conditioned, etc.) and why?

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Alexi, Chris, Devan and Adam:

1. Humans’ Intuition & Technology

Devan McConnell

“The end stage of return to play still has quite a bit of intuition. As a player gets closer to fully returning, there’s still a layer of the coach’s eye involved — that blend of the performance staff, medical team, coaches, and even the player making sense of what’s going on. We have good data, and we use it, but that final stretch still really relies on practitioner experience and understanding the nuances that the numbers can’t always capture.”

Alexi Pianosi

“One area I’ve always leaned on heavily is subjective movement quality. You watch an athlete go through particular drills and you’re looking at the ankle angle, the knee, the hip — trying to figure out if they’re moving efficiently and absorbing force the right way. Technology can help, but once you start adding force plates, motion capture, and EMG, the complexity ramps up fast. Experienced coaches rely on a trained eye built over hundreds of thousands of reps. Bridging the gap between that coach’s eye and objective measures of movement quality is a major frontier for technology.”

Chris Stackpole

“On the technical side, it would be really interesting if we could tap into the same kind of biomechanical analysis that hockey product companies do behind the scenes. It’s similar to baseball, where pitching mechanics are broken down in incredible detail. We don’t have that level of access at the team level. If we could apply that type of analysis to skating or stick-and-puck skills — especially for younger players who are still developing — it could help unlock skill sets we’re not fully tapping into, even in-season.”

Adam Douglas

“We have all these measurement tools — Catapult gives us hundreds of metrics — and I still feel the biggest gap is technology that can tell me, ‘What am I missing?’ I want something that can run through all that data automatically, compare today against yesterday, and flag what’s different. Then I can bring that to the medical staff or coaches and say, ‘This popped — how do we feel about it?’ I think AI is going to move us in that direction. I want tech that fills in the blind spots.”

2. Important Metrics That Don’t Exist Yet

Devan McConnell

“I’d really like to be able to measure cognitive load or cognitive clarity. We have plenty of tools for CNS fatigue and metabolic readiness, but almost nothing objective on the mental side. For performance and readiness, understanding cognitive load — how sharp someone is, how clearly they’re processing — would be incredibly valuable. It’s the next big area I’d want access to.”

Alexi Pianosi

“We can measure CNS readiness in lots of different ways, but what we’re missing is how that interacts with motivation, emotional wellbeing, or the player’s mental state when they walk into the rink. Some players are exhausted on the second night of a back-to-back yet perform incredibly well — clearly something psychological is contributing. Understanding how the mental and physical side combine into a more holistic definition of readiness would be extremely valuable, even if I don’t know how we’d measure it yet.”

Chris Stackpole

“I’d love to see something that could measure team dynamics or chemistry. We all see teams that overperform relative to their roster talent — but we can’t quantify why. If we had a metric that helped us understand how team cohesion, emotional regulation, leadership characteristics, and interpersonal dynamics influence performance, it could completely change roster-building and player selection. It would help us understand the nuance beyond technical and tactical ability.”

Adam Douglas

“Everyone in high-performance sport is chasing the same thing: a true, holistic readiness score that combines physical, mental, cognitive, emotional — all of it. Right now we only have proxy measures that we interpret the best we can. If someone actually figured out a reliable, scientifically sound way to calculate that, they’d be sitting on an absolute goldmine. Every team in the world would want it.”

3. Return to Play in 5–10 Years

Alexi Pianosi

“I think biomechanics and 3D motion analysis will become a much bigger part of return to play. If you can watch a player skate, pivot, stop, or start and actually see — in real time — where force is going through the kinetic chain, then you can make immediate, actionable coaching adjustments. Most non-contact injuries come down to force exceeding tissue capacity. Real-time movement analysis would help us guide rehab much more precisely. It’s complex, especially in hockey’s environment, but it’s coming.”

Devan McConnell

“Live biomechanics is incredibly difficult in hockey — the environment is chaotic, the rink is big, the equipment interferes with tracking — and it hasn’t been done well yet. But if someone cracks that challenge, it could be enormously beneficial. Baseball can analyze arm action, spin rate, and mechanics because the environment is controlled. If we ever get even part of that capability in hockey, it could really move the needle for return to play.”

Chris Stackpole

“My hope is that in 5–10 years every team is consistently applying modern standards of sports medicine. Too many players still go through the rehab process without timely diagnoses or without access to the right specialists. Some organizations still operate in an old-school way. I’d like to see integrated, collaborative models across performance, medical, front office, and agents — fewer silos, fewer unnecessary surgeries, and better long-term outcomes for players.”

Adam Douglas

“The teams that figure out recovery will be the ones that succeed. Schedule density is only getting worse — 82 games now, 84 soon — and players are going to war every other night. Keeping your best players healthy and recovered is everything. Whoever solves that piece at scale will have a massive advantage.”

4. NHL Player Profile of the Future

Adam Douglas

“The future is already here. Younger players are pushing into the league sooner because they’re more prepared for the pro game than ever before. Five or six years ago, unless you were picked first overall, you weren’t making the NHL right away. Now these young guys are ready. In a salary-cap environment, if you can get elite contributions from entry-level players, you set your organization up for long-term success.”

Devan McConnell

“The differentiator today is cognitive ability. The game is unbelievably fast. The players who succeed are the ones who can process what’s happening at that speed — that’s what separates them now. Physically, everyone is stronger and faster; those margins have shrunk. The next evolution is the brain’s ability to process, decide, and act under pressure. That’s why younger players are excelling earlier — they can see the game differently.”

Chris Stackpole

“I’m curious if the pendulum eventually swings back toward slightly bigger players. The league right now is trending toward smaller, highly skilled, highly mobile players. But there’s only so much faster players can get physically. As everyone’s fitness and speed converge, teams might start looking for different differentiators — and size could come back into play.”

Alexi Pianosi

“Everyone trains now — strength, conditioning, nutrition. There aren’t a lot of untapped physical secrets left, so players are becoming more homogenized physically. What will separate them is how they think the game: how they make plays under pressure, how they adapt as they enter the league, how they learn from veterans. Those who are open-minded and can evolve their understanding of the game will be the ones who stand out.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Sayawni Lassiter , CEO of Complete Sports, a Boston-based sports technology company founded in 2024 that offers an all-in-one platform for athletic departments and professional teams.

Sayawni Lassiter is a sports technology founder and entrepreneur whose career is defined by the resilience learned on the court and the operational precision honed in finance. A former Division I athlete, she played basketball for three powerhouse programs: Florida State University, Rutgers University, and the University of Rhode Island (URI). Her hoop dreams were ultimately curtailed after suffering three devastating ACL injuries and numerous broken bones, experiences that illuminated a profound, systemic lack of integrated support for athletes managing recovery and daily life.

Throughout her athletic career and navigating her numerous injuries, Sayawni knew early on that her hoop dreams would be long lived. So, she focused on finance, earning a BA in Finance with minors in Business Analytics and Economics, followed by an MS in Financial Analysis. Her educational track culminated in her sitting for the CFA (Charted Financial Analyst) exam, giving her a powerful foundation in data, efficiency, and financial rigor.

However, the systemic problems she endured in college called her back to sports. Her initial vision was a platform designed to help athletes find nearby parks and hills and outdoor exercise locations during COVID, while also helping them hone their mental and nutritional health. This initial focus quickly transitioned into realizing the larger market issue in collegiate and professional athletics: the lack of attention to overall athlete well-being and expensiveness of siloed legacy solutions.

Sayawni then founded Complete Sports to directly address this. Leveraging her financial background to ensure cost-efficiency and her athlete experience to guarantee holistic support, she sought to blend and morph the worlds of operational efficiency (communication, scheduling, forms) and athlete performance/well-being. Today, she leads Complete, providing the single operating system she wished she had—a platform that ensures every athlete and program has a more complete path to success.

Picture: Complete Sports platform and mobile app

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During this interview we discussed Sayawni’s journey from being a top Division I basketball recruit who endured multiple ACL tears to becoming the founder and CEO of Complete Sports, an all-in-one athlete operations and wellbeing platform designed to fix the gaps she experienced firsthand. She explained how the product blends calendars, communication, nutrition, and mental-fitness tools into a single system that serves both staff and athletes, and she highlighted the fragmented nature of today’s AMS, nutrition, and mental-health markets—where teams often pay high prices for tools that only solve one problem.

We also explored the platform’s main use cases, the benefits of consolidating systems, what teams appreciate most about the product, the company’s competitive advantages in being holistic and cost-efficient, and her flexible subscription-based business model. Finally, she shared her plans for the next 12 months, including raising capital, expanding features such as strength and conditioning and AMS-style availability tracking, and increasing visibility among teams and athletic departments.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Sayawni located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Sayawni:

1. Background

“I was a top recruit out of high school for basketball and went to Florida State, but everything hit me at once. I tore my ACL as soon as we got back from our foreign trip to Spain and Italy. The next year my grandmother passed away, and the year after that I tore my ACL again—but on the other side, after already tearing it once in high school. That made three ACL tears. Through all that—the physical injuries, the weight gain from being immobile, the mental battles I went through with my knees and losing my grandmother—I started to realize how many inefficiencies existed for athletes who were struggling behind the scenes.”

“Even at high-level programs like ACC or Big Ten schools, the tools we had were glorified calendars and messaging systems. There wasn’t anything to help with easily accessible nutrition tools or mental health resources when things got really hard. That gap became extremely clear to me as I went from school to school and experienced different environments. That’s ultimately where the idea for Complete Sports was really born.”

2. Company & Product

“We’ve built a platform that blends day-to-day operations with athlete performance and wellbeing. On one side you have the tools organizations absolutely need—calendars, communication, forms, scheduling—the things athletic departments will always pay for. On the other side, we’ve integrated the things athletes actually need and want but are usually put on the back burner: nutrition, what we call mental fitness, journaling, meditations, and tools they can access anytime. Instead of everything being siloed and hard to find, we’ve put it all together in one system.”

3. Main Use Cases

“The number one use case teams rely on is the calendar—figuring out where players are, how to schedule meetings, workouts, practices, and everything else. That’s what the staff uses most. But for athletes, the biggest use case is the mental side. They use our guided meditation tools, journaling tools, and other features that help them understand where they are mentally, and how to get from where they are to where they want to be. They finally have something easily accessible on their phones that supports their performance and their wellbeing.”

4. The AMS / Communication Market Trends

“The market is still incredibly fragmented. Everything is getting so expensive, and schools—especially junior colleges, D3s, D2s—are paying $40,000, $50,000, even $100,000 for a platform that only does one thing. Even pro teams are feeling that. That’s why we decided to combine everything into one platform and make it cost-efficient. Technology has evolved to the point where trying to ‘boil the ocean’ isn’t as crazy as people think—it’s actually possible now if you build it intentionally from the start.”

“A lot of AMS platforms give you data but don’t tell you what to do with it. You can tell someone they’re 36% body fat and need to get to 27%, but that doesn’t explain what that number means or how to actually get there. Same with performance: if someone goes from shooting 90% at the free throw line to 75%, they didn’t forget how to shoot. It’s probably a mental spout. Our platform helps teams and athletes understand the ‘why’ behind the numbers and provides actionable steps to improve.”

5. Benefits for Teams

“The biggest benefit is having all your important information in one place so you can make sense of it. Instead of switching between Kitman, NoteMeal, Teamworks, Slack, GroupMe, email, text—it’s all in one dashboard where everyone is on the same system. That reduces friction, improves communication, and saves staff hours of time every week.”

“Another major benefit is consolidation. Even though teams don’t want to put all their eggs in one basket, the reality is they’re already using fragmented tools. We help them consolidate those tools, save money, and reallocate resources toward things that actually generate revenue or enhance the program. And because everything is connected, they can finally understand how their data fits together.”

6. Competitive Advantages

“Our biggest advantage is that we’re holistic and comprehensive. People often ask, ‘Why can’t the big companies just build what you’re building?’ The answer is simple—they haven’t, and they don’t want to. They’ve acquired so many platforms built in silos that it becomes nearly impossible to combine them cleanly. We built everything from scratch with the intention of being all-in-one, which means it actually works together instead of feeling patched together.”

“We’re cost-efficient, intuitive, and focused on turning data into action steps. It’s not just giving athletes and coaches numbers—it’s helping them understand what those numbers mean and what to do next. And we provide all of that within a single ecosystem that makes both athletes and staff feel supported.”

7. What Teams Like About the Product

“Teams love that they can operate like a high-performing organization on one system. Small schools especially—like junior colleges—appreciate that their athletes now have mental tools they can actually use, because at that level the staff wears so many hats. Our platform reduces that burden and gives them structure they never had before.”

“They also love having a sound, unified communication system. Instead of juggling Slack, GroupMe, texts, and emails, everything lives in one place. It makes the entire athletic department feel more organized, aligned, and professional.”

8. Business Model

“We operate on a subscription model—one, three, and five-year options. We can support entire athletic departments or individual teams depending on the need. And we scale based on the level of the organization. Junior colleges may need more hands-on support because they don’t have nutritionists or mental health professionals on campus. Professional teams can input their own information and operate more independently. The model is flexible because every level of sport has different needs and different resources.”

9. Plans for the Next 12 Months

“We’re definitely planning to raise money. We’ve been bootstrapped until now, and we pushed as long as we could, but now it’s time to go faster. A big focus is exposing more teams to what we’re building—because if you don’t know something exists, you won’t even realize there’s another option. Getting our name out there is one of the biggest priorities.”

“We’re also adding new features—like strength and conditioning components, more AMS-style functionality, and tools that let trainers and coaches easily update who’s out, who’s available, and for what reasons. Everything we build is driven by feedback from teams. My goal is to make sure the platform actually aligns with what they need, not just what we think they need.”

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This week we have the honor to interview again a group of NBA sports performance executives to talk about the latest trends in the world of sports performance and rehabilitation.

• Dr Marco Nunez, the former head athletic trainer for the LA Lakers (NBA).

• Derek Millender, the head S&C coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers (NBA).

• Dr Bill Burgos, a former NBA S&C Coach for the Orlando Magic, NY Knicks and Timberwolves. Bill is now the CEO of LONU, a nutritional platform.

Here are the topics that we covered during the video interview:

• Q1. Use of wearables in the NBA:

Wearables are not currently allowed during live NBA games. There is only a list of approved wearables in the NBA during practice. Do you see the league’s stance on wearables evolving in the near future, especially as new technologies emerge?”How do you balance player privacy, data ownership, and competitive advantage when working with these systems?

• Q2. Biomechanics Programs: The NBA is launching a league-wide initiative to install standardized biomechanics labs in all 30 team facilities to collect consistent data on player movement, aiding in injury prevention and performance enhancement. How will your coaching staff and strength and conditioning staff utilize the biomechanical feedback to modify training regimens or on-court techniques without overwhelming the player with technical information? What are the biggest logistical or cultural challenges you anticipate in getting players to consistently engage with the new biomechanics testing, given the already demanding NBA schedule?

• Q3. “Micro-dosing” Training: Practitioners are using “micro-dosing” to provide consistent physical preparation during the season without over-draining players before competition. This approach seeks a balance between health, performance, and the demands of an 82-game schedule. What is your take on micro dosing training? Have you been using micro dosing training as part of your program? How are the benefits of micro dosing training in your opinion.

• Q4. Training the “Brakes”: In the NBA, there is an emphasis on training deceleration (braking) in S&C programs, as basketball involves frequent stop-and-go movements. Improving this capacity is seen as key to success and injury prevention. Have you used such method as part of your program? What is your opinion on it?

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Marco, Derek, and Bill:

✅ Q1 — Use of Wearables in the NBA

Dr. Bill Burgos

• “I think the league’s stance on wearables is absolutely going to evolve because the technology itself is evolving so fast. We’re seeing devices become smaller, more accurate, more predictive, and more relevant to real-time decision-making. Eventually the league won’t be able to ignore that. But at the same time, we have to be really thoughtful about the layers: where does the data go, who controls it, and how is it being used? Players want transparency. If they feel like the data is being used to support their health and longevity, they’re all in. If they feel like it could be used against them in negotiations or public perception, they’ll shut the whole thing down.”

• “For us, balancing privacy, data ownership, and competitive edge comes down to trust. If a guy is wearing something on his body, he wants to know exactly what’s being collected and why. He wants to know how long it stays in the system, who sees it, and what decisions are being made with it. You build buy-in by making the process collaborative — otherwise you lose the room.”

Dr Marco Núñez

• “Players are more educated than ever about data privacy. They want to know not just what we’re collecting but what the organization, the league, and the union are doing with it. If we can show them that the technology is there to help them extend their career, stay healthier, or reduce soreness, they engage with it. But the second they sense the data might be used for anything other than their immediate wellbeing, you lose trust. And trust is everything.”

• “I do think the league is moving toward more wearable integration, but it’s going to be deliberate and player-driven. The union will have a major say, and they should. Because at the end of the day, these systems collect biological, movement, and physiological data that belong to the athlete first — not the team, not the league.”

Derek Millender

• “We’re already getting a ton of value from wearables during practice and controlled environments — load tracking, movement trends, fatigue markers, asymmetry checks. But the minute you shift into games, it becomes a different conversation because you need to balance performance insights with privacy and competitive fairness. I think the league will eventually allow it because the upside is too big, but not until the players are fully protected and the rules are crystal clear.”

• “With wearables, the message to players has to be consistent: this is for your benefit, not to grade you or use against you. When players feel the data is a partnership — something that helps them stay available and at their best — the buy-in is fantastic.”

✅ Q2 — NBA Biomechanics Labs

Dr Marco Núñez

• “The biggest challenge isn’t collecting biomechanical data — we’ve been collecting data for years. The real challenge is communicating it in a way that makes sense to players. NBA guys don’t need twenty pages of analysis. They want one or two actionable changes: ‘Adjust this angle on your landing,’ or ‘Shift your foot here on your drive.’ If the feedback is simple and directly tied to helping them feel better or perform better, they’ll engage. If it’s too technical, you’ll lose them immediately.”

• “And culturally, we have to remind players that biomechanics testing is not a judgment of their ability. These guys already feel like they’re under a microscope: media scrutiny, fan expectations, contract pressure. So before every test, I tell them: this is just a snapshot of how your body is moving today — nothing more, nothing less.”

Dr. Bill Burgos

• “Biomechanics is going to help us identify the inefficiencies we can’t always see with the naked eye — things like uneven loading, compromised landing mechanics, or subtle asymmetries that creep in over a long season. But the key is translating those findings into coaching. If the data shows a player is overusing one side, the skill coaches might need to adjust how he attacks off the dribble or how he positions his feet on a cut. That integration between data and skill work is where the real value is.”

• “But the cultural and logistical challenges are real. These guys already have a packed daily schedule: film, practice, treatment, lifting, recovery, travel. Getting them to show up consistently for biomechanics testing means we have to make the process fast, smooth, and obviously useful. If they don’t see the benefit right away, it becomes another thing they skip.”

Derek Millender

• “The biomechanics labs will give us incredible insight — but you can’t throw every metric at a player. The approach has to be: here’s one cue, one drill, one adjustment that will make you more efficient. If you overwhelm them, you lose the opportunity. If you simplify the message, you get buy-in and you see results quickly.”

• “Routine is the biggest challenge. NBA players live on routine. If the testing isn’t easy, quick, and seamlessly integrated, it won’t stick. So we have to build it into their rhythm in a way that feels natural rather than like another appointment.”

✅ Q3 — Micro-Dosing Training in the NBA

Derek Millender

• “I’m a huge believer in micro-dosing because the traditional 60-minute lift just isn’t realistic during an NBA season. You’re traveling, practicing, playing, recovering — sometimes all in the same 36-hour window. Micro-dosing lets us keep players strong, explosive, and resilient without draining them before a game. Five minutes here, eight minutes there — you stack enough of those and you preserve performance all year.”

• “We use micro-dosing all season long. Short priming sessions, quick power work, small clusters of high-quality reps — that’s the formula. It keeps strength from dropping, and players appreciate that it fits into their day without adding extra stress.”

Dr. Bill Burgos

• “Micro-dosing is essential in the NBA. The schedule is too demanding and the players are too taxed for long gym sessions. When you can give them a targeted stimulus — a little eccentric load, a couple of heavy pulls, a few power reps — you keep the neuromuscular system sharp without adding fatigue. It’s about consistency, not volume.”

• “The best part is that players actually buy in because it’s low-dose, low-duration, and high-impact. They feel the benefits without feeling worn down.”

Dr Marco Núñez

• “From a medical standpoint, micro-dosing is one of the best ways to maintain tissue health over an 82-game season. Regular, small doses of load keep muscles, tendons, and joints prepared without overwhelming them. And mentally, players prefer it — a six-minute lift feels manageable on a back-to-back, whereas a full session feels impossible.”

• “Micro-dosing is consistency without overextension. That’s the key.”

✅ Q4 — Training the “Brakes”

Dr. Bill Burgos

• “In basketball, deceleration is arguably more important than acceleration. Anyone can run fast, but not everyone can stop efficiently. Most soft-tissue injuries — groin pulls, hamstring strains, even knee issues — happen when players can’t control the braking phase. So we spend a lot of time training how to absorb force, how to land properly, how to cut safely. Teaching a player how to stop is often the best injury-prevention tool you have.”

• “Over the years, emphasizing deceleration mechanics has saved us countless injuries. It’s one of the core pillars of what we do.”

Derek Millender

• “We absolutely train the brakes. If you can’t absorb force, you’re at risk — plain and simple. A lot of players are explosive, but they don’t know how to stop that explosiveness safely. When you improve a player’s braking capacity, you improve everything: their movement efficiency, their ability to change direction, their durability. It’s one of the biggest performance unlocks in the sport.”

• “I tell guys all the time: speed is great, but being able to stop on command is what separates elite movers from everyone else.”

Dr Marco Núñez

• “As a medical professional, one of the first things I look at with any player is how they decelerate — how they land, how they absorb a cut, whether the knee collapses, whether the hip is stable. Deceleration gives you more information about injury risk than almost anything else.”

• “If a player can’t brake properly, the body starts compensating in dangerous ways. Training the brakes isn’t optional — it’s foundational movement health. Everything in basketball starts with how well you can control your own momentum.”

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This week we had the honor to interview a group of NCAA sports performance experts.

• Dr. John DeWitt, Director of applied sports science in the athletic department and a faculty member, Rice University (NCAA team).

• Paul Silvestri, Sr director of sports health and performance, University of Florida football (NCAA team).

• Drew Lukes, Senior PT at Duke University and the head of sports science, Duke university’s women soccer team (NCAA team).

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

Q1. Changing Athlete Development Priorities

• Ten years ago, coaches said speed and strength were the priority. What physical or psychological qualities do you believe will define winning NCAA programs in the next 10 years?

Q2. Performance vs. Social Media Stress

• Do athletes feel more pressure from performance expectations or social media scrutiny — and how do performance staff help them manage the difference?

Q3. The Biggest “Hidden Performance Gap”

• What is one silent performance gap — something most NCAA programs do not track or invest in enough — that you think will become standard in the next two years?

Q4. Data: The Real Limitation

• If you could only track three athlete metrics in-season and had to ignore everything else, what would you choose and why?This quickly exposes what truly matters.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

You can leave a comment by clicking on the button below:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with them:

✅ Q1 — Changing Athlete Development Priorities

Paul Silvestri

• “Availability is going to be key. As roster sizes go down and depth becomes a real issue, durability and resiliency — both physically and mentally — become even more important. The teams that can keep more guys on the field, week after week, are the ones that will ultimately succeed. Obviously talent matters, but if you can’t keep your players available, you’re not giving yourself a chance.”

• “We’re really trying to figure out what true resiliency looks like. That means more screening, more specific testing, looking for the leaks in the system — lumbar stability, nerve issues, soft tissue vulnerability. And on the mental side, we’re building a toolbox for athletes so when adversity hits, they know how to handle it without spiraling.”

Drew Lukes

• “You’ll never be able to replace speed and strength — those will always be foundational. But as we look toward the next decade, the margins are shrinking. The differences in speed and strength between elite programs are getting smaller, so we’ll have to identify the tiny physiological variables that separate good from great.”

• “The question becomes: how strong is strong enough? Do we need players squatting massive weight? Or do we get them to a point where strength no longer limits performance, and we can shift resources toward other qualities that move the needle more? That’s where the field is heading.”

John DeWitt

• “Speed and strength aren’t going away. What will change is how targeted we are in developing them. With better technology and better interpretation of data, we’ll be able to individualize training not just to the athlete, but to their specific job on the field — and adjust instantly when coaching systems or demands change.”

• “Players are coming in much smarter now. A high school kid might walk in with years of force-plate data, GPS history, even conditioning profiles. In the past, we had almost no baseline on incoming athletes. That shift alone is going to fundamentally change how we develop them.”

✅ Q2 — Performance vs. Social Media Stress

John DeWitt

• “NIL deals are increasingly tied to social media following. That means players feel obligated to stay active online, but the same platforms give gamblers and angry fans direct access to them when something goes wrong — an interception, a missed shot, anything. That creates a dangerous conundrum: they need social media for income, but it exposes them to enormous pressure and criticism they’re not equipped to handle.”

• “Social media brings positives — brand building, NIL money — but the negatives are becoming more significant. We need to seriously consider how we protect athletes from the darker side of that ecosystem.”

Paul Silvestri

• “When the SEC availability report goes out, our guys get bombarded instantly. We didn’t realize how overwhelming it would be until the first report was released. Players were running in with messages from gamblers and fans they had never interacted with before. It’s a massive issue we’re still trying to adapt to.”

• “Some of our high-profile guys have completely deleted social media because the comments were wrecking their confidence and bleeding into their performance. They’d check their phones before practice or games and immediately get rattled. It absolutely affects how they play.”

• “You want the exposure and the good that comes with social media, but you also have to be mentally resilient enough to face the backlash. That takes training — real mental skills training — because it’s not as simple as ‘just ignore it.’”

Drew Lukes

• “Social media can be a very vile and difficult place, especially for high-profile athletes who have thousands of people critiquing their every move. Inside the athletic training room, I want them to know they’re in a safe space — a place where they can drop the armor, speak openly, and decompress even for fifteen minutes. That matters more than people realize.”

✅ Q3 — The Biggest Hidden Performance Gap

Drew Lukes

• “The biggest hidden performance gap isn’t collecting more data — it’s having people who actually know how to interpret the data we already gather. We need staff who can translate metrics into meaningful, real-time insights that coaches can act on. Before we go hunting for new hidden variables, we need to get better at integrating staff and extracting value from the tools we already have.”

• “There’s so much data out there that it’s easy to drown in it. The real innovation will come from programs that can turn data into clear, actionable decisions, not just dashboards.”

Paul Silvestri

• “Sleep and nutrition remain two of the biggest performance gaps in collegiate athletics. We can educate and control a lot inside the building — meals, hydration, supplementation — but once they leave, we lose most of that control. Are they sleeping? Are they door-dashing at 10 p.m.? Are they following the individualized nutrition plans we build from advanced blood testing? That’s where performance is often won or lost.”

• “Athletes today are more in tune with sleep monitoring — Oura Rings, WHOOP bands — and sometimes they start competing with each other over sleep scores. That’s encouraging, but adherence outside the building will always be the challenge.”

John DeWitt

• “Colleges often buy technology because another team has it or a coach wants it, then hand it to a young assistant coach and say, ‘Figure this out.’ That’s not a sustainable model. The performance gap is investing in personnel who can educate, integrate, and guide the staff on how to actually use the data.”

• “The cultural shift is coming from the athletes themselves. When a freshman arrives already using Oura or WHOOP, they bring their own data and their own curiosity — and that changes how we approach education and monitoring.”

✅ Q4 — The Real Limitation: If You Could Only Track 3 Metrics

John DeWitt

• “If we’re trying to maintain or improve what we built in the preseason, RSI from the countermovement jump is essential. It tells us about overall performance, and if it drops, we can trace that change down to strength deficits, technique changes, or fatigue patterns. It’s a simple number with a lot of diagnostic power.”

• “Peak power from the CMJ gives us explosiveness in the purest form. If that starts trending downward, we know something is off — and it gives us an early warning signal before performance dips in games.”

• “Player load from Catapult is critical for understanding periodization. You want your heavy practice days to mimic a game. If player load is too high or too low relative to demand, we can fix it before players break down.”

Drew Lukes

• “I want to get better at heart rate metrics — HRV and heart rate recovery — because there’s still so much untapped potential in using them for recovery, fitness, and load management. They give a global picture that can tie together strength, fatigue, and stress patterns.”

• “RSI-mod blends performance and recovery into one metric, which makes it incredibly helpful during a long season when you need simple, actionable information.”

• “High-speed distance above 90% — not just total distance, but actual exposures — is vital for hamstring health. Making sure players hit those 90% exposures two or three times per week is one of the best ways to reduce soft-tissue issues.”

Paul Silvestri

• “NordBord eccentric strength, RFD on the force plate, and eccentric deceleration and braking capacity are the metrics that matter most to us. They help us understand how durable a player is — especially from a soft-tissue perspective — and how fatigue accumulates as the season progresses.”

• “Everyone talks about doing too much load, but no one talks about the players who aren’t doing enough to be ready for game demands. The athletes who don’t get enough load during the week are often the ones at risk on Saturday.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Dr Wayne Chappelle, Team Psychologist of the OKC Thunder & Founder of PsyOPTIMAL . He is joined by Bryan Fetzer, President & Co-Founder, PsyOPTIMAL.

Dr. Wayne Chappelle is a performance psychologist whose career spans Olympic sport, U.S. military special operations, and the NBA. Originally trained in clinical psychology, he shifted his focus toward understanding the psychological skills that help individuals perform at the highest level in high-pressure environments. He currently serves as the team psychologist for the Oklahoma City Thunder (NBA) and is the co-founder of PsyOPTIMAL, a performance and wellbeing platform that gives elite teams science-backed insights into mental readiness, resilience, communication, and culture.

Bryan Fetzer is the President and Co-Founder of PsyOPTIMAL and a sports executive with nearly 30 years of experience in collegiate and professional athletics. After more than two decades as a Division I coach, he recognized that while teams talked about the importance of the mental side of performance, they lacked structured tools to develop it. Through PsyOPTIMAL, he now helps organizations use data-driven assessments to improve player development, team cohesion, and leadership across elite sports environments.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Where PsyOPTIMAL can plug into your team’s ecosystem:

• Player readiness & availability (week-to-week)

• Short, secure wellness check-ins give your performance/medical/mental health staff a real-time view of stress, focus, and recovery trends.

• Flags show up early (sleep, burnout, confidence, off-field stress), so you can support guys before it becomes a missed game or a bigger issue.

• Game-week preparation & “mental game plan”

• Map the mental side of the week (install days, travel, short weeks, prime-time games) and give coaches simple “plays” they can run to stabilize the locker room.

• Position coaches get a quick snapshot of how their room is doing, so they can adjust meetings, messaging, and leadership moments.

• Draft, free agency & player development

• Use PsyOPTIMAL as a complement to your scouting and interviews—understanding how players typically handle pressure, adversity, and role changes.

• Onboarding rookies and new vets with a baseline profile helps you tailor support and development (who needs structure, who thrives with autonomy, who might need extra touchpoints).

• Return-to-play & long-term rehab

• Track the mental side of injury: confidence in the body, frustration, isolation, purpose.

• Gives your medical, performance, and mental health staff a shared, non-clinical language and data set to support the player all the way back to the field.

• Culture, cohesion & leadership

• Cohesion metrics by position group and unit help you see where the locker room is tight and where there may be early signs of friction or drift.

• Leadership can target specific position rooms with the right conversations, captains, or staff support instead of guessing.

• Staff & coach wellbeing

• Optional modules for coaches and key staff to monitor their own stress and burnout risk.

• Helps protect the people who carry the emotional load for the organization, without adding another platform or heavy lift.

Why teams like it:

• Built for elite environments: Originally developed by Dr. Wayne Chappelle for U.S. Special Operations and now used in pro sports settings.

• Low lift: 90–120 seconds per check-in; we integrate with your existing staff and processes rather than replacing them.

• Privacy-first: Players’ individual data is protected; leadership sees trends and actionable insights, not therapy notes.

You can sign up for a free trial by clicking on the link below:

📝Show Notes: During the interview they discussed how Dr. Wayne Chappelle and Bryan Fetzer came together to build PsyOPTIMAL after recognizing that mental performance was often talked about in elite sports but rarely supported with practical, science-based tools. Chappelle shared how his path through Olympic sport and military special operations shaped his approach to understanding what helps individuals achieve the extraordinary, while Fetzer explained that decades of coaching showed him the need for a measurable, structured system to support the psychological side of performance. This led to the development of a mobile platform that gives athletes and coaches fast, research-driven assessments of wellness, attitude, cohesion, and behavioral factors linked to performance.

During the interview they discussed how teams in the NBA and Division I college sports are using PsyOPTIMAL to improve culture, communication, accountability, and player development by replacing guesswork with clear data. Dr Chappelle described how aggregated insights can reveal problems hidden by short-term success and gave examples of teams like the University of Dayton using the tool to rapidly align new players around shared standards. They also covered new features coming to the platform—including multilingual expansion and new injury psychology assessments—and Dr Chappelle provided insight into the day-to-day work of an NBA psychologist, ranging from observing practice to helping players navigate performance stress and off-court challenges.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Mark located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Dr Wayne Chappelle and Bryan Fetzer:

✅ 1. Personal Journeys

Dr. Wayne Chappelle

“My original training and background was in clinical psychology, and that was really helping people who were struggling in specific areas of their life learn how to live a normal daily life. And that for me was satisfying, but I really wanted to know how to take an ordinary individual to accomplish the extraordinary. That led to a journey with professional sports athletes, actually starting with Olympic athletes, which then moved into the military special operations environment. I spent 20 years in special operations, which naturally led me to professional elite sports where people have to operate at a very high level in physically demanding, psychologically taxing, and highly precise environments.”

Bryan Fetzer

“I spent 29 years in college and pro sports, 23 of them as a college coach. When I looked back, the mental part of performance was such a cliché for a coach because you would constantly tell a player, ‘It’s mental,’ or ‘You’ve got to do better mentally.’ But we were never really trained on it, and we never really did a whole lot to improve it. You were just trying to figure it out on your own. When Wayne and I connected, and I saw the assessments he had been using in the military and with OKC, it was a no-brainer for me to help build a company that could help coaches and administrators address processes that typically get overlooked.”

✅ 2. Moment that inspired founding PsyOPTIMAL

Bryan Fetzer

“For years coaches like me were saying that performance was mental, but we were never given tools or training on how to improve the mental side of the game. It was all guesswork and personal opinion. So when Wayne brought forward the assessments he had refined over years of military and elite psychological work, it made complete sense to build something that didn’t exist – a system that could actually measure the things we were talking about, instead of leaving coaches to figure it out on their own.”

Dr. Wayne Chappelle

“There are a lot of opinions about what people think they need to work on, but once athletes complete the assessments, they truly know what they need to work on – there’s no second guessing. Someone might say, ‘This is an anxiety issue,’ but based on the results I might say, ‘No, this is actually a confidence issue,’ or, ‘This is an energy issue coming from gaps in rest, recovery, diet, or self-discipline.’ The platform removes guesswork and gives clarity, which is something existing tools simply weren’t doing.”

✅ 3. What makes PsyOPTIMAL different

On accessibility & usability

“The platform is a very user-friendly system where you can take assessments off your cell phone at any point in time, no matter where you are or how much you’re traveling. We didn’t want a model where a psychologist had to administer everything. It needed to be accessible, on-demand, and something athletes could take ownership of. You simply create an account and can begin completing assessments on your own.”

On measuring what others don’t

“One differentiator is our measures. For example, we can assess overall psychological wellness in about 90 seconds – and we can quickly determine whether someone is struggling, surviving, or thriving. In elite sports, you need to be thriving. But beyond personal attitude, confidence, and energy, we also measure the relationship an athlete has with their teammates and coach. Cohesion is absolutely critical, because you can take an average-talent team with high cohesion and over the long term they will always outperform a highly talented but divided team. Most platforms don’t measure whether someone feels valued, trusted, respected, or able to collaborate with others – we do.”

✅ 4. How elite teams are using it and the concrete impact

Bryan Fetzer – giving coaches a real pulse on the team

“Results are given individually and in aggregate. As a coach or administrator, you can see how the whole team dynamic is trending, and that’s incredibly powerful. So many times as a coach you think things are great, but the team could be on the verge of a train wreck and you wouldn’t know it because you’re winning. Winning becomes an easy cop-out: ‘We’re winning, everything’s good.’ But sometimes you’re winning early in the season against weaker teams, or success is masking problems. With aggregate reporting, you can see the true pulse of your team and coach more intentionally.”

Dr. Chappelle – accelerating culture at Dayton

“At the University of Dayton, they had nine new players out of a 15-man roster. Normally you rely on time to establish culture, but they didn’t have that luxury – they needed the team aligned quickly. So we measured emotional resilience, cohesion, trust, compliance, self-discipline, and other cultural drivers at the start of the season. Now players know what they will be held accountable to, what the organization values, and what the expectations are. Instead of taking months to establish culture, the platform compresses that timeline dramatically because everyone is immediately operating from the same understanding.”

On reducing guesswork and aligning departments

“One major outcome is that everyone – coaches, performance staff, psychologists – understands what the actual issue is, and they can work together to solve it. Then after four or five weeks, we can reassess and see whether improvements in psychological factors are lining up with improvements in execution and effort in competition. It gives teams a way to measure whether what they’re doing is actually working.”

✅ 5. New innovations coming to the platform

Bryan Fetzer – multilingual expansion

“One of the biggest additions is adding languages. We have English now, and the next rollout is Spanish, which is incredibly important given basketball, baseball, and soccer globally – especially in the United States. And we will continue adding other languages after that.”

Dr. Chappelle – new assessment for injury recovery psychology

“We’re adding an assessment that looks at an athlete’s perception of injury recovery – their belief in the process, their compliance, and their trust in the medical team. We know that if an elite athlete is out longer than a month, 30–40% typically experience anxiety, depression, or adjustment-related disorders. They may be thinking, ‘Someone else is playing well in my position. Will I ever get back to where I was?’ So being able to assess and support athletes at that stage is crucial.”

✅ 6. Day-to-day of an NBA psychologist & modern league trends

Dr. Chappelle - On what the role actually looks like

“First, it’s really about being available. You want to be on the court at practice, in the strength and conditioning gym, observing day-to-day interactions. From that alone you get a sense of who is doing well and who may be struggling. You might spend an hour with a player working on managing performance anxiety or dialing in pre-game mental routines. You might meet with a physician about an injured player and strategize on how to build trust and lower stress during rehab. Or you might work with a coach who wants to move a player to a different position and needs to understand how that athlete learns and adapts best.”

On showing skeptical players the relevance

“Some athletes may see sports psychology as a sign of weakness, so you must demonstrate relevance. They need to know you’re not just there to treat anxiety or depression. A player might be perfectly healthy and performing well, but can still get better. Or maybe something off the court is distracting them – conflict with parents, a spouse, or suddenly navigating large amounts of money. By helping them in areas beyond the court, they begin to understand that you’re there to help them improve their performance and their lives – and that builds buy-in.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Tyler Harris, the director of sports medicine at St Louis CITY SC, an MLS team.

Tyler Harris is the Director of Sports Medicine for St. Louis CITY SC of Major League Soccer, where he oversees athlete care, rehabilitation, return-to-play processes, and the medical departments across the first team, second team, and academy. A lifelong soccer enthusiast, Harris began his career with a strong passion for the human body and its performance in elite environments. After graduating in athletic training, he joined U.S. Soccer, working within the prestigious residency program in Bradenton, Florida, where he supported the country’s top youth talent while traveling internationally and preparing teams for major tournaments. His time in the national system exposed him early to high-pressure environments and helped shape his professional foundation.

Tyler later continued his development in the USL with New Mexico United, where he played a key role in building a medical and performance program from the ground up. The broad responsibilities and limited staffing of the USL environment accelerated his growth, helping him refine his clinical systems, communication strategies, and return-to-play frameworks. In 2022, he transitioned to St. Louis CITY SC, reuniting with former colleagues to develop the medical and performance infrastructure for the new expansion club at the MLS level. Today, he is recognized for a collaborative, athlete-centered approach that blends communication, evidence-based practice, and technology evaluation to deliver elite care and maximize player performance across a grueling professional season.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• His journey to the MLS

• Training & Rehab Philosophy

• Evaluating New Technologies

• Advice for Aspiring Practitioners

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Tyler located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Tyler:

1. Journey to the MLS

“I’ve always been very passionate about sports in general and soccer more specifically. It’s always been a pretty big passion of mine throughout my life, and knowing that I wanted to pair that with my understanding of the human body and how it functions in elite settings when it comes to sports, I think it was just a good pairing between the two. I knew that early on going into university, and that led me down the athletic training path because I wanted to do something active and team-oriented.”

“I was very fortunate to work with US Soccer pretty fresh out of university, down at their residency program in Bradenton, Florida. We would bring in the top players from across the country for a two-year cycle, train them daily, travel around the world, and prepare for the U17 World Cup. It was an incredible environment with great performance staff and coaches, and it really helped jumpstart my career. I was thrown into the deep end early, as I say, and it helped formulate how to deal with high-stress environments.”

“In the USL, you have to wear a lot of hats and carry a lot of the load because there isn’t the staffing you have in MLS. You’re working with the bare bones, which can really help develop you as a clinician. For me, it helped formulate how I wanted to work things—my processes and procedures when it came to return-to-plays—and really set me up for success long term.”

“To do that at the MLS level with a new expansion team was an opportunity I just couldn’t pass up. Having done that at the USL level, to come to St. Louis and help start the medical program at the MLS level was something that really excited me and I knew would be a big challenge.”

2. Training & Rehab Philosophy

“For me, a lot of it comes down to full collaboration with anyone that is involved with the player. When an injury comes up—and injuries happen in this sport—you want to meet the athlete where they’re at. They have prior experiences, whether with similar injuries or clinicians they’ve worked with in the past, and I’m always trying to figure out on an individual level how best to work with that athlete from both a communication and clinical perspective.”

“Some days they come in and you have to know there are going to be days where you can push them and get a lot out of them, but there are also days where they show up and mentally or physically they’re just not there. And maybe this isn’t the day to add a new stimulus, introduce a new exercise, or try something new. A lot of that comes from conversations, daily screenings, and knowing where the athlete is not just physically but emotionally.”

“You’re dealing with human beings at the end of the day, and that becomes such an important aspect of rehab and athlete care in general—figuring out how they’re doing, what they’re dealing with, and recognizing that life outside of sport impacts how they show up.”

3. Evaluating New Technologies

“I always start with: Will this benefit the athlete and how? And does it fit with our approach to treatment, to rehab, and the way we want to operate? If the answer is yes, then we can start going down the line and filtering systems based on whether they align with our philosophy and daily workflow.”

“There are a lot of competitors on the market, and everyone will say theirs is the best at X, Y, and Z. If you understand what’s driving your approach as a clinician and what matters in your system, it helps narrow the field. Then you can start looking at which one fits your practice the best, speak with other clinicians and other teams, and get real-world feedback.”

“We’re always open to learning about new things. If we come across something that could be beneficial, we start looking into it immediately and try to figure out how to get it into the building as soon as possible. Whether that’s a trial or working through budget timelines, we try to evaluate things in a real setting, get hands-on use, and see if it truly fits.”

“Athlete feedback is huge. I’ve had athletes come in and say, ‘I’ve used this in the past, it worked really well for me, can we look into it?’ And if it’s something I haven’t heard of, I’ll dive into it. If I think it’ll help us, we’ll try to push it through. You have to consider a lot before making a decision on something that’s hopefully going to stay in your building long-term.”

“A lot of the exciting stuff coming out now is around HRV and what the best way is to monitor and regulate it. With all the travel in this league and the different climates you’re playing in, recovery becomes a massive component of the season, and finding ways to enhance recovery protocols is critical.”

4. Advice for Aspiring Practitioners

“I would recommend immersing yourself in the environment you want to be in professionally. If you know you want to be in pro soccer, find ways to get into those environments—volunteering, internships, anything that gets you firsthand exposure. There are so many teams now that offer these opportunities to young clinicians, and it’s hugely important so you understand the demands at the professional level.”

“Continue seeking out ways to become a better clinician. Whether that’s through continuing education, manual therapy skills, or other practical skill development, the key is putting tools into your tool belt but making sure those tools are sharp and can be used effectively. Don’t just take a course to take it—you’re spending your own money, so make sure it applies to your environment and your goals.”

“Networking is such a big part of this profession. Soccer is a small world, especially on the sports medicine side, and the more you show up, get your name out there, and talk to people, the more opportunities you uncover—whether it’s internships, new roles, or simply learning from others.”

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Here is below the logos of some of the Scrum Ventures’ portfolio startups:

Source: Scrum Ventures

Scrum Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm with offices in San Francisco and Tokyo. Founded by Tak Miyata, it operates at the intersection of Silicon Valley innovation and Japanese corporate networks, helping founders connect with global customers, strategic partners, and capital.Through its “thematic” investing model, Scrum targets emerging trends in technology and culture, and supports founders not just with money, but with hands-on help in hiring, fundraising, and business operations.

In late 2024, Scrum Ventures made a major move by closing its first vertical fund — the $68 million Scrum Sports & Entertainment Fund I — aimed squarely at startups transforming sports, media, and lifestyle.With this fund, Scrum is investing in startups such as Bandit Running, Fever, Ozlo Sleep, TMRW Sports, Volo Sports, Campus Ink, and GlobalComix.The firm believes that as sports and entertainment increasingly overlap with lifestyle and culture, technology-driven companies can unlock powerful new business models.

This week, we interviewed Mike Proman, partner at Scrum Ventures. During the interview with Mike, we discussed his career journey from sports marketing roles at Coca-Cola and the NBA to founding a startup, exiting, and eventually moving into venture capital, where diverse experience and industry relationships shaped his investment approach. He explained that while AI currently dominates sports tech investing, many companies lack defensibility unless they own strong IP, unique data, or create “tribal tech” that brings people together at scale, as sports naturally does.

Mike also outlined Scrum Ventures’ philosophy that truly venture-backable companies must be able to scale beyond teams and leagues, since the sports market alone rarely supports 10–20x outcomes, and highlighted companies like Bandit and Negoti as examples. He closed by emphasizing that early-stage investing is largely qualitative, relationships matter more than anything, and experience across different sides of the industry helps investors better navigate reality — and recognize when something isn’t likely to work.

You can watch below the full video interview with Mike:

Here are some of the best quotes of our interview with Mike:

1. Your Journey & Background

• “If you told me 23 years ago when I started my career that this is where I’d be now, I’d probably tell you you’re b*g me. I never really felt that this was going to be a career path, but I think the role of venture has changed dramatically in the last 20 plus years.”*

• “When I started my career with Coca-Cola, working in their global sports marketing team on the Olympics and FIFA, it exposed me to a lot of opportunities within the sector. It’s a very small, somewhat incestuous industry and relationships matter, and those relationships enabled me to do some pretty amazing things.”

• “It allowed me to work with the NBA, helping build out their international business in the mid-2000s. I then leveraged that experience into my own startup in the late 2000s and ultimately to an acquisition in 2011, and then channeled that momentum into the venture world.”

• “There are gaps in the market, and having diverse experience and skill sets has served me pretty well.”

2. The State of Sports Tech Investing

• “AI’s prominence is real. I don’t think it’s going away. It will continue to evolve. But like a lot of very nascent industries, it’s kind of Darwinism at its best — some companies will wither away and some will get bigger, stronger, faster and become the next unicorns.”

• “There is a lot of noise. Venture funding broadly, not just in sports, is being dominated by AI right now. I don’t disagree with peers deploying into AI — but the saturation is pretty pronounced.”

• “Three areas stand out to us right now. First, companies with strong IP — AI will disrupt a lot of things, but if you have strong IP, that is real defensibility. Second, companies that own unique data sets. AI can amplify and enhance what you can do with that data, but if you own it, you’re truly differentiated.”

• “The third is what I call ‘tribal tech’ — technologies that bring people together at scale. Sports is the best living and breathing example of tribalism. We could be complete strangers, but if we walk into a stadium wearing the same colors, for three hours we’re on the same tribe.”

3. AI’s Growing Role in Sports & Performance

• “AI will disrupt a lot, but if you have strong IP, I think that’s a very strong piece of defensibility.”

• “If you own data that’s unique, AI will be able to extend, amplify, and enhance what you can do with that data. But without proprietary data or IP, many AI companies don’t have anything that prevents others from copying them.”

• “What we’re seeing is a large amount of funding going into AI-related technology, but a lot of it sounds the same. The key question we ask is: what do you actually own? What is your edge? What makes you defensible five years from now?”

• “We’re not contrarians for the sake of being different, but we are disciplined in looking for areas where AI is not just a wrapper around existing capabilities — but where it’s enabling value that didn’t exist before.”

4. Favorite Investments & Lessons Learned

• “There are so many companies I could talk about — it’s like trying not to rank your kids. But the ones that embody data sets, IP, and tribal connection are often my favorites.”

On Bandit

• “Bandit is essentially currency now within the running community. Three or four years ago, very few people even knew the brand existed, and today they’re as ubiquitous as it gets.”

• “Go out on the West Side Highway in New York at 7am on a Tuesday — it’s basically a Bandit fashion show. They’ve built a premium brand in a category with almost no barriers to entry, which is incredibly difficult.”

• “Their marketing is world-class. They could literally spin out their marketing team into its own company and that could be a hundred-million-dollar business.”

On Negoti

• “Negoti is solving real-world problems in licensing. Licensing is a mess — and they built a marketplace structure that works for licensors and licensees with strong IP.”

On what makes a company venture-backable

• “Our end game is finding 10–20x outcomes. A lot has to go right to get there. You have to enter at the right valuation, and the company has to have the ability to scale beyond just sports.”

• “If a disproportionate amount of revenue is coming from teams, leagues, or properties, it’s probably not venture backable. Not because those aren’t great customers — but because there just aren’t many venture-scale exits from that playbook.”

5. Advice for Aspiring Investors & Founders

• “The face of venture is changing. I wasn’t the guy with investment banking or private equity experience. At early stage, 90% of our diligence work is qualitative.”

• “If you want to be in early-stage venture, it supports a much more liberal-arts background — much more qualitative than quantitative. Growth-stage is different: by then the product works, the model is proven, and it’s mostly execution.”

• “Relationships matter. If you want to source, diligence, or support a company, everything goes back to who you know more than what you know.”

• “Having operator experience made me a more well-rounded and empathetic investor. It helps us balance what we want with what founders are trying to achieve — and it enables us to call b**t when we see it.”

• “There are certain things in sports that you can’t change. What matters is learning how to navigate around them. Many companies fail because they don’t understand the structural realities of the sports industry.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Brandon Epstein, a mental performance coach that works with athletes and ceos, entrepreneurs, and high achievers.

Brandon Epstein is a leading mental performance coach known for his work with top athletes in the UFC and other professional sports leagues. He has worked closely with high-level fighters such as UFC welterweight contender Sean Brady and former UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman, helping them strengthen the psychological side of their preparation. Epstein blends sports psychology, mindfulness, and cognitive training into a practical, actionable framework that athletes can apply in high-pressure moments—from title fights to career-defining performances.

His approach focuses on building emotional regulation, sharpened focus, and sustainable confidence, enabling athletes to show up mentally prepared and resilient when the stakes are highest. As more fighters and athletes credit his coaching with elevating their mindset and performance, Epstein continues to establish himself as one of the most trusted mental coaches in elite sports.

Picture: Brandon Epstein and a UFC Fighter Shane Mosley Jr

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Brandon also was on the Joe Rogan Experience show where he spoke about the type of work he does with UFC fighters.

Brandon is the author of a book entitled “The Success Code: The High Performance Playbook for Eliminating Mental Barriers and Scaling Your Career, Relationships and Health”.

📝Show Notes: In our interview with Brandon, we discussed how his journey began as a college football player searching for solutions to his own struggles, which led him into a deep path of self-discovery and eventually to 17 years of mental performance coaching with UFC fighters, athletes, CEOs, and entrepreneurs. He explained his core methodology — the Rewired Method — a somatic, subconscious-focused approach designed to uncover and transform emotional scar tissue, clear fears, and build true presence and confidence. Brandon also walked through his intake process, the importance of addressing all areas of a client’s life, and why most of the mental work is done long before an athlete steps into competition.

We also talked about how he helps clients manage pressure, including techniques like breath work to regulate arousal levels and visualization to reinforce game plans. Brandon shared a powerful example of guiding an undefeated fighter through an “ego death” after his first loss to rebuild a grounded, confident identity. Finally, he emphasized a universal lesson for anyone pursuing high performance: the importance of being yourself, owning your unique strengths, and not trying to project an identity that isn’t authentically yours.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Mark located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Brandon:

1. Your Journey & Background

• “I was a college football player and I was struggling in my freshman year, so I went searching for solutions. I was a seeker looking for more knowledge to help me grow, and that very coincidentally led me into the path of awakening — understanding my role here in the universe, what my purpose is, and what my connection is to a higher power. I started to learn the power that I had, that I am a creator of everything that I experience in this life, and I create through my focus and my choices.”

• “I came back the next year, had a lot of success playing football, started sharing all these tools with my teammates, and they loved it. I got a grant to do a study while I was in college to expand on this coursework, and I haven’t looked back since. For the last 17 years, I’ve continued to bring it to CEOs, entrepreneurs, UFC fighters, and all types of professional athletes.”

• “As I’m in it, I can only take people as far as I’ve gone. The continual work is how much I can continue to expand my capacity so that I can light the torch for others.”

2. Core Philosophy

• “I created something called the Rewired Method, and what I’m doing is taking my clients on a journey from awareness. Most people aren’t conscious of what their true deficiencies actually are. They might be conscious of some negative thoughts or emotions, but they’re not aware of where the real blockages lie — which is at the subconscious level.”

• “Through my method, we uncover where those deficiencies lie. I fundamentally rewire the subconscious of my clients. I leave everything that’s working — any empowering piece of code stays — and I focus specifically on every piece of code that’s creating chaos, confusion, low confidence, anxiety, or uncertainty.”

• “Once you rewire yourself, you’re able to get to a place of pure presence. Then the decisions you make — whether you’re a CEO or an athlete — come through clearly because there are no longer disempowering pieces of code distracting you or pulling you into the past or the future.”

• “Even though people call me a mental performance coach, it’s really not mind-based work — it’s body work. This is deep somatic work. Emotional scar tissue from trauma lives in the body, and the only way to release the past is to go into that emotional scar tissue somatically. That’s how we dissolve it and free someone to meet the present moment fully.”

3. Working with Fighters

• “Everyone gets the same intake process whether you’re a CEO or an athlete. We are all unique people, and performance is holistic. So I analyze how they’re doing mentally, emotionally, physically, how they feel about their career, their finances, and the most important relationships in their life. We just take inventory — where is everything at, really?”

• “Then I take them into a process of getting to the feeling they want in each one of these areas. It’s not just about what is going to be created — it’s about how it feels to get each bucket to a 10 out of 10. Once they can feel it, then we start grooving the subconscious patterns to make it real. We reverse engineer everything from the desired reality.”

• “Often people already know a lot of the things they need to start doing or stop doing. I help them come to awareness around that and hold them accountable. That first session is all about getting clear on where they are and where they want to go, and then we begin closing the gap immediately.”

4. Managing Pressure & Adversity

• “Physically, mentally — 99% of the work is already done before a fighter steps into the cage. The performance is just everyone getting to see the work you’ve been doing. You’re not going to become more conditioned in the middle of a fight. You’re not going to become more skilled. It’s the same mentally — the heavy lifting has already happened.”

• “Every fighter I’ve worked with has told me they felt the best they’ve ever felt going into a fight after we’ve done our camp together because we’ve cleared out all the fears. We’ve exposed them, they’ve seen them, they’ve gone through the ego death of living the fears, and we release them through the Rewired Method.”

• “When they’re in the locker room, the job is already done mentally. But if they’re too high strung, I have them put a hand on their belly and take deep, slow breaths to drop them into parasympathetic. If they’re too low, I have them do breath of fire — powerful exhales — to activate the sympathetic nervous system and raise the intensity.”• “I had a fighter who was undefeated, but his identity of being unbeatable was tied to perfectionism. When he finally lost, he essentially self-sabotaged because he was living in anxiety and overthinking. The belief ‘I can be beaten’ became emotional scar tissue stored in his body.”

• “I had to take him through a full ego death — fully accepting that yes, he can be beaten. What we can’t accept will never change. What we resist persists. Once he accepted it, we created the spaciousness to reprogram a new piece of code. He stepped into a new identity rooted in true, heart-centered confidence. He’s been undefeated ever since.”

5. Lessons Beyond the Octagon

• “The biggest lesson is to be yourself. Don’t try to be something you’re not, and don’t try to project an identity you think you should be projecting. You have to honor who you truly are — that gives you the best chance to win.”

• “There might be a ceiling on what that identity can achieve, and there’s acceptance around that. But owning your true identity — your gifts, your strengths — can carve out an entire career. Don’t try to be the guy who creates his own shot if that’s not who you are. Own what makes you unique.”

• “We all have unique talents and unique gifts. You’re bypassing God if you’re not honoring those. When you bypass God, you’re no longer connected to the source. Honoring your unique gifts gives you the best opportunity for success and fulfillment in sports, business, and life.”

6. The Best way to reach out to Brandon

• “You can reach out to me on any of the platforms on my Instagram. You can email me, go to my website — my website’s at brandonepstein.com. You can apply there or shoot me a message in the contact form.”

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This week we had the honor to interview again Dr. Ron Dick, associate professor of sports marketing at Duquesne University in the school of business. Ron also worked for 20 years in sports, including 15 years in the NBA with the Sixers and the Nets, and then five years in the NCAA.

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• Gambling Scandals in NBA and MLB

• NBA teams and standings

• MLB: World Series TV Ratings, The New Babe Ruth from Japan

• NFL Teams and standings

• NHL Games Abroad and Teams

• NCAA: College Football and Basketball Updates

• MLS Calendar Alignment with European Leagues

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ron located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Ron:

Q1. Gambling Scandals in NBA and MLB

On the Integrity of the Game:

“The integrity of the game is being threatened. In the NBA situation, Tim Donaghy, who’s from Philadelphia and went to Villanova and Cardinal O’Hara, he’s the referee that went to jail. They tried very much to isolate him and say he was a rogue referee that was all doing this by himself. And after he came out of jail, he said, ‘You know, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Basically I’m not alone. Today me, tomorrow it’s gonna be somebody else.’ And he looks like he was right. I mean, we have all these other players involved now.”

On Who’s Behind the Investigation:

“The FBI is very patient. They almost never lose. They’re methodical. They don’t pounce until they have something with real meat on the bones. The question I’d like to ask is, who alerted the NBA and the MLB about this? Do you really believe these leagues want this negative publicity? They just want it to go away. The people that are pushing for this, for the FBI to get involved in the investigation, believe it or not, are DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Caesars Sportsbook, and Bet365. They’re the five largest companies that pay millions of dollars to have this association with the sports teams. I know they’re behind it because they’re getting beat. When the house loses money, they want to know why, and they see money moving mysteriously toward prop bets in particular, not just over-unders.”

On Terry Rozier’s Scheme:

“In the case of Terry Rozier from Louisville and the Miami Heat, who’s making $26 million a year, what he did was he told the bettors, ‘Don’t bet on the overs. You can bet on a prop bet—how many points a player’s gonna get, how many assists they’re gonna get, how many turnovers, how many rebounds.’ He said, ‘Bet all the unders.’ And then seven minutes into the game, I’ll grab my knee and pretend I’m injured. And all those unders came in. When they saw hundreds of thousands of dollars moving mysteriously and then they tracked it again, the house was losing because it was fixed. You’re taking the integrity of the game away.”

On Why Players Risk Everything:

“I’ve talked to people about it, and they say the greed—it’s like drugs. It’s the lure of the easy money. Well, you know, no one’s gonna catch us. It’s a quick hit. We’ll make some money. Charles Barkley was on ESPN and he said, ‘When you make this kind of money as an NBA coach and NBA players, why are you putting your career at risk for so little money compared to what you’re making every year?’ It’s chump change. I mean, it’s nothing. It’s peanuts. I don’t know. It must be the thrill of the chase. It must be getting over on somebody. I have friends who say it doesn’t matter how much money you have, it’s a zero-sum game, meaning it’s never enough. But you sold your soul for nothing.”

Q2. NBA Standings

On Early Season Surprises:

“It’s still very early in the season. The Pistons—I mean, it just seems like yesterday they were not a very good team, and now all of a sudden they’ve turned the corner. I wouldn’t have thought the Sixers were gonna be seven and four. That surprises me. They got a really good player, number three overall. He scored over 40 points in his first game as a rookie. He was quite a draft pick, and you team him up with a young Tyrese Maxey and things are looking good there. Joel Embiid seems to be fading a little bit. He’s more of a role player now than maybe before. He is a very highly paid role player, but he’s one injury away from sitting out games. He doesn’t do back-to-backs. Good for the Sixers. It’s time that team makes the playoffs and does some damage.”

Q3. MLB World Series TV Ratings

On the Historic Viewership:

“There are feelings that baseball was just for older people and that younger people are bored by it. They’ve done some nice things with speeding the games up. The ratings for Game 7—now of course you got a lot going on. You got Canada with Toronto, wonderful city, one of the biggest cities in North America. You’ve got Los Angeles, the second biggest city in the United States, and you have the entire Japanese community as a country who was watching that game. Canada did 11.6 million viewers, Japan itself did 12 million viewers, and the United States had over 29 million viewers. This was rivaling what maybe a Super Bowl would be. Baseball was really strong. The zenith point was 33.06 million at 11:45 at night. I mean, that game went late into the night. What an exciting game. It really helped the viewership—one of the highest since 2007 for the World Series.”

Q4. New Babe Ruth from Japan

On Roki Sasaki (Murakami):

“We have an announcement coming out of Japan. We have what is commonly called the Babe Ruth of Japan. His team just posted him, meaning he can go to an MLB team and you have to pay them a fee to get out of that contract. This is the nature of the relationship between Japan and MLB. This player’s name is Murakami. He is the Babe Ruth of Japan. He’s not overly athletic. He hits the ball a mile. He strikes out a lot. So he’s really not an outfielder. He’s more of a third baseman or first baseman. I don’t know that he’s gonna go to the Dodgers unless he wants to take a pay cut, which I’m gonna assume he doesn’t. So look for him to sign with the Yankees, the Red Sox, or somebody of that ilk would be my guess. But you gotta love the Hot Stove League. I mean, we got free agency happening, possibly trades. Look for that guy to be a very interesting piece to leave Japan and come to MLB next year.”

Q5. NFL Teams Doing Well

On Paul Tagliabue’s Legacy and Current Standings:

“I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the death of Paul Tagliabue. He was the commissioner from 1989 to 2006. He oversaw great growth in the NFL. We saw expansion, salary caps put in place, free agency finally for the players, TV deals exploded, new buildings built throughout the league. The Rooney Rule was put in place where you must interview a minority candidate. He is one of the most important figures in NFL history. When you’re asking about wins and losses, it looks like the Eagles are seven and three in the NFC East, the Lions and Bears and Packers are doing pretty well. Surprising, the Patriots—look at that, nine and two. They hired one of their former players who had been the head coach of the Titans and he’s just getting it done. The Bills are sitting there at six and three. Look at the West, the Broncos with Bo Nix as quarterback are eight and two. The Chargers are seven and three and just beat the Steelers, and the Chiefs are five and four. So that division is wide open, but it’s getting to be exciting.”

Q6. NHL Games Abroad and Teams

On European Expansion:

“They’re really trying to expand their brand in the NHL, and there are some really good teams in the northern part of Europe. I had the opportunity to go to Copenhagen, Denmark, Sweden, and next-door neighbor Norway. Hockey’s big up there for obvious reasons. Our Pittsburgh Penguins are playing the Nashville Predators on November 14th and 16th and then flying home after that to get an opportunity to expand their brand into Europe. That to me makes complete sense. The northern part of Europe is a real fertile area for growth. A little surprising, the Oilers only have 18 points. It looks like our two teams in Florida are doing really well—the Florida Panthers in Miami and also the Tampa Bay Lightning. They’re both kind of middle of the pack right now, but again, it’s early. Could this be finally the year Toronto does it? Some experts think so. They haven’t won a championship in 59 years, so they’re pretty due.”

On Winter Olympics:

“Don’t forget the Winter Olympics—we’re gonna shut down the NHL this year, February 6th to the 22nd. We’re going to one of your neighbors in France. They’re going to Italy and they’re gonna play. The Winter Olympics will have hockey in Milan, Italy, and Cortina, Italy, where we will have all our players in the NHL playing with their respective countries.”

Q7. College Football and Basketball Updates

On College Football:

“With college football, we have two teams in the top 10 that have two losses. Notre Dame is sitting there at 9-2. They have a big game against the top 25 team, the Pitt Panthers—both starting freshman quarterbacks. Texas is number 10 at 7-2. But Ohio State is really doing well—undefeated. Indiana Bloomington, undefeated. Texas A&M, undefeated. Alabama and Georgia with one loss, Texas Tech, Ole Miss with one loss, Oregon at eight and one. So that rounds out the top 10. The one common denominator with all these big payouts to coaches that programs want to get out from under is their agent is usually a guy named Jimmy Sexton. He’s the one getting these guys the big contracts. Of course, Scott Boras is a feared agent in MLB and Lee Steinberg was loosely based on in the movie Jerry Maguire from 29 years ago.”

On College Basketball:

“Switching gears to college basketball, BYU supposedly has the best player in the country, and his name is AJ Dybantsa. He’s probably gonna be the top pick in the draft in 2026 in the NBA. He plays for BYU. BYU is buying players left and right and they should be a team that may end up going to the Final Four.”

Q8. MLS Calendar Alignment with European Leagues

On the Schedule Change:

“The MLS yesterday announced a shift in its competition calendar to align the league schedule with the world’s top soccer leagues, especially in Europe. Beginning in the summer of 2027, the MLS will adopt a summer-to-spring season format, basically starting around August until June, making it one of the most significant developments in the league’s history. I think it’s absolutely a good thing. The only downside for the MLS is you’re taking on the NBA and you’re taking on hockey directly, and the early part of the NFL. That would be my only concern about that. As far as getting and securing talent, which Europe has been known to be number one for with the Premier League and soccer, that might help. If we mirror it and get it consistent, we could go from being the 10th or 15th best league in the world to top five. I think the MLS definitely belongs in the top 10. It makes sense. It’s good news for the MLS. It’s a good decision.”

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This week we have the honor to interview again a group of sports performance executives to talk about the latest trends in the world of sports performance and rehabilitation.

• Jason Han, Former Head of Rehabilitation, LAFC (MLS). Jason is also the head of business development in North America at OneBase health.

• Michael Messer, Head of Rehabilitation, Nashville SC (MLS).

• Darcy Norman, Director of Performance, Chicago Fire FC (MLS).

• Gavin Benjafield, Performance Director, LAFC (MLS).

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• MLS Playoffs – Adapting Recovery & Training.

• MLS Offseason – Reflection & Reset

• Grass vs Turf – Adapting Preparation

• 2026 World Cup – Managing the Midseason Pause

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Darcy, Gavin, Michael and Jason:

Q1. MLS Playoffs – Adapting Recovery & Training

Gavin Benjafield (LAFC) - On the Challenge of the FIFA Window:

“Decision was the 18th of October, MLS Cup final is December 6th. So you’re looking at a seven-week duration of the playoffs. What makes it the most challenging is that there’s actually a FIFA window bridging almost the first half and the second half of the playoffs. We have seven players away on international duty. We completed the first round in two games, so there’s a good 21 days between our last game and the semifinals. That really is a challenge to keep players engaged, keep the rhythm going, keep the cycle going, keep the competitiveness going. We’ve taken 10 months to get to this point of building a team, building the cohesion, building the rhythm of competition. And now we’re basically completely out of rhythm.”

Gavin Benjafield - On Managing Split Training Groups:

“Right now, my biggest focus would be the players that have played the most number of games and minutes. We’re actually having them more in a maintenance and rest and recovery phase, and the players like the subs, maybe guys that haven’t had as many minutes or have come back from injury, we’re actually using this as a mini loading period. Then the last block before the game will almost put everyone on the same program—a tapering program and getting them ready. But I have no control of those seven players that are away, and it makes it incredibly challenging to go to Vancouver and play a semifinal with only having two days of training with your full starting 11.”

Jason Han (Former LAFC) - On Controlling the Controllables:

“Regardless of the schedule or these guys going away, they’re essentially distractions. Of any high performer, whether it’s the athlete or us as performance staff individuals, I think we pride ourselves on our ability to control the controllables—and that’s really ourselves. The attention to detail was a little bit better. Even within staff, because it is a long season, we can all complain that we don’t play for three more weeks and we have Vancouver away on turf. It is what it is. I think the faster that we as a staff can actually hone in on what we need to do, that bleeds over to the players. The year that we won, we had Vela, we had Chiellini, we had Bale—we had guys that had been there that don’t get rattled. That’s where it kind of all bleeds down, where you’re able to get through the mud in a sense.”

Jason Han - On Recovery Modalities:

“In 2022, that’s when we brought the hyperbaric chamber into the club. We have to be able to sell it to them in the sense where like, ‘Hey, we’re in a heavy period right now. You’ve been through X amount of injuries. We need to get the most out of you. I know you don’t want to get in the chamber every day. I know you don’t want to do these things, but for the betterment of the team and yourself, this is what we need to do. Are we good? Let’s lock in. Let’s lock shoulder to shoulder.’ That was LAFC’s mantra—how can we lock shoulder to shoulder as a staff, as a team, as a brotherhood in a sense, to get the job done. That’s when we won in 2022.”

Darcy Norman (Nashville SC) - On the Nature of the Playoffs:

“It’s a bit of a double-edged sword. There’s not that many games in the MLS. When I was at Bayern and Roma, we were playing in all three trophies all year round—you’re at 60 games, all your players are off playing international teams. So it was a rinse and repeat all year long. So there’s that side of it, and then there’s these gaps and windows that you just gotta accommodate for. It kind of is what it is. It’s really the Shackleton experiment of managing expectations, telling them what’s gonna happen, why it’s gonna happen, how it’s gonna happen, so when it happens, nobody’s surprised. It reminds me that MLS is still a developing league.”

Mike Messer (Nashville SC) - On the Unpredictability:

“The MLS playoffs are just a bit of a roulette. You just don’t know what you’re gonna get. There’s so many uncontrollables, and so what it really does come down to is what can you control. We spend the whole season trying to get these guys in a rhythm, and even little things like having to change the training cadence because now we’re playing games on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday nights, which we don’t normally do in the regular season. There’s just a lot of things that you get thrown a curve ball and you just kinda have to manage it as best you can.”

Mike Messer - On Medical Approach:

“You start to look at some of the guys who have been out—maybe in the season you take a little more conservative approach. Maybe you start to look at that a little bit differently. With the season winding down, maybe you start to push a little bit, take a little more risk. Obviously if the player’s willing and staff are willing as well. It just puts a little bit of a different tint on some of the rehabs you have and your approach to them.”

Q2. MLS Offseason – Reflection & Reset

Darcy Norman - On Continuous Work:

“It feels like another, a different season of different work. For us, we’re giving the guys just like, ‘Hey, walk away.’ It’s always tough when you’re pushing for something and then you don’t make it. So just to have everyone clear their head. Then we’re running optional mini camps starting December 1st all the way up until when guys report back on the 10th. We’ll have a little break at Christmas, but just trying to provide them the opportunities to come in and train and stay fresh because it is a long season. I think it’s gotten shorter over the years, which is in a good way, because it’s hard to go in such a span without playing and ramping up fast and hitting games. So just at least keeping guys ticking over, working on stuff that they need to work on to get better and improve as players.”

Darcy Norman - On Building Systems:

“It’s a constant audit. We’re going through all the reviews, summarizing the season—what worked, what didn’t. This staff here at Chicago is kind of year one for us all as a group. There was a lot of systems and structures and things that we needed to get organized. We were kind of building the boat as it was moving from day one because it was all these quick hires and getting going and then you’re off to preseason. Our theme this year was process, transparency, and legacy. So it was writing down everything you did. Our things are like a digital wiki—everything is hyperlinked and connected so that anybody can find anything at any one time. If something were to happen to anybody, I can click a button and understand exactly all the bits that they’re touching that I might not appreciate in their day-to-day. Now we’re putting all the pieces together, getting a V1 on all that stuff, and then putting plans in place to figure out how we’re gonna do it better next year.”

Gavin Benjafield - On Staff Reviews and Innovation:

“I use the November FIFA window to complete my staff reviews for the year. We do that little bit of a mini audit. We’ve had good turnover retention of staff for the last four years under the same coach. So my challenge is almost more around, ‘Are we doing things that we should continue doing in 2026 or should we actually stop doing certain things and innovate in a different direction?’ Also, with the challenge of a new coach coming in 2026, you almost can’t be making plans when you don’t know who the coach is gonna be. So I’ve switched our focus a little bit more. My focus for 26 is actually gonna be more the integration of the different departments and the different tiers within the club—how can we integrate better with the second team, with the academy? I start with a blank canvas. Whatever we did last year worked for last year, but for 26 it’s not gonna work. So I need to break it all down to build it all back up again to figure out what combination is gonna be the right combination with the players that remain, the new staff that do or don’t come, and obviously we’ll have a brand new technical staff.”

Mike Messer - On Recharging:

“No offseason has been the same in five years. I’ve had some seasons where I have one guy that hangs around with a long-term rehab. I’ve had some seasons where I’ve had five or more hang around for a long-term rehab, so it doesn’t really feel like the offseason at that point. But I do think one of the really important things is to appreciate what it is, which is the offseason. You have to find some way, shape, or form to recharge and get ready for the next season because it is hard. We’re always thinking—it’s hard to turn that off. But you really do have to try to find a way to recharge your batteries a little bit, collect yourself. I think that comes down to the individual. For me, I try to take a few days to go back home, see our immediate families. Then the days tend to be a little bit shorter in the offseason, so you try to take advantage of that extra time that you have on a day-to-day basis and just make sure that you’re ready for what the next season is gonna bring.”

Mike Messer - On Player Expectations:

“The big thing is establishing expectations before they leave. Making sure that they understand that when they come back day one of preseason, this is where we expect you to be. We’re gonna try to communicate between now and then as best we can and facilitate that as best we can. But ultimately, if you’re choosing to not be at the facility and go somewhere else around the world, this is the standard that we’re gonna hold you to when you come back. So clear expectations.”

Gavin Benjafield - On Player Check-ins:

“We go radio silence for two weeks. We’re not gonna make any contact with any players for two weeks—you’re not gonna get a text, a phone call, anything from us. After that two-week period, depending if it’s a starter, maybe it’s a three-week period because their offseason plan looks different to a sub’s offseason plan. But typically a sub from the two-week mark onwards is gonna start getting check-ins. We break up the squad relationally—who do I have the best connection with and who can I hold accountable over the offseason? I check in, sometimes twice a week, sometimes only once a week. How’s the plan going, where you’re at, how’s the family—a little bit of a life-work balance combination. There are some guys that don’t need check-ins and they come back flying on day one, and there are other guys that I just hope that we don’t have a nine-week offseason because the guy’s in such a deep hole. Having good relationship with your players is vitally important, but giving them that time where they’re totally disconnected is just as important because they’ve invested so much time physically and mentally into the season.”

Jason Han - On Segmentation and Documentation:

“Gavin’s always been really good at segmenting. We talk as a group all the time—’Jason, who are you in charge of? Gav, who are you in charge of?’ So we would segment it that way. You actually have two different populations—your healthy guys (the starters, the subs, based on minutes) and then you have your rehabs, your long-term rehabs. It depends where they are in their rehab cycle. There are other players that don’t get back to you, and you document how many times you reached out to them because Gav or Steve’s gonna ask, ‘What’s going on with so-and-so?’ Like, ‘Look, I’ve texted him this many times, I’ve called him this many times.’ Because maybe, or maybe not, there’s times where the player goes, ‘No one reached out to me.’ Look at my WhatsApp. So that communication—as long as you can do that in the offseason as well as you can, then you can come back before preseason where we are game planning and we predict this person that we haven’t heard from, how’s he really gonna come back? So we’re already planning two or three steps ahead.”

Darcy Norman - On Player Commitment:

“Wrapping up the season, it was like, ‘Okay, obviously we have work to do, we failed out of the playoffs, so who wants to get better?’ You’re looking for a team of guys that are putting up their hand to say, ‘Yes, we want to get better. We all have goals, we all want to get there.’ So they make a verbal commitment to what’s happening. It makes the conversations easier, it makes the programming easier, and staying in touch with the guys so that when they come back you can hit the ground running. Hence our optional mini camps—we’re doing everything possible so that when we start the next season, there’s no excuses as to why we’re not hitting the ground running.”

Q3. Grass vs Turf – Adapting Preparation

Gavin Benjafield - On Recovery Timing:

“It’s always very contextual. Let’s paint a picture—you play on turf on a Saturday and you’re in a density period, so you’re now playing Wednesday and Saturday. Grass field players that train on grass, play on grass, go and play on turf, and especially when there’s an age factor added to that, they just take that extra 12 to 24 hours to come back from joint pain, this tendonpain, that hurts. Contextually, if we have a midweek game, then we’re throwing the kitchen sink at the recovery. We may adjust what our match minus one looks like because we still know that some of these older players are still in a recovery phase from that.”

Jason Han - On Proactive Treatment:

“Knowing that you’re gonna be in Vancouver in a few weeks, the ground reaction forces are gonna be that much more. Whether it’s the post-practice recovery strategies, we’re really just pushing that a little bit more. There’s some guys that don’t like to do proactive steps, so it was really up to us to grab them like, ‘Hey, come in, come in.’ Now in this period where you’re gonna have seven starters that are out, you’re gonna grab players that weren’t even used to being on the table. You’re putting them on the table and they’re like, ‘What?’ I was like, ‘Look, we’re doing everything that we can with what we have at this point. If there’s a situation where you’re going in, you’re gonna feel your best. Don’t worry about the starters that are not here. We can’t do anything about them right now.’ At least leading up to the game. And then understanding that it does take another 12 to 24 hours for these guys to kind of turn around. We’re gonna do what we need to do on our part from the performance and medical staff, but also being able to relay that to the technical staff like, ‘Hey, this is what we’re gonna see.’ And then hopefully there’s that cohesion where we can actually start the training cycle in the way it should or a little bit lower than you would otherwise.”

Gavin Benjafield - On ACL Reintegration:

“It often comes into discussion with players that may be carrying an injury or carrying a past injury. If we had an ACL player and he was reintegrating back into team minutes, and now all of a sudden we were gonna play three away games and all of them were gonna be on turf, and it was not a critical part of the season, then we would be more conservative and we’d speak to our coaches and go like, ‘Yeah, you know what? This is not the ideal reintegration for this player and his minutes. Let’s be a little bit more conservative in terms of how many minutes we’re gonna allow him to be playing on turf.’ Because yes, there is definitely a different factor involved when he is playing at home on grass or away on grass and then also away on turf. So it is just taking all factors into consideration when you’re trying to make the best decision possible. That’s most of our jobs—we’re just trying to collect as much information as we can and make the best decision that we can with all the facts that we have, and then draw the player into that conversation and decision as well, and obviously the technical and head coach as well. Part of our job is to see things before they actually happen and to try and navigate through the muddy waters that sometimes aren’t very clear. You just hope that the decision that you’re making is more right than it is wrong.”

Mike Messer - On Different Coaching Philosophies:

“I’ve had a little bit of an interesting experience in Nashville between two different coaches. One coach took the perspective when it came to turf where he actually wanted us to train on the turf for at least two training sessions prior to the match, which led to a lot of complaints from some of those senior players. You kind of take the multiplier of the complaints that you get from guys having to play on turf in a match and then add two days of training on top of that. The medical staff is pulling their hair out trying to get these guys to turn around after those three days. The turf field we have now with the new coach kind of sits vacant. He has bought in a little more to the aftermath of what you deal with from the players when you do give them that extra time on the turf. I think there was the realization of maybe we actually get more out of them when we manage this a little bit more, rather than try to get them to see how the ball bounces on the turf two days leading up to the match so that when they get there it doesn’t feel foreign to them. I just think some of the problems that we were dealing with after the fact maybe outweighed the technical benefit from that extra time on the turf.”

Mike Messer - On Medical Management:

“Overall as a medical staff, you’re gonna expect it. The guys with the tendinopathies, maybe are a little more conservative with someone who’s coming back from an ACL injury. You make sure that everyone is aware of that and you just try to manage it as best you can. But at the end of the day, if it’s your star player, it’s probably gonna be more about the recovery on the back end rather than the management of minutes in the match.”

Darcy Norman - On Tailored Recovery:

“I think also just educating the players, right? What are they recovering from? Is it the turf or what the turf is causing? Is it more muscle soreness versus joint soreness versus just overall general neural fatigue for maybe a perceived harder surface? Then tailoring your recovery strategies to those various complaints. If somebody’s got more of a joint issue, you might change their programming to more isometrics, get them in the pool, front-loading, more cold-based scenarios to help with inflammation and irritation. Where if it’s more muscular soreness, it’s a whole different set of pieces where it might be more mobility and contrast and flow-based stuff and aerobic. Versus neural fatigue where it’s just more meditation and sleep and controlling some things. So I think there’s a variety of ways to handle it. That also puts the players in a little bit of the driving seat—you’re providing the tools and then they can kind of feel and do a little bit of a choose-your-own adventure that deals with what they’re dealing with as well as giving them some autonomy to what also feels good to them instead of saying, ‘Hey, everyone’s on this path.’”

Darcy Norman - On Mindset:

“A lot of it is just the mentality of how you approach it. It’ll only be a problem if it’s a problem. So don’t make it a problem. I don’t think the injury rates or research isn’t that conclusive. I think we just make this assumption that, ‘Oh, it’s turf, it hurts’ because ‘I don’t like playing on turf for whatever reason.’ But when you look at the research—and I’m not saying if it’s not in the research, it’s not true—but there hasn’t been any hard evidence that turf creates a higher level of injuries. There’s the anecdotal piece, but that’s the brain driving the bus. You just gotta take that for a grain of salt. Everybody’s doing it, everyone has to go through it, and so you kind of get on going and then deal with what the symptoms are to provide the best prescriptions.”

Q4. 2026 World Cup – Managing the Midseason Pause

Darcy Norman - On Two-Season Structure:

“Just evaluating the schedule, we had nine congested fixtures this year—that’s defined by two or three days between games. Next year we’re on pace to have a minimum of 21 over the course of those two blocks, and it’ll accumulate if we do well in advance in the various cups or League’s Cup or whatever the case may be. We’ve talked about kind of restructuring our periodization during the week as a result of that. To me it’s almost like a Mexican league where you got two seasons—you got the first part where you’re gonna get after it, prepare like you normally would and go strong in a congested, pseudo-congested timeframe. Then you get a break and a little reprieve and you come back and you hit it for a second season. It’s the accumulation—trying to just win each segment and hopefully in winning each segment you win the whole thing. Just taking it down in its bits and then also letting the guys enjoy watching the world’s best and finding inspiration to come back and get it going in the second half.”

Gavin Benjafield - On the Density Challenge:

“It’s gonna be controlling the density because you’re now gonna have two really compacted seasons. It’s almost gonna be like a sprint to the World Cup and then you’re gonna come up for air and then you’re gonna have another sprint race. Just looking at it, if you’re not in the Champions Cup, you’re gonna have 15 games in approximately 13 weeks—that’s super manageable, that’s one game a week. But if you’re in the Champions Cup and you go deep, you could be having 24 games in three months. That’s eight games a month. That’s almost a double-header every single week for the first three months. So it’s a big challenge.”

Gavin Benjafield - On Two Preseasons:

“I think you’re also gonna find that you’re gonna have two preseasons because you’re gonna have to—it’s a 53-day break for the World Cup. So how much time do you give the players off after that first half of the season? If you’re considering it as two seasons, how much time do you give them off? How much time do you have to take to get them back up again? So that’s considered like almost a mini preseason. If you did three weeks off, three weeks mini preseason to get yourself ready for the next one. I think it may depend on how deep you go in the first half of the season, how long you give players off, how many have gone away to the World Cup, when are they coming back, how do you manage that for the second half? So again, it’s this art of working out what’s the best fit for you and your team, because my plan may not be the best plan for Darcy in Chicago. It’s for us to work it out—what works for us and our team and what’s gonna get us in the best possible winning situation in that first 13-week sprint and then the second one after the World Cup.”

Darcy Norman - On National Team Perspective:

“From a national team perspective, it worked relatively well for the 2022 World Cup because it was kinda like your traditional European thing going into a tournament, a summer tournament. It was great from a national team because guys rolled in from a good competitive season. They were in form. It was more the MLS group that got knocked out of the playoffs really early and you had to get them ready from October to darn near December or end of November when things kicked off. That was a bit of a challenge. We had a pre-World Cup camp for those guys, and just trying to balance out all the different periodization cycles for different guys that you were trying to mesh into one path. It was a team effort. Not only the guys in our care, but we did a lot of work with the MLS teams to ask for their help to support their players in programming and consistency in offseason programs to help from a developmental standpoint. So it was definitely a village from that perspective.”

Darcy Norman - On Player-First Approach:

“We’re a player-first program, always. If you do everything for the player, then they’re gonna be successful for their respective team, their country, as I mentioned earlier. I’ll always work with wherever the group’s going to give them the best chance of success so that they can hit the ground running. If they do well in their program, that’s gonna help confidence and they’re gonna come back and have motivation to keep driving and rolling forward. So I’ll always be one to help wherever we can to support the player in their endeavors.”

Jason Han - On Segmentation and Opportunity:

“I really look at these gaps as opportunity really. You’re gonna have to segment the players—you have the players out with their national team, and then within the subset of players that are still there, who are they? Are they subs that haven’t got enough minutes? Do we send them down to the second team so they’re playing more? Do you have the ones that have played a lot and they actually need more rest? Or you have the ones that are in rehab and you’ve actually bought some time for them? To be able to segment between these three different lanes, and then even within the performance staff and the medical staff, we have to be flexible too. Just as much as they want to rest, we want to rest too, but we have to do what’s best for the player and the team. Sometimes we don’t like it, but we may have to sacrifice ourselves a little bit more. Maybe I didn’t take as long a vacation, but it’s player first—we have to do everything we need to do for ourselves, but mostly the player to get the final result. If I need to come in a little bit more to see a certain player because I’m in charge of him, that’s what needs to be done. But also to have that cohesiveness within the staff—when you can build a good, cohesive unit, you can do it.”

Mike Messer - On Rinse and Repeat:

“It’s almost like rinse and repeat, I guess you could look at it. We talked about reflecting—you could almost look at it like, ‘Okay, how’d the first half of the season go? Because it’s about to happen again.’ So what could we maybe do different second half of the season? What worked, what didn’t? It’s certainly gonna be something new. Looking forward to having the World Cup here in the US, but it’s gonna present its own challenges behind the scenes that all of us are gonna have to deal with individually.”

Mike Messer - On Gamification:

“One of the things we’ve talked about is during some of these down periods for the guys that are around, gamifying it basically so that every drill, there’s points up for grabs. When you’re in the gym, there’s points up for grabs. At the end of this little mini training period, there’s a winner and there are prizes. It seems like the guys buy into that. They put in a little more effort. So who knows? Maybe we’ll have something like that when the time comes for the guys that are still in market.”

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Today as part of our continued effort to bring more awareness on female athletes, teams and associated trends related to female athletes, we have the honor to interview a group of female sports performance experts:

• Allison Schmitt, a 10 time Olympic medalist and multiple world champion in swimming (Team USA), and consultant with Orreco a leading sports data company.

• Ciara Burgi, Director of health and performance, Las Vegas Aces (WNBA).

• Byrnadeen Farraye, assistant sports scientist, Miami Marlins (MLB).

Here are the topics and questions that we covered on the group podcast:

• The next frontier in women’s performance — emerging areas such as data, recovery, health tracking, and leadership development.

• Key skills and mindsets needed for the next generation of practitioners in women’s sports.

• Redesigning performance models and AI tools to be built specifically for women rather than adapted from male baselines.

• The future vision for female athletes by 2030 — scientific, cultural, and economic advancements.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here are the quotes from the interview with Ciara, Allyson and Byrnadeen:

Q1. What’s the next big frontier for women’s performance — data, recovery, health tracking, or maybe something cultural like leadership development?

Allison Schmitt:

“From an athlete’s perspective, I think the next big frontier is really understanding our bodies in real time — not just tracking data but actually applying it. For so long we’ve trained off systems that were built for men, and now we’re finally connecting the dots between the science, the cycles, the recovery, and the performance. Working with FitrWoman, we’ve taken something that used to feel like a mystery and turned it into something empowering. We’re realizing that feeling right — understanding hormonal shifts and personalizing recovery — isn’t an ‘extra,’ it’s essential for performance. And I think the next step is making that part of every team’s language. It’s not just a ‘female-specific’ conversation anymore; it’s just really smart performance that benefits everyone.”

Byrnadeen Farraye:

“I think we’re still playing a lot of catch-up. Historically, women weren’t even allowed to participate in strength training — for a long time, it was seen as something women shouldn’t do. Even in baseball, where I work now, strength training for men is still fairly new. So when you think about how far behind we’ve been culturally and historically, it makes sense that women’s performance science is still evolving. I think the next frontier is about being smarter — not necessarily doing more, but training smarter, recovering smarter, and really understanding how to make the most of the data and technology we have now. We’re bridging the gap between history and modern performance.”

Ciara Burgi:

“I agree with both of them, and I’d add that from a structural standpoint, not every women’s team even has its own facility — which is wild. You can’t build a true high-performance culture without basic infrastructure. In the WNBA, we’re just starting to see teams like the Las Vegas Aces set the standard by building their own facilities, but others are still far from that. Having a full-time staff, your own space, your own recovery setup — that should be the baseline, not the exception. At the same time, because women’s sports don’t have the same legacy systems that men’s sports do, there’s a kind of freedom and creativity that comes with that. Men’s sports have history — which is great, but it can also be a limitation. In women’s sports, we have the chance to build something different, more collaborative, and more forward-thinking from the ground up.”

Q2. When you think about the next generation of practitioners entering women’s sports, what skills or mindsets do they need most?

Byrnadeen Farraye:

“We need better practitioners across the board — whether it’s men’s or women’s sports. I think we’ve been asking the same questions since the 1960s in both research and clinical settings. The next generation of practitioners has to be critical thinkers — people who know how to ask better questions and not just accept old assumptions as fact. We need coaches, trainers, and scientists who understand empathy, who know where their athletes are coming from, and who can connect with them as human beings. You can have all the technology in the world, but if you don’t understand the human in front of you, you won’t be effective. For women in particular, it’s about recognizing that the environment they’ve had access to — or sometimes haven’t had access to — shapes everything about their experience in sport.”

Ciara Burgi:

“There’s nothing you can look up about how to connect with other human beings. That’s the foundation of being successful in any performance environment. You can Google the answer to any question about physiology or training, but if you can’t connect with people, if you can’t read the room or sense when someone needs space versus when they need support, it doesn’t matter what you know. We work in human systems, not mechanical ones. Practitioners have to learn to read people — some athletes want you to hover and coach them through every rep, others want you to hand them the program and step back. If you can’t read that and adapt, you won’t get buy-in. Everything we do starts and ends with human connection.”

Allison Schmitt:

“The two words that immediately come to mind for me are curiosity and empathy. Athletes don’t need someone who just reads numbers off a screen — they need people who see them as whole individuals, not just data points. And practitioners have to be comfortable in the gray areas because so much about performance, especially female performance, is still evolving. Having the humility to say, ‘We don’t fully know yet, but let’s learn together,’ builds trust. And that trust is what makes the science work for the athlete, not just at them. I went back after my last Olympics and got my master’s in social work because connection and understanding are at the heart of performance. With all the tech we have now, we can’t lose our human ability to connect.”

Q3. Much of the data and systems in sport are built on male baselines. How do we start designing performance models and AI tools that are truly built for women, not adapted from men?

Allison Schmitt:

“We have to start by accepting that ‘normal’ looks different for each of us. If we can use AI and performance tech to understand those individual baselines — hormonal cycles, recovery rates, life stages, injuries, even vitamins or nutrition — we can make the data more accurate and more personal. The goal isn’t to overcomplicate things but to make them truly representative. You can’t just shrink a men’s jersey and call it a women’s fit — and the same logic applies to data models and performance systems. They have to start with real female athletes, with our data, our voices, and our experiences at the center.”

Byrnadeen Farraye:

“I think it all starts with asking better questions — especially when it comes to AI. If we’re feeding AI only with data built from men, that’s all it’s going to learn. So we have to be very careful about the data we input and the questions we use to shape those systems. Representation matters — we need women in research, in tech, in sports science labs, and in leadership. When I worked in research on ACL injuries, which are far more common in women, we made a point to over-represent female subjects in our studies to help shift the baseline. It’s not just about adding women into existing models — it’s about building those models from the ground up to reflect women’s physiology and experiences.”

Ciara Burgi:

“We have to be okay with not knowing everything yet. There are real biological and hormonal differences between men and women, but we don’t fully understand all of them. So our job right now is to ask better questions, collect high-quality data, and lean into that discomfort of uncertainty. It might take 10 or 20 years for us to fully map what those differences mean for training and recovery, but we have to start by being curious and honest about what we don’t know.”

Q4. If we meet again in 2030, what do you hope will be different for female athletes — scientifically, culturally, or economically?

Ciara Burgi:

“By 2030, I hope there’s true equality in facilities, access, and resources — that every women’s team has its own space, full-time staff, and support systems as the baseline, not the goal. But more than that, I hope women’s sports become the model for how organizations are run. Because there’s less legacy, we have the opportunity to design new systems of leadership and collaboration. I’d love to see female-led organizations become the blueprint for what modern performance and leadership can look like — interdisciplinary, creative, and genuinely collaborative, not just using those words as buzzwords.”

Allison Schmitt:

“Scientifically, I hope that by 2030 we’re no longer having to explain why female-specific data matters — it’ll just be part of the language. Every athlete, male or female, should have access to tools that help them understand their bodies from adolescence through postpartum and beyond. Culturally, I hope it’s completely normal to talk about things like hormones, periods, and energy levels in the same way we talk about nutrition and training. And economically, I want to see investment that truly reflects the value women bring to sport — from research to staffing to sponsorship. We’ve already seen what happens when women’s sports are supported: the performance rises, the fan base grows, and the entire ecosystem benefits.”

Byrnadeen Farraye:

“All of those things — science, culture, economics — are intertwined. To advance the science, we need more funding. To get more funding, we need to keep proving the value and impact of women’s sports. And to do that, we need people to keep investing, researching, and supporting. I hope that in 2030, we’re not having to justify why women’s performance matters — it’s just part of the conversation. At the end of the day, I just want women to keep showing what we can do, because we already know we can do everything men can — and often better. We just need the same opportunities and resources to keep proving it.”

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This week we have the honor to interview a group of NFL sports performance executives to talk about the latest trends in the world of BFR in the NFL.

• John Griffin, Director of player Performance, Atlanta Falcons (NFL).

• Dr Josh Nelson (Nelly), Director of Performance Science, Atlanta Falcons (NFL).

• Dr Warren Bradley, Founder, Hytro.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the best practices related to:

• BFR Best Practices & Customization

• BFR Trends in Application: Performance vs. Recovery

• Integrating BFR into the Rehab Continuum

• Practical & Safety Barriers in an NFL Environment

• Future of BFR & Research Gaps

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here are some pictures of Atlanta Falcons players wearing the Hytro BFR short:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with John, Nelly and Warren:

1. Best Practices & Customization

Dr. Warren Bradley:“When it comes to protocols, pressures, and rep ranges, the truth is there’s no single formula that fits everyone. You’ll find countless variations in the literature — different cuff widths, pressures, and set/rep schemes — but in practice, the most effective approach is the one that meets the athletes and coaches where they are. It’s about making BFR fit seamlessly into an existing performance or recovery program, not forcing a program to fit BFR. That’s actually why we started working closely with the Falcons — we found that flexible middle ground, meeting them where their players and staff were, and adapting our approach to the realities of the NFL environment. That’s where the real-world results come from.”

John Griffin:“In our setting, we’re using BFR primarily as a recovery tool right now, especially early in the season. Our schedule is highly cyclical — you play every week, so recovery becomes a premium commodity. Getting players’ tissue to turn over and legs back under them is both a science and an art. Every team has its own rhythm and approach, but for us, BFR plays a key role in post-game recovery. Later in the season, as the schedule tightens and total load starts to accumulate, we’ll use it as a deloading stimulus — maintaining strength and conditioning while reducing external load. But right now, recovery is king.”

Dr. Josh Nelson (Nelly):“When we arrived last year, we initially experimented with some of the more traditional electronic units like the Delphi system. Those work great for precision, but they’re hard to scale across an entire NFL roster. That’s when we started working with Warren to explore wearable options that were more portable and flexible. The wearable system allows us to get the benefits of BFR without needing a clinician present every time. It’s simple, efficient, and scalable — we can literally roll it out to the entire team, which is crucial in a high-performance environment with 50+ athletes.”

2. Trends in Application: Performance vs. Recovery

John Griffin:“We’re using BFR in some non-traditional ways, especially around aerobic and recovery work. Right now, we’re emphasizing unloaded conditioning — bikes have been a huge part of that. We’ll have players go through steady-state aerobic sessions, eight to ten minutes under consistent occlusion, or alternate between higher-intensity bouts and rest. It’s about maintaining cardiovascular conditioning and tissue quality without overloading their joints and muscles. In-season, we’re not chasing hypertrophy — we’re fighting atrophy and trying to maintain strength. So instead of stacking heavy volume, we’ll do things like Spanish squats, split squats, or goblet-loaded movements under BFR. The load is lighter, but the stimulus is significant, and it keeps our athletes strong throughout a long, punishing season.”

Dr. Josh Nelson (Nelly):“We’ve got guys who do absolutely everything right — the ones who chase every 1% gain possible. For them, BFR has become one of those small edges. The beauty of the wearable system is that they can take it home or on the road and build it into their own recovery routines. We’ve even used it during travel — cross-country flights, home use, wherever it fits. It’s a highly scalable tool that gives athletes autonomy while still providing a measurable recovery benefit.”

Dr. Warren Bradley:“If you zoom out beyond football, what’s really exciting is how BFR is being used across sports — not just for hypertrophy, but for solving very specific problems. You’ll see it used for tendinopathies, as a pre-conditioning tool before a match, or even to manage soreness and tissue recovery. It’s not a one-size-fits-all tool; it’s a versatile intervention that can be tailored to the specific demands of the athlete and the phase of the season they’re in.”

3. Integrating BFR into the Rehab Continuum

John Griffin:“BFR has really helped us bridge that gap between the medical and performance sides. Early in the rehab process, it’s about mitigating atrophy when a guy can’t load — especially post-surgery or after long immobilization periods. As athletes progress into later stages of rehab or return-to-play, we use BFR strategically to keep loading low while still creating a meaningful training stimulus. For example, if a player’s coming off an ACL and starting to rejoin practice, we’ll extend the BFR window a bit longer to avoid stacking multiple high-stress loads on the same day. That way, he’s getting stronger and reconditioning tissue without overloading his system during reintegration.”

Dr. Warren Bradley:“Clinically, we’re seeing BFR being used as soon as two or three days post-op — once the wound is closed and the athlete is medically cleared. Passive BFR at that stage stimulates hormonal pathways and keeps the tissue in a responsive state, even before active rehab begins. It offsets atrophy dramatically. But it’s important to match the technology to the phase of rehab. In early rehab, precision matters, so a digital device like Delphi gives you that exact occlusion percentage. Later on, when athletes move to self-managed work or home rehab, that’s when wearables become invaluable. You can’t send a $10,000 Delphi home with a player — but you can send a lightweight, wearable cuff that they can use independently and safely.”

Dr. Josh Nelson (Nelly):“One interesting thing we’ve been doing is using BFR on the non-injured limb if a player’s injured on one side. There’s a systemic hormonal effect — if you train one limb under occlusion, the increased growth factors and hormonal response still circulate throughout the body. So even though you’re only training one leg, the injured side gets some benefit too. It’s a creative way to keep athletes engaged and physically progressing without overloading the injured area.”

4. Practical & Safety Barriers in an NFL Environment

John Griffin:“Education and trust are everything. You can’t just hand an athlete a device and say, ‘This will help you.’ You have to explain why it works, how it’s used safely, and what outcomes they can expect. Our approach has been to build a professional network, constantly stay up to date with new research, and lean on experts like Warren who’ve been living and breathing BFR for years. From a staff standpoint, we emphasize continuing education and certification where possible. And we keep the athletes involved in the learning process — because once they understand and trust the method, buy-in is easy.”

Dr. Warren Bradley:“For us, the relationship doesn’t end once we provide the product. We’re very intentional about staying connected with coaches and practitioners — getting their feedback, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and adjusting together. The most valuable insights come from those real-world feedback loops. It’s not just about research; it’s about collaboration, problem-solving, and ensuring safety and effectiveness at scale.”

Dr. Josh Nelson (Nelly):“At the end of the day, our environment is chaotic — you’ve got limited time, multiple demands, and players in different physical states. So whatever you implement has to be consistent, quick, and scalable. That’s where simplicity and education come in. If it’s not practical week to week across the whole roster, it won’t last.”

5. Future of BFR & Research Gaps

John Griffin:“Mainstream adoption is the next big step. The more exposure athletes have to BFR and the more often they see it being used, the easier it becomes for them to trust it. When something’s new or unfamiliar, there’s always hesitation. But once they see it used across teams and leagues, that trust barrier disappears. From a performance perspective, I’m particularly interested in how BFR influences tendon adaptations — things like cross-sectional area and fascicle length. We still don’t fully understand those morphological changes, and that’s a fascinating space for future research.”

Dr. Josh Nelson (Nelly):“Every time we bring in a new system or technology, I immediately think about scalability — how do we make this work across the entire roster and across a long season? How do we match the right protocol to the right stressor? A high-speed day might call for one recovery pattern, a heavy-contact day another. We’ve even talked with Warren about pairing BFR with cold-water immersion — combining occlusion with hydrotherapy to see if that accelerates recovery. That’s where the field is going: strategic pairing of stress and recovery.”

Dr. Warren Bradley:“If you search PubMed right now, you’ll find over 13,000 studies on BFR — but about 95% of them are in rehab or elderly populations. The big gap is elite performance. The exciting part is that we’re finally seeing an explosion of research into areas like passive recovery, ischemic preconditioning, tendon health, and endurance adaptations. Coaches like John and Nelly are pushing the boundaries — using BFR in ice baths, saunas, even at altitude. We’re now doing the research to validate what they’re discovering in the field. And honestly, that’s the best part — practitioners are driving innovation, and the science is racing to keep up.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Mark Strickland, a former NBA player who played for the Miami Heat, Brooklyn nets and now is a coach and founder of Pogoman’s Pop-Up Clinics.

Mark Strickland, known as “Pogoman,” is a former American professional basketball player who spent ten seasons in the NBA, most notably with the Miami Heat, and also played for the Denver Nuggets, New Jersey Nets, Sacramento Kings, Atlanta Hawks, Indiana Pacers, and Dallas Mavericks. Following his NBA career, Strickland continued to excel internationally, competing in professional leagues across China, Dubai, Jordan, Qatar, Lebanon, France, and Puerto Rico—where he led his team to a championship. Throughout his journey, he trained under legendary coaches such as Pat Riley, George Karl, Don Nelson, and Larry Brown, experiences that shaped his approach to coaching and player development at the high school, collegiate, and professional levels, including the NBA D-League.

Beyond the court, Mark has remained deeply engaged in community and advocacy work. As an active member of the National Basketball Retired Players Association (NBRPA), he spearheaded the partnership between the NBRPA and the Cancer Treatment Centers of America to promote prostate cancer awareness and early detection. Together with his wife, Tomi, he also co-founded The Ara Initiative, an organization dedicated to providing clean drinking water to children across the United States—reflecting his lifelong commitment to using his platform for impact and social good.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During the interview with Mark, we discussed his journey from an undrafted player to a nine-year NBA career, highlighted by his four-year stretch with the Miami Heat where a one-day tryout turned permanent by outworking everyone in Pat Riley’s culture of accountability. He shared his transition to coaching, the entrepreneurial mindset he developed—that “it’s all mental” and “some nos are a blessing”—and leadership lessons learned from playing alongside greats like Reggie Miller and Alonzo Mourning.

Mark explained his current mission through the Pogoman Pop-Up Clinics, providing free basketball training to overlooked kids whose families can’t afford expensive AAU programs, and his future vision for the Pogoman Foundation built on three pillars: education (scholarships), sports (Pop-Up Clinics), and nutrition (partnering with Feeding South Florida to address food insecurity).

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Mark located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Mark:

Q1. NBA Career & Time with the Miami Heat

On Making the Team:

“Making the Miami Heat team was the highlight because I came down here on a one-day trial. One day turned into two days, two days turned into three days, and then they sent me home. So I thought it was over, but I didn’t know it was Labor Day weekend, so they didn’t want any players down here while everybody was gone for the three or four-day holiday. Then all of a sudden I got a call from my agent that Monday saying, ‘Hey, they want you back.’ And I’ve been here ever since. That was one of the biggest highlights—just the way I made the Miami Heat team, coming on a one-day trial and then spending four seasons there. Now I still live here and have businesses here.”

On Standing Out:

“I was trying to figure out ways to stand out because I was coming in at the bottom. I had a couple of free agents ahead of me, a guy that Pat Riley really loved and brought to camp every year, and I had a couple of draft picks as well in front of me. So I was maybe like five on the depth chart when I first got here. I was like, okay, what is it that I can do to stand out every day? So I knew nobody on that team was faster than me, nobody on that team could jump higher than me, and nobody was going to outwork me. Those are the things I brought to the table every day.”

On Competing in Everything:

“They were keeping charts on everything. The number of dunks in one minute—I got that record. The sprints that we did on the football field—I got that record. The 17 record—I think I had it for years until somebody else broke that record. I wanted to have my name on all of the records. You’re trying to figure out ways to stand out, so every drill I was trying to be first. Every time we had any type of challenge, I was trying to find ways to stand out so that I would always be seen.”

On Heat Culture:

“The Miami Heat has the best organization as far as being in shape, development, weight, and body fat. That’s why they call it the Heat culture—it’s different from everywhere else. They hold you accountable for everything: being on time, following a rule book about this thick with all the rules. You have to be very disciplined to play here. When you play for the Heat, because I was here so long, you kind of take those same characteristics and those initiatives and you put them towards your real life.”

Q2. The Transition from Player to Coach

On Learning from Pat Riley:

“Before I took the job in Oshawa, I had a meeting with Pat Riley. The great thing about the Heat organization is they’re always accessible to you, especially when you’re one of their players and I was here for a long time. I still have a relationship with him and I also do the Junior Heat basketball camps. I went to him and had a couple of meetings. He told me what to look for in the draft, what type of wings he looked for. He told me to look for long athletic wings, make sure I had a good center, make sure I had a good point guard. So I went off that formula.”

On Combining Different Philosophies:

“I took little bits and pieces from everybody. I picked little bits and pieces from Larry Brown, little bits and pieces from Coach Cheney, and a lot from Pat Riley. Because it was professional basketball, I knew he knew what to look for—what type of wings he looked for, making sure I had a good center and a good point guard.”

On Why He Moved to Training:

“It wasn’t that hard going into coaching, but it got kind of difficult once I got to the D-League—it’s the G-League now, but it was the D-League then. I just didn’t like how I was treated. I felt like as a former NBA player, I should have been treated a little bit differently up in Bakersfield. That’s what made me venture out into doing training, doing consulting work—like I do with Hoop Dreams where I help them out and do the mental part of the game as well as the conditioning. Now I’ve gotten into doing some development, which led me to doing the Pogoman Pop-Up Clinics.”

Q3. Entrepreneurial Mindset & Life Beyond the Court

On Mental Toughness:

“It’s all mental. All the coaches I played for, you have to be mentally tough. I kind of have tunnel vision when I want to do something—I don’t let outside things bother me. I focus in well on what I want to do, and I just keep going and keep plugging. The hard work, getting up early, being there first—if you own a business, I feel like you should be there first and you should be the last to leave because your workers see that example and they’ll follow suit. They’ll take on that same type of attitude.”

On Learning from Rejection:

“I did learn over the years that some nos are a blessing. Once I learned that, when I got a no from some people or was rejected by some people, or a company would say no and wasn’t interested, I wouldn’t take it personally. Because I know, okay, that might not be the situation for me—that might be a better situation. And nine times out of ten, more than likely that’s what happened. That company said no, but then later on, two or three months later, I meet with, say for instance, Coca-Cola Florida, and now they have a bigger budget and now I’m dealing with somebody on a much bigger scale that’s willing to help me and likes what I do.”

On Learning from Great Players:

“You learn leadership skills playing with guys like Reggie Miller, Alonzo Mourning, Mark Jackson, and Dale Davis. The list goes on. You study these guys, you see how they lead, how they get guys to follow them. So you take on those same skills with the students at the school, with the students that I have at the Hoop Dreams programs, and also with the Pogoman Pop-Up Clinics—the same type of dedication, same type of focus, letting these kids know that this is for development, getting you better. It’s all about getting better, and then the rest will kind of take care of itself.”

On Veterans Teaching the Culture:

“The first guy that taught me about being a professional, especially down here in Miami, was a guy by the name of Keith Askins, who works for the Heat now in the scouting department. He wasn’t a star player, but he was a leader. He was a guy that was always first, always last to leave the gym. He always had great advice for me, he worked hard every day, and he was always ready when his number was called on the bench. When you’re seeing that, you kind of take that same type of attitude and apply it to yourself, and the next thing you know, you’re having success as well.”

Q4. Current Youth Basketball Initiatives & Philosophy

On Making Training Free:

“I see all these trainers and all these people charging these kids, you know, and I know my parents didn’t have six, seven, eight hundred dollars a week for me to have coaches. They didn’t have it. All I did was go up and play ball on my own. So I figured out a way to play chess and not checkers, and I figured out how to get a lot of great sponsors and got some grants. I was able to get the money through these companies and through grants, and now I can have the kids come for free and they can get quality training for free. It’s the same concept as Day Prep Academy—we have two now, one in Cutler Bay, one in Florida City. We take the bottom 10% out of all public schools and we give them an opportunity to get their credits up and get their high school diploma. And it’s for free, through school choice vouchers and Step Up for Kids. Everything I try to do, I try to make it free for the kids so we can get as many kids as we can to come in and get that quality training.”

On Teaching Teamwork Over Individual Glory:

“I try to teach them how to work with others. It’s five guys out there—you have to work as one unit. I think these days with AAU and social media, everybody wants clicks and everybody wants a highlight reel, individual play. But for me it’s more about if you can play well with others. A lot of the great players—Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan when he got Phil Jackson—started trusting other teammates. You can even see it in his documentary, The Last Dance. When he first got in the league, it was all one-on-one, Michael, Michael, Michael. Phil Jackson was like, ‘Hey, you have to—defense is easy for the defense to guard that. We’ve got to get the ball moving a little bit more. We’ve got all these other players that have different talents that can help make the game easier for you.’ So I try to teach that.”

On Life Skills Beyond Basketball:

“I try to teach them to work hard—you have to work hard at everything you do. And I try to teach them how to work well with others because you’re going to have to do it on a job. You’re going to have to do it if you own a business—you’re going to have to be able to work with other people. If you get a group of people that work well together, you’re going to have a stronger foundation than just having one person being that guy.”

On Being Honest and Realistic:

“I’m very honest with them. At least I tell them, if you’re going to go out and try to play ball, at least try to be some type of important piece to your team. If you can’t score, you can always get rebounds, you can always play defense, you can always be a good screener, you can always run the floor to get easy baskets for your team. There are other things that you can do. I get a lot of players that just want to make their high school team, just to have that memory and be a part of a team some kind of way. So I tell them, ‘Hey, this is what you do well. Try to do this, but also work on your other things. Work on other things, but these are the things you do well, so you need to do these things every day consistently. The coach needs to see you doing this every day, and trust me, he’ll see you getting better at the other things.’”

On Working with Overlooked Players:

“Most of those younger players are already on AAU teams—their path is already kind of set. But there’s a group of kids out there that are maybe not that good, or maybe not there yet, but people give up on them. So now what do you do? I’ll be like, ‘Hey, come over here, we’ll teach you some skills. We’ll get you better. I’ll see what you can do. We’ll work on that, but also work on these things so that you can be a well-rounded player, and then you can at least help a team with the team you’re trying to make.’ That’s why I do what I do. Because most of those younger players are already on AAU teams, but I work with the kids that people have given up on.”

Q5. Sports Management Background and Future Goals

On His Three-Pillar Mission:

“What I’m doing now and in the future is building the Pogoman LLC. I have the 501(c)(3) Pogoman Foundation, and what we’re going to do is cover three areas. Education—we’re going to start giving out scholarships to unfortunate kids that have straight A’s at Day Prep. Since I’m a part of Day Prep, I’m going to give a portion of money to give out free scholarships for kids to go to Daye College. That’s the education piece. The sports piece will be the Pop-Up Clinics. And then I’m going to eventually start working with Feeding South Florida—that’ll be the nutrition piece. As you know, groceries are crazy these days. There’s an organization down here in Florida that gives out free groceries to people. I saw something on the news where they’re looking for people to donate and give back and make it easier for them to get the food in for free. So my mission is to do education through giving kids scholarships, sports through the Pogoman Pop-Up Clinics, and nutrition through Feeding South Florida.”

On Sports as a Lifelong Habit:

“Once you play sports, you don’t forget it. I can’t go a day without working out. The leadership skills I got from other people, I try to hand that down to a lot of the younger coaches. I have younger coaches that work with me at Hoop Dreams—I give them advice. I do the same with the people that come with me to the Pogoman Pop-Up Clinics. I give that same advice.”

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This week we have the honor to interview a group of F1/Nascar sports innovation and performance experts.

• Clayton Green, an experienced human performance coach that worked in F1. He was at McLaren for 12 years with multiple times F1 champion Lewis Hamilton

• Kevin Kidd, a top motor sports executive in NASCAR (Ex RFK Racing). He now works as the North American motorsports competition director for Stellantis.

• Simon Reynolds ASCC, an F1 performance trainer He is the director at Formula 1 perform LTD. He previously worked for McLaren for 14 years as the Mclaren driver performance manager. He was also the performance coach of Keikki Kovalainen.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the best practices in F1 and NASCAR related to:

• Innovation Landscape in F1/NASCAR.

• AI and Data Integration.

• Human Performance & Training

• Future Technologies & Sustainability

• Cultural & Structural Differences in Innovation

• Psychological & Mental Performance.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Clayton, Kevin and Simon:

1. Innovation Landscape

Simon Reynolds (F1):

“I mean, F1 does have a big tradition, certainly, and a big history, but I don’t think the teams are necessarily kind of restricted by their tradition, if you like. They can be very proud of it and want to present it and obviously play off it if it’s been successful. But in order to be competitive in F1, it is very much about the innovation side. It is about how can you get any kind of edge over your competitors. And normally that’s a technological edge in F1 because they do have a bit more freedom over what they can create in terms of a racing package. So definitely history’s important. Tradition’s important, but I would say innovation is what really drives the teams. The sport probably wants to hold onto the tradition more, but the teams are happy to just go down the innovation route wherever possible.”

Kevin Kidd (NASCAR):

“You know, on the NASCAR side, the story is very similar, surprisingly. I think a lot of folks probably think that Formula One and NASCAR aren’t very similar. But when you lift a hood up, you’ll find that in NASCAR we’re doing a lot of the same activities. Our simulation efforts, our total engineering efforts really are scaled by budget. So we obviously have a little bit less budget to work with than Formula One teams, but the types of activities, the things that we’re doing are very similar... Heritage is something that’s very much part of our sport. It’s something that we all have a lot of respect towards. But quite frankly, it’s good for telling marketing stories. When we really focus on the competition aspect, we try to live at the bleeding edge of technology just the same as the Formula One guys do. Because in the end, you know, Motorsport worldwide is pretty similar. We’re taking inert pieces of metal and carbon fiber, and we’re trying to make them go as fast as possible around a circuit.”

Clayton Green (F1) on rule changes:

“The rules package for the cars changes quite frequently in F1. So we’ve got a big rules change coming up for the 26th season where they’re changing the power units, they’re changing things to do with the aerodynamics as well. And you tend to get shuffling of the pack at that point in time in terms of who’s got the best package. Obviously everyone’s trying to produce the best package that they can, but no one quite knows where any of the other teams are. So you never quite know at the start of a new rules change what’s going on there... It’s like that on a week by week basis. I mean, not so much now as it used to be when Simon and I were at McLaren and in F1 when there was a bit more freedom to spend whatever money you had available on the cars. So every week the cars would be different. There would be little upgrades and stuff coming, and the drivers had to always adapt to a changing performance package underneath them.”

1. AI and Data Integration

Kevin Kidd (NASCAR):

“I think we’re still very early days on this journey. But it is a journey, and if you’re not on board for the journey, then you’re probably going to get left behind in Motorsports pretty quickly. When I look at AI as a topic and how we’re trying to utilize it, we’re trying to make the easy decisions more automated. A typical NASCAR race, and the way NASCAR teams are structured — and boy, we could argue about whether this structure is the right way or not, I have strong opinions on it — but it all kind of funnels up to largely one person who’s making a lot of decisions on behalf of the team during a race. That one person gets overloaded just like that. And if we can use AI to help automate some of those decision making processes and really serve up the right answers at the right time, and have it to be trustworthy and something that the crew chief ultimately believes in and depends on, now all of a sudden we have freed up some cognitive load to allow the crew chief then to focus on the hard decisions that quite frankly, AI might not be capable of handling just quite yet. So if we can just reduce his cognitive load, free up some space to really take on the tough problems, I think personally that’s where we’re at today.”

Kevin Kidd (NASCAR)

“Traditionally in NASCAR there was zero data, like none. It wasn’t until about five or six years ago that that opened up a little bit to the point where each car has a steering sensor, has throttle and brake and GPS. So we have location of the car and speed and engine RPM, things of that nature. It is very simple when compared to Formula One. Formula One, there are 200-300 channels — there’s probably not much that’s not getting measured on a Formula One car. In NASCAR, we keep it very simple by rule, obviously. Us as race teams, we would put as many sensors on the car as we could if we were allowed to. Here’s where it gets interesting though: in Formula One, it’s my understanding that each team has access to their car’s worth of data, and that’s kind of it. In NASCAR, we have access to every car in the field. So not only can we analyze our data, but we can analyze every data point of our competitors as well, which gives us a huge runway for analysis to determine all kinds of things.”

Clayton Green (F1):

“McLaren was, and F1 as a whole was always into big data. It was always about what can we measure and if we could measure something, let’s measure it. We don’t necessarily know what we’re going to do with it right now, but the opinion was always, why wouldn’t you measure something if you could? So you always end up with so much information. There was a danger of paralysis of analysis going on. So they’re always then looking at, well, how can you mine the big data? How can you do predictive analytics on that? And this was before AI was kicking in. So I would imagine now there is a massive push to integrate it as much as possible. Like Kevin said, to try and reduce the cognitive load on the individuals that have got to make strategy decisions. In F1, if it was a really boring race, then the engineers were really happy that they’d done their job really well because it really was about how do we take any kind of chance out of this, how do we control all the variables? How do we predict everything that could happen?”

Simon Reynolds (F1):

“I think the more data points that you are collecting, if you’re collecting hundreds of data points, and I can only speak for Formula One, but then AI is then able to make predictions with future predictions for the following seasons, and that becomes extremely valuable. Compared to NASCAR, Formula One is very much more secretive and closed off to some degree. And I think collecting as many data points as possible, and having AI technology to be able to run that data and look at trends and forecasts and predictions for the future, I think is probably very valuable.”

1. Human Performance & Training

Kevin Kidd (NASCAR on elite drivers):

“I’ve had the good fortune of working with drivers. I’ve worked with the very best, Hall of Fame drivers. And I’ve also worked with very young guys who are just starting their journey, and I’ve worked with the guys in between. And what I can tell you without a doubt within the NASCAR world is that the very best drivers, those Hall of Fame guys — their actual skill behind the wheel to make a car go fast isn’t what separates them. Obviously they’re operating at a high level, the same as everybody else, but that’s not the difference. The difference is how cerebral they are and their ability to think their way through a race. The game is just so much slower for them, so to speak, and they can make good decisions on a more frequent basis. And so that’s what happens during the race. But then the other side of this that I think is an intangible that the very best guys have is their ability to kind of direct and guide the team and make the team stronger with the feedback, with the direction that they give on what they’re feeling in the car. They have that experience, they have that knowledge, and they can point a team in a direction that generally speaking leads to positive outcomes. Race car drivers who can do that and also go fast, those are the ones that win the races.”

Kevin Kidd (NASCAR pit crews):

“In NASCAR, our pit crews — and when I refer to pit crews, I’m talking about the five guys that jump over the wall and change tires and put fuel in the car — they are athletes, hands down. These guys play college football or college baseball. I have not seen many basketball players, but I don’t entirely know why that is, but I have seen a lot of former football and baseball players. And these guys, they were on a path where they were probably pretty successful in college, maybe not successful enough to make a professional career out of it. Or maybe they got to pro football, the NFL and lasted a season or two and then sort of flamed out. These are guys who were in their mid twenties, they’re looking to extend their athletic career doing something. They discover that NASCAR racing is an opportunity to do that, and they, quite frankly, if they keep fit and catch on, they can do this all the way out until 40 or 41 years old... These folks all come in, they’re very much clued in already on what strength and conditioning looks like. Working with human performance coaches they’ve come from programs that have all the coolest things from a data collection standpoint. They’re already in large part, already trained up on how to use the data... If you come to RFK racing now, and you look at the resources, the facilities we’ve put in place to support this part of our program, it would kind of remind you probably of a very small division one school. We’ve got some pretty impressive things that we’ve thrown at the problem. And these athletes, this is all they do, they pit cars for a living. They don’t work on cars. They’re not mechanics or fabricators. They’re not engineers. These guys are all athletes training every day to pit vehicles on a race on Sunday.”

Clayton Green (F1):

“We’ve always kind of alluded to the fact that it was more of a cognitive task that the F1 drivers had to perform, but physical fatigue starts to get in the way of that. So it was about being able to offset the physical element so they could do what they needed to do cognitively... The drivers that could communicate with their engineers and the team better would always do better. Of course the engineers had to set the car up for the driver to get the best out of the driver. I used to always like talking about how things felt, and then the engineers obviously want to deal in numbers and stuff, but the best drivers could find a way of communicating feelings into setup changes and then they’d have a vehicle that did everything that they wanted as well. So it wasn’t just about having the skill, you had to integrate yourself into the team and lead it and develop it as well.”

Clayton Green (F1 pit crews comparison):

“I think the biggest difference that I can see between F1 and NASCAR would certainly come round to the pit crew. I know that in NASCAR, you have the designated pit crew of people who are ex-athletes. And it is a very physically demanding role that they undertake. With the pit crew in F1 we have three people on each corner changing a tire. So you’ve got 12 people around the car. You’ve got front rear jacks, you’ve got about 14 people or so to change four tires, which is why we can do a bit quicker than NASCAR. But those individuals then, although they’re trained much more athletically now than they ever were, they aren’t athletes. They are the mechanics that work in the garage on setting up the car, and that is their first and most important role. Then from that pool of mechanics, because we couldn’t take extra people to race to just do the pit stops for us, you’d pick the best people, get them into the right positions. There was a lot of sports analysis done on kind of what body shape, what kind of strength do people need for certain things, vision track, all sorts of things that you bring in from a normal kind of athletic domain. They weren’t athletes in the first place. So a lot of the training was then also about keeping them healthy over the course of the season.”

Simon Reynolds (F1 on pit crews as athletes):

“When it comes to the roles within Motorsport, the pit crew’s role, or the race team’s role is the preparation of the car and to have a positive effect during the race to manage the changes of tires obviously in as quicker time as possible. And to react as quick as possible to changes that are occurring in the race with weather conditions and things like that... When we come to human performance, we are now treating the pit crews as athletes. And I think Clayton and myself and the medical team and the chief medical officer, Dr. Aki Hintsa at the time were really innovating that in the early days of 2007, 2008, 2009 of training the pit crews as athletes. And from that point forward, obviously the teams then started to do the same. And seeing that pit stop times were coming down as a consequence, and now we’re talking about seconds as opposed to multiple seconds in the earlier days when the pit crews weren’t necessarily treated as athletes.”

1. Cultural & Structural Differences in Innovation

Kevin Kidd (NASCAR):

“From our side, we are absolutely a fan engagement sport. We’re nothing without our fans. We’re nothing without the television broadcast. We very much cater to our fans and that’s what’s most important. I think maybe culturally, what’s a little different than Formula One is that our fan base really resonates with the stories of the drivers and the threads that kind of get pulled in and out with the drivers. And quite frankly, in the American Market we’re a little bit — I don’t know if we’re unique or not — but fans enjoy drama. So the stories that can add drama to the sport, those are the things that really sort of engage. Whereas I think, and again, maybe being a little presumptuous here, but on the Formula One side, fans really resonate in some part to the technology story. Technology is deeply rooted in both sides in Formula One and NASCAR. We just tend not to tell that story quite as often and really lean hard into the drivers and what’s going on and the dramatic parts of the sport.. who’s fighting who and why are they fighting? And what kind of drama we’re gonna see on the racetrack come Sunday.”

Simon Reynolds (F1):

“I think fan engagement is important in F1, and I think it’s a growing part of F1 now. I think F1 kind of found itself in quite a privileged position, if you like, with the global backdrop that it managed to establish. And it does have a huge following, but this is my own opinion as opposed to all the fans that are out there — but I’m never convinced that all the fans really know the intricacies of F1 and appreciate that the drivers don’t all have a level playing field they compete on. Because you do talk to a lot of people who always thought, well, why is so and so doing so badly this year? And you’re like, well, they’re not, but the team, the car is not where it was. So I think there is a big opportunity for the fan engagement side to develop in F1, although I think the teams do a lot of fan engagement themselves rather than F1 as a marketplace... I think the fan engagement is crucial. Drive to Survive was a huge influence on fan engagement and I think the documentaries that Netflix and other companies that were produced on motor sport have had huge engagement from the younger population. I also think McLaren have done an incredible job at fan engagement together with other teams. But I think with having Lando and Oscar who are very charismatic and young, both exceptionally talented and great with the fans, I think they have really enhanced the fan engagement to such a high degree.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Jeff Ruiz, the Sr Director of rehab and athletic performance for the Miami Heat (NBA).

Jeff Ruiz is the Senior Director of Rehab and Athletic Performance for the Miami Heat (NBA), where he leads player rehabilitation, sports science integration, and performance optimization across departments including strength and conditioning, athletic training, and nutrition. Before joining the Heat in 2023, Ruiz built a strong foundation at the University of Miami, where he completed his physical therapy education and rose to become Director of Rehab for the athletic department.

There, he also served as an assistant strength and conditioning coach, working across multiple sports such as football, track and field, diving, and women’s basketball, blending hands-on clinical rehab with performance training. He later spent nearly three years as Director of Rehab for the Washington Commanders (NFL), overseeing injury recovery and return-to-play processes at the professional level. Known for his collaborative, multidisciplinary approach, Ruiz now plays a pivotal role in aligning rehab, sports science, technology, and performance strategies to support player health, reduce injury risk, and enhance on-court performance for the Miami Heat.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During our interview with Jeff Ruiz, we discussed his role as Senior Director of Rehab and Athletic Performance for the Miami Heat, a position he started in 2023 after serving as Director of Rehab for the Washington Commanders in the NFL. His professional background is rooted in exercise physiology/kinesiology and psychology, leading him through physical therapy and strength coaching roles. Jeff emphasizes that his overall approach is centered on collaboration across strength, rehab, analytics, and dietetics to facilitate comprehensive care. He strives to work “as hard as possible but as smart as possible.

Key technologies he prefers are those that allow for direct, specific, and live monitoring, such as IMU/LPS/GPS tracking systems and force plates, which he calls essential for an NBA team. Looking forward, Jeff anticipates a massive shift toward AI and machine learning to personalize rehab and flag performance decrements, though he cautions that this technology must enhance the practitioner, not replace them. Ultimately, his ideal future technology would be a seamless, comprehensive AI model that acts as a supervisory “net” to improve workflow, communication, and management across all departments

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ryan located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Jeff:

1. Tell me about your background

“My background is kind mixed. I started with an undergrad degree in exercise physiology or kinesiology, and I double majored in psychology. I wasn’t sure if I was going to go down the route of sports physical therapy, strength and conditioning, or neuropsychology, but I knew that for the most part, I wanted to work in the sports realm.”

“I worked at the University of Miami for years — internships, then full-time as a physical therapist, assistant strength coach for track and field, diving, football, and women’s basketball. Eventually I became Director of Rehab there. Then in 2021, I got called by the Washington Commanders and spent about three years in the NFL before joining the Miami Heat.”

2. What is your role at the Miami Heat?

“As Senior Director of Rehab and Athletic Performance, I work across several departments. My primary role is making sure that anyone who’s injured gets coordinated care across all groups — rehab, athletic training, performance, and medical. But I also work on the strength and conditioning staff doing most of the sports science — load monitoring, tracking — and I work with high-risk players. It’s a dream job because I get to collaborate with amazing people across so many areas.”

3. What is your approach to training, S&C, rehab, and innovation?

“My main approach is collaboration. I lean on such a good village — strength and conditioning, rehab, athletic trainers, dietitians, analytics. We try to create comprehensive care by communicating constantly across departments. My methodology is working as hard as possible but also as smart as possible… making sure we’re looking at things biomechanically, physiologically, and through load metrics, and then knowing when to push and when to pull back. Communication across the board is my favorite piece of what we do.”

4. What are your preferred technologies and why?

“If you asked me what one piece of technology I’d take with me, I’d probably say a barbell. But honestly, when it comes to performance tracking, I love IMUs, GPS or LPS systems. Those systems that allow you to monitor in real time give you a different lens — you can see if KPIs are being hit, if performance is dropping, or if someone is at risk. Force plates are essential in the NBA — every team should have them — but live tracking becomes the glue between departments: strength coaches, trainers, nutrition, performance staff. Everyone can look at the same data and understand what just happened.”

5. How do you see the future of rehab evolving?

“We’re in a really interesting era. In 10 years, I think we’ll see a massive shift into technology and AI. The ability to personalize and build out machine learning models will be huge for rehab — it can help make sure critical details don’t get missed during long rehab processes. It could constantly remind practitioners of things that need adjustment based on large datasets. But I don’t think AI will provide the care — it will support it. People who don’t use AI will fall behind, and people who rely too heavily on it will also fail. It’s about balance.”

6. If you had unlimited resources to build technology, what would you create?

“I’d build a very comprehensive machine learning and AI system that helps tie everyone and everything together — rehab, performance, nutrition, medical, analytics. Almost like a multi-headed platform that manages communication, flags when something is missing, reminds staff of critical steps, detects small drops in performance, and integrates all departments seamlessly. Right now, everyone has their own AMS or custom system, but they don’t fully talk to each other. I’d build something that acts like a net over everything — making workflows easier, freeing up time so practitioners can focus on actual care.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Raphaël Ravet, the Chief Cmmercial Officer of Myocene, a leading Belgian based sports tech company.

Myocene is a Belgium based sports technology company revolutionizing how muscle fatigue is measured and managed. Recognizing the need for objective and precise monitoring in athletic performance, Myocene has developed an innovative device that combines a sensor, stimulator, and proprietary algorithm to assess the loss of force and speed linked to muscle fatigue. In just two minutes, the device generates a comprehensive muscle fatigue index, offering clear insights into an athlete’s readiness, recovery, and overall physical condition.

By providing objective, data-driven feedback, Myocene empowers teams and coaches to make smarter decisions about training and recovery. Myocene helps identify muscular imbalances, optimize performance, and reduce the risk of overtraining. Trusted by leading sports organizations Myocene is setting a new standard in performance monitoring and athletic recovery.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here is a look at Myo-Contractor, Myocene’s patented high precision system which controls the muscle contractions:

The Myocene device provides a fatigue index in just two minutes, instantly giving coaches a clear picture of each athlete’s recovery status.

By comparing post-training or post-game values to baseline readings, coaches can quantify fatigue and track recovery. Repeated drops in the fatigue index indicate accumulated fatigue and incomplete recovery, signaling an increased risk of overtraining or injury.

Here is a video explaining how OGC Nice (Ligue 1), a leading french pro soccer team, uses Myocene:

📝Show Notes: During this interview, we discussed Myocene, a Belgian sports tech company. Raphael explained that the company created a product that objectively measures muscle fatigue. This is done using a sensor, stimulator, and an algorithm that detects a loss of force and speed in a muscle, which is a key indicator of fatigue.

Raphaël stated that a key benefit for teams using Myocene is the objective data it provides, which helps them make informed decisions about athlete readiness and recovery. He noted that the technology is backed by scientific literature and, because the athlete is passive during the measurement, it is not influenced by external factors like motivation. Myocene operates on a yearly licensing model costing $20,000 per device, with additional costs for disposable electrodes. The company’s plans for the next 12 months include scaling the business by expanding its sales force in the U.S. and securing new deals.

Please note that Myocene will be exhibiting at our 2025 Upside US Summit on October 21 at the Florida Panthers (NHL) stadium.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Raphaël:

Q1: Tell me about your background.

“I have a background in international business, and I have been working for the last decade in the medical industry, both in pharma and in medical devices. I have always been focused on innovation and on small companies, launching new technologies in the market. I was mainly in charge of sales, managing distribution networks and sales forces across the world.”

Q2: Tell me about your company and product.

“Myocene is a Belgium-based company, and we developed a product to objectively measure muscle fatigue. It uses a combination of a sensor, a stimulator, and an algorithm. Muscle fatigue is described as a loss of force and speed, meaning the muscle in a fatigued state develops less force compared to a muscle at rest.”

“Using these three key elements, the Myocene system allows you to obtain a muscle fatigue index in just two minutes, which can translate the level of readiness and recovery of an athlete. For example, in a rested state, the athlete will always get the same force because there’s no muscle fatigue. In a fatigued state, there is a drop in force. The Myocene calculates a baseline value when the athlete is at rest, and when you use the system post-exertion or post-game, the index is lower when there is muscle fatigue. You know your athlete is fully recovered when the index gets back to the baseline.”

Q3: Tell me about the benefits for teams to use your product.

“The benefit is really to get something objective. It’s not based on gut feeling or player feedback; it’s fully objective, which means you can make informed decisions based on objective data. It’s also adaptable to the challenging environment of a team and allows you to perfectly assess the recovery of an athlete in terms of muscle fatigue.”

“You know when an athlete is ready to start a new microcycle. You can also use Myocene as a readiness marker to know how to adapt the last training session before a game. With this measurement, since it measures both legs, we can also assess imbalances in terms of capacity to resist fatigue, which is interesting for coaches to identify compensatory mechanisms.”

Q4: What are your competitive advantages?

“The main competitive advantage is that this technology is backed by science. We are translating lab technologies to real-life applications for the benefit of teams, which is a real game-changing approach in athlete management for injury prevention, readiness, and recovery. The metrics obtained, which are called the fatigue index, are fully objective because the athlete is totally passive during the measurement, so it is not influenced by emotion or motivation. Integrating this objective measurement with other markers, like performance tests and RPE scores, gives a comprehensive overview of the level of readiness and recovery of athletes.”

Q5: Tell me about your business model, pricing model.

“Myocene is offered through a licensing model at $20,000 per device per year. Most teams choose two to three devices to monitor athletes consistently, depending on their needs but they can certainly start with one”.

Q6: What are your plans for the next 12 months?

“We went into the process of developing our sales force. We’ve already hired three salespeople in the United States and we plan to hire another three. We also have a sales force in France and another one in Spain. The real approach now is to scale up the business. We are having very good traction in Europe, with teams either renewing their contracts after using it for a year, and now teams are also committing to several devices for a longer period, which validates the interest in the technology.”

“We just started in the United States more recently and are already having very good results with a top university using the device in football, and we are securing a deal with an NBA team and another one in MLS. This also confirms the high interest of the American market for this technology.”

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This week we had the honor to interview again Dr. Ron Dick, associate professor of sports marketing at Duquesne University in the school of business. Ron also worked for 20 years in sports, including 15 years in the NBA with the Sixers and the Nets, and then five years in the NCAA.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ron located at the top of this blog post.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During the interview with Dr. Ron Dick, we discussed major storylines across college and professional sports, including Penn State’s $50 million buyout of coach James Franklin and the growing volatility in college football and NIL deals. He highlighted preseason college basketball favorites like Purdue and Houston, and reflected on the passing of Sister Jean at 106. Dr. Dick also analyzed NBA stars Stephen Curry and Trae Young taking assistant GM roles at their alma maters, calling it a smart NIL and post-career move. He previewed the NBA season, predicting a competitive field led by the Celtics, Bucks, and Mavericks, forecasted the Dodgers to win the World Series, and noted strong performances in the NFL’s West divisions along with the resurgence of Daniel Jones and Baker Mayfield.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Ron:

🏈 1. College Football – Penn State Firing, $50 Million Buyout, Rankings & NIL Updates

“It’s unbelievable — just 18 days ago, James Franklin was in the top 10, top five, winning at home in overtime against Oregon, which was number two in the country. And here he is without a job. After two losses to Northwestern and UCLA, he’s gone. It’s shocking, but that’s the business.”

“This is not a one-off thing. Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M got a $77 million buyout — the highest in NCAA history. That’s how irrational it’s become in college football. Texas A&M also paid Kevin Sumlin $10.4 million, and Ed Orgeron $17.1 million. The system just keeps recycling money.”

“The rumor is that Adidas might have stepped up and paid somewhere between $45 to $50 million for Franklin’s buyout — deferred payments. It’s not a lump sum. In his contract, he has to pursue employment, and if he gets hired elsewhere, that offsets the owed money.”

“When do we hold the people responsible who make the decisions to hire the coaches? We never hold the athletic directors or board of trustees accountable. They make million-dollar mistakes, and no one calls them on it.”

“College football is more irrational than any other sport — even more than the NFL. It’s all about results. If you can’t win, you’re out. There’s no patience anymore, no perspective.”

“And another thing — why don’t colleges honor contracts like the pros do? In the NBA or NFL, if you’re under contract, another team can’t just hire you away. In college, presidents and boards don’t honor that. That would be called tampering in the pro leagues.”

“The Group of Five conferences — Sun Belt, Conference USA, the MAC, Mountain West — are wasting their time. The power lies in the SEC and Big Ten. Right now, 10 of the Top 25 are SEC schools and five are Big Ten. The Pac-12 has disappeared.”

“We don’t really use the term ‘collective’ anymore in NIL discussions, but the chaos continues. There’s no uniform contract or payment structure. Is it lump sum? Paid monthly? Seasonal? Nobody knows. Pitt gave $2 million to Eli Holstein, and now he’s been benched. There’s no consistency or oversight.”

“It used to be that scholarships were one-year deals renewed at the coach’s discretion. Now we’re in the Wild West. NIL has made the system even more unpredictable — and we’re still figuring out what that means for recruiting, loyalty, and team building.”

🏀 2. College Basketball – Season Start, Rankings, and the Passing of Sister Jean

“College basketball officially tips off on Monday, November 3rd, and the preseason rankings are loaded. Seven SEC schools, six Big Ten, and six Big 12 teams make up most of the Top 25. The Pac-12? None. The Big East? None at the very top, though UConn and St. John’s both cracked the Top 5.”

“Purdue starts at number one in the country, followed by Houston at number two, Florida at number three, UConn and St. John’s rounding out the Top 5, and Duke right behind them. Michigan and Kentucky are also in the mix. The SEC, Big Ten, and Big 12 clearly dominate this year.”

“I’d be remiss not to mention the death of Sister Jean. She passed away at 106 years old. Loyola Chicago’s beloved team chaplain was born in 1919 and wrote a book at 100. She represented everything good about college sports — faith, loyalty, and joy. Her loss is deeply felt in the basketball community.”

“There’s also growing discussion about expanding the NCAA Tournament from 68 teams to 76 — and maybe even 128 one day. It would just mean one more weekend of March Madness, and probably even more revenue. It’s coming; it’s just a matter of time.”

🏀 3. Stephen Curry & Trae Young Become Assistant GMs of Their Schools – NIL Implications

“This is a fascinating new development. Davidson announced that Stephen Curry — yes, Steph — has been named Assistant GM at his alma mater. At the same time, Trae Young donated $1 million to Oklahoma and received the same title. Both still have full-time NBA careers, so what does that really mean?”

“I called my contacts and asked, ‘What does an Assistant GM title even mean for an active NBA player?’ It seems like these guys are preparing for life after basketball — positioning themselves for management or ownership roles down the line.”

“But there’s also a practical NIL component. These players bring credibility, media attention, and massive fundraising power to their schools. Imagine Steph Curry hosting a fundraising dinner circuit — Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis Clubs, alumni galas — raising millions for the NIL pool. That’s huge for recruiting.”

“In today’s college landscape, having an alumnus like Steph Curry or Trae Young actively connected to your program isn’t just symbolic — it’s strategic. It gives the school’s NIL operation legitimacy and a face fans recognize and trust.”

🏀 4. NBA – Favorites to Win the 2025–26 Title

“The preseason is wrapping up, and this year’s NBA landscape looks more balanced than ever. You’ve got the Celtics, who look strong again, the Bucks always in the mix, the Mavericks, the Rockets with KD, and the Spurs with Wemby getting stronger. The competition is fierce.”

“The Warriors brought back Al Horford from Boston, and that could be a sneaky move — though they’re an older roster now. Still, experience wins in the playoffs.”

“The Celtics are my early favorite in the East if Jason Tatum stays healthy. But don’t count out the Bucks or Cavs. The Pacers were one of the surprise teams last year — we’ll see if that was a fluke or a real step forward.”

“In the West, the Spurs, Rockets, and Mavericks all have enough talent to make a run. The Lakers are always a wildcard. It’s too early to crown anyone — but expect the balance of power to keep shifting. The NBA parity is real this season.”

⚾ 5. MLB – Final Four, Free Agency, Hot Stove & Arbitration

“Right now, both visiting teams — Seattle and the Dodgers — have taken 2–0 leads on the road. The Dodgers look deep, pitching lined up perfectly. Seattle has never made a World Series — imagine what that would mean to that city. It’s one of the most loyal fan bases in sports.”

“Our playoff format is 2-3-2 now. So the next three games are in Los Angeles and Seattle. If either team can close it out at home, it’ll be a massive boost heading into the World Series.”

“I think the Dodgers will beat Seattle. They’re too balanced. And if that happens, it’d be a fitting send-off for Clayton Kershaw, who’s announced this is his 18th and final season. Winning back-to-back titles would be a storybook ending.”

“Free agency and arbitration start right after the World Series — the so-called Hot Stove season. Players with three years of service enter arbitration; full free agency comes after six. If I were a free agent, I’d sign a long-term deal now, before a possible salary cap hits MLB in 2027.”

“We’re fine for 2026, but 2027 could bring a reckoning for baseball economics. Locking in security now is smart business.”

🏈 6. NFL – Power in the West, Quarterbacks Improving

“Here we are six games in, and the iron is in the West. The Chargers are 4–2, the Broncos 4–2, and the Chiefs are 3–3 — but that’s one of the best 3–3 teams you’ll ever see. They always come alive later in the season.”

“Daniel Jones — left for dead by the New York Giants — is playing out of his mind with the Colts. They’re 5–1. It’s a great comeback story.”

“Baker Mayfield, also left for dead in Cleveland, is now 5–1 with the Buccaneers. Some people even think he’s the MVP of the league right now. The redemption stories this season are incredible.”

“The Lions might finally get there. I think we’ll see the Chargers and Lions in the Super Bowl — finally a shot for Detroit to break through.”

“The AFC East is all over the place. There’s a real lack of parity right now — some very good teams, and some horrifically bad ones. The Jets are definitely in the latter category.”

“The NFL Draft is coming to Pittsburgh in April 2026, and it’s projected to generate between $120 and $160 million in local economic impact — hotels, restaurants, everything. It’s a major event for the city.”

“And when we look at the quarterback class for the next draft, it might not be the blockbuster we expected. Outside of a couple standouts like Marino at Indiana, most have underperformed. It’s going to make for an interesting evaluation period.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Shaun Jayachandran, AI product advisor at GameRun.ai a leading AI powered athlete analysis tool.

GameRun.ai is a New York-based company that provides AI-driven solutions for youth sports management, including a platform for event information and performance analytics. The app works by having users upload a video for AI-based analysis to level up their skills. The AI analyzes game scores and provides personalized feedback to help athletes improve. Additionally, the platform allows users to build an athletic profile, track progress, and connect with coaches.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here are the pictures of GameRun.ai app:

Here is the picture illustrating the process to upload and analyze videos via the GameRun.ai app:

Picture: GameRun.ai

Here are the types of analyses performed by the GameRun.ai app:

Here is a video explaining how GameRun.ai works:

📝Show Notes: During his interview, Shaun discussed his journey from coaching and education to becoming the AI product lead for GameRun.ai. He described their product as an AI-powered athlete analysis tool that is agnostic to any camera system, providing detailed reports on player strengths, weaknesses, and potential. Shaun highlighted the benefits for teams, including unbiased analysis and the ability to evaluate an athlete’s body language and leadership. He explained that their AI determines player maturity by being trained on a tiered system from a young age.

He mentioned their large database of tens of thousands of films and their focus on including female athletes. As a key example, he shared how the app identified Cooper Flagg as a generational talent and accurately predicted an ankle injury based on his biomechanics. He also outlined their competitive advantages, business model, and future plans, which include expanding into sports like soccer, fencing, and lacrosse

Please note that GameRun.ai will be exhibiting at booth #28 at our 2025 Upside US Summit on October 21 at the Florida Panthers (NHL) stadium.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Shaun:

Q1. Tell me about your background.

“I’ve had a diversified background, starting in education and coaching basketball at very high levels. My high school coach was even coached by John Wooden from UCLA, so he brought that Wooden philosophy with him. About seven or eight years ago, I moved from education to the product side of tech in Boston. This journey was a combination of my passions and problem-solving, which led me to Game Run as the AI product lead for basketball”.

Q2. Tell me about your company and product.

“What we’ve designed is unique because it’s agnostic of any camera system. We’re not a video subscription service. You simply upload a video of an athlete, whether it’s three minutes or two hours long, and provide demographic information like age, height, gender, and weight. Within four minutes, our system produces a detailed player report on strengths, weaknesses, and skill sets, and even offers a projection of where the athlete could be in a year. The reports can be provided in multiple formats, including a spoken avatar or a five-to-six-page PDF”.

Q3. What are the benefits for teams to use your product and platform?

“The first benefit is an unbiased approach to evaluation. Our system doesn’t rely on subjective opinions; it analyzes an athlete’s skills and explosiveness based entirely on the film. Second, it provides the athlete with solid feedback, including timestamps, and even analyzes body language, coachability, and leadership. This allows the athlete to process feedback independently and see what the film shows without personal bias. For coaches, it serves as an extra tool to check their own biases and provides tangible evidence to share with parents regarding their child’s performance”.

Q4. How do you determine the level of maturity of each player?

“We built our visual learning model from the ground up, starting with very young athletes. Instead of beginning with professional leagues, we introduced the platform to the sport in tiers, starting with a 7-year-old and building up from there. The system continually learns, and we’ve fine-tuned it with extensive analysis from experienced coaches and former professional athletes. This programmatic approach allows the AI to understand and distinguish different levels of play, such as a recreational level versus an EYBL player in basketball”.

Q5. How big is your database?

“Our database consists of tens of thousands of films and analyses from different athletes. It was crucial for us to build a data set that included a strong representation of female athletes, as there hasn’t been as much research or data on them. Both my colleague Brendan, who leads the hockey side, and I have daughters, so we understand the importance of this representation”.

Q6. What is your competitive advantage?

“Our competitive advantage is our focus on sport-specific, athlete-specific analysis. While other companies may focus on a single moment or overall game strategy, we hone in on a single person and what they do throughout an entire game. This allows us to track performance and decision-making over time, even as an athlete becomes exhausted. We believe in a blend of art and science, so we don’t just provide numerical data. We analyze how an athlete’s body moves and whether it’s progressing correctly. This helps us identify potential future stars based on skill, not just on being bigger or faster at a young age”.

Q7. What kind of insights does your app generate on the athletes?

“We’re able to produce a detailed player report on strengths, weaknesses, different skill sets, assessments, how they compare against the level that you have set that they are playing at. (..) We also have PDF reports that comes out as a five six page PDF report that can provide that in analysis”.

“In our research and development, we are looking at ways to present this both as a single page cover page infographic, and then on the backend, another infographic on the biomechanics, that include like injury potential and where we see them.”

“We actually built in the idea of body language coachability leadership. So we’ve trained it to listen to and look at how it’s reacting, how the athlete’s reacting to their teammates, how they’re reacting when they go to the bench... what’s that feedback? Is it positive? Is it negative?”

“Our app actually shared low risk or higher risk of ACL. For example it can tell if there is a very high risk of injuring in the athlete’s ankle based on the way he jumps in traffic. (..) It was able to pick up on those small details of even how he was landing in the lane.”

Q8. How the GameRun.ai app was able to identify Cooper Flagg as a generational talent.

“And in our research development, we looked at a young man who was just drafted into the NBA and we ran a game film from two years ago on him and and it was on Cooper Flag. We ran everything. We obtained a video from an AAU tournament and we identified who Cooper Flagg was in the video jersey number. And we told the learning model nothing about this young man. We run it and it was both telling us that he was a generational talent by telling us “Here’s the style of play that he excelled in”. And we looked at his biomechanics (see the analysis here). It actually shared low risk of ACL (see analysis here) because of the way ACL teared, and the way he rubbed higher risk, a very high risk of injuring his ankle based on the way he jumps in traffic in the lane.”

“And if you remember, in March, that’s exactly how Cooper Flagg got injured (see video here) at Duke. So our app was able to pick up on those small details of even how he was landing in the lane and. Fortuitously, it actually happened this march.”

Q9. What is your business model?

“We’ve recently moved from a beta to open beta with paid subscriptions. We offer a few free videos to start. Our pricing varies based on the length of the film. For example, a package of three full-length game films costs about $300. We’re also developing enterprise packages for major programs and professional teams, like those in the MLB and NHL, who want to analyze their entire roster every game”.

Q10. What are your plans for the next 12 months?

“We recently closed our seed round. We are now bringing our product to market and introducing paid subscriptions from the open beta. Our goal is to raise our Series A round later this winter. We are creating services for a few major league and NHL teams, but we also want to ensure the platform is accessible to everyone, which is the core ethos of AI. In the coming months, we will be expanding our sports offerings to include soccer, baseball, fencing, and lacrosse. We are also considering American football, but we’re also looking at flag football as an option”.

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Rick Cost the director of high performance at Olympique Lyonnais (Ligue 1), a leading European soccer team.

Here is a picture of the Olympique Lyonnais squad:

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During the interview with Rick Cost, we discussed his professional journey and the key experiences that shaped his path into high performance and ultimately led him to his current role as Director of High Performance at Olympique Lyonnais. We explored how he defines his role, his leadership philosophy, and the core principles guiding how he structures and develops his department.

Rick also shared his perspective on the differences between the U.S. and European approaches to sports performance, athlete management, and innovation. We then delved into his strategies for balancing training loads, recovery, and injury prevention throughout a demanding season. Finally, we spoke about the future of high performance — including the role of AI, data, and biomarkers in shaping the next generation of athlete development and performance management in football.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Rick located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Rick:

1. Background & Path

“I’ve been in top sport for over 25 years now, and interestingly, I didn’t start in football. My journey began in Olympic sports like handball and field hockey. I studied physical therapy and human movement science, ran my own practice, managed a couple of gyms, and even advised national teams on high-performance structures. That broad exposure helped me understand performance from every possible angle.”

“When I finally moved into football in the early 2000s, it was a big achievement — football was still quite closed to outsiders then. But I brought something new to the table: I’d already been a physical therapist, a sport scientist, a strength coach, and even worked in analytics before analytics was a thing in sport. I touched every element of performance, and that gave me the perspective to later oversee entire departments.”

“The biggest advantage I had — and still have — is being both a medical professional and a sports scientist. That combination is rare today. Most of the people from my generation in high-performance leadership share that dual background. We’re like dinosaurs in a way — the last generation that deeply understands both the medical and performance sides.”

“People sometimes ask why I left my own successful practice to join a club full time. The truth is, it was partly financial and partly passion. Olympic sports are incredible, but they don’t pay. I had a child, I was working from 6:30 in the morning to 11 at night, and traveling constantly. Football offered stability and the ability to do what I loved full time, surrounded by the intensity and emotion of the game.”

“When I joined Feyenoord, I remember walking into the stadium and feeling the power of the supporters — it was life-changing. Once you experience that atmosphere, that passion, it sticks with you forever.”

2. Role & Philosophy

“At Olympique Lyonnais, I oversee the entire support structure — sports science, medical, strength and conditioning, research, analytics, nutrition, and psychology. My role is not to dictate, but to structure, align, and develop.”

“I always start by giving people purpose. Every staff member needs clear roles, clear responsibilities, and a developmental pathway. Without that, you don’t have a performance culture — you just have individuals working next to each other.”

“When I arrived, I did a maturity assessment of the environment. We were at stage two — good practices, but not yet repeatable. My mission is to move us through the stages of maturity until we reach level five, where everything becomes autonomous — where the system continuously improves itself in real time.”

“The key is building systems that are repeatable but flexible. We’re developing standard operating procedures, but I also believe in giving practitioners autonomy. In France, especially, you have to respect the culture — if you try to impose a strict model without room for individual color, you’ll hit a wall. In the U.S., you can be more standardized; in Europe, you need to lead through collaboration.”

“Leadership, for me, is about asking the right questions. I’ll never tell someone, ‘Do it this way.’ Instead, I’ll say, ‘Our goal is to build the best recovery system in France — how are you going to achieve it?’ Then I support them, challenge them, and make sure they have the resources to deliver.”

“I’m also responsible for budget strategy, innovation funding, and hiring. One of my biggest priorities is internal promotion — creating pathways so that people from the academy or support teams can move up when they’re ready. Consistency in culture starts with developing your own people.”

“Ultimately, my job is to take care of people — so they can take care of the players and each other. If we get that right, performance follows.”

3. US vs. Europe

“The biggest difference between the U.S. and Europe is how innovation is adopted. In Europe, implementation is evidence-driven. Clubs won’t integrate a technology unless there’s solid research and proven impact. In the U.S., the mentality is much more: ‘Let’s try it, see what happens, and refine later.’”

“When we went to the World Cup, we had infrared light beds, dry floating beds, cryo chambers — all sorts of recovery tools. We didn’t even know which ones worked best yet, but in the U.S., that didn’t matter. Players loved them. They believed that if something gave them even a one percent edge, it was worth it.”

“In Europe, you’d never get away with that approach. If it’s not backed by data or peer-reviewed research, it won’t be implemented. You need to show scientific proof — not just belief.”

“That difference also reflects cultural mindsets. In America, there’s a comfort with trial and error — if something fails, you move on and learn. In Europe, people are more conservative, more risk-averse. Both systems have strengths: the U.S. is more innovative, Europe is more consistent and structured.”

“The ideal world is somewhere in between — Europe becoming a little more open to experimentation, and the U.S. becoming a bit more critical in asking, ‘Does this actually solve a problem?’ If we can find that middle ground, that’s where high performance truly evolves.”

4. Training & Rehabilitation

“Managing training loads, recovery, and injury prevention is one of the hardest parts of the job — especially now with shorter preseasons and more congested schedules.”

“The core principle is adaptation — if you can adapt to specific intensities and volumes, you’ll be prepared for the demands of the season. But because preseasons are shorter now — sometimes only five weeks instead of eight — full adaptation is nearly impossible. That’s why recovery and freshness have become equally important.”

“We constantly balance adaptation and recovery. You can’t expect a player to perform 90 minutes every three days. Sometimes it’s 90-60-90-30 — that’s how you keep them in the sweet spot over a long season.”

“Recovery isn’t just physical — it’s mental, emotional, and physiological. You can do all the cryotherapy you want, but if a player’s emotionally drained, performance will drop. We have to manage all aspects of recovery to sustain elite performance.”

“There’s no perfect model. Things will go wrong, but the goal is to make informed decisions, to understand each player individually, and to continually improve. It’s critical thinking and constant adaptation.”

“We also explore new modalities — like vagus nerve stimulation, which targets the parasympathetic nervous system to improve stress recovery. It’s early, but technologies like these could become part of future recovery strategies.”

1. Talent Pool in France and the Quality of the Medical System and Sports Science

“I actually am very surprised about the level of the players that come from the academies (..) I think it is due to the individual quality of the medical system. In the sports science system, it is a very, very high level, and I think that is the case with all the clubs”.

“French people really love the game (..) They go to a club because they love the game (..) We don’t start with specializing too young, but I think we leave them in the clubs just long enough and then pick them up at an older age which is a great approach”.

6. Innovation & Future

“The biggest innovation of the past decade was GPS — it changed the way we quantified movement, workload, and intensity. The next wave will be about biomarkers — real-time, non-invasive data that tells us what’s happening inside the body.”

“Imagine a world where you don’t need to fill out questionnaires or draw blood. You just walk through a scanner at the training ground, and it instantly reads your fatigue, hydration, stress, and readiness. That’s the future — and it’s closer than we think.”

“AI will be the key to that future. It will help us analyze huge volumes of data and individualize training and recovery. Instead of generic load management, we’ll have player-specific algorithms that predict what each athlete needs to perform and stay healthy.”

“We’ve been measuring heart rate since the 1970s — but that’s just scratching the surface. The next frontier is understanding the biochemical and neural states of the player in real time. That’s when we’ll truly move from reactive to proactive performance management.”

“I think within a decade, we’ll have systems that use AI and biomarkers together to predict fatigue, optimize recovery, and maybe even prevent injuries before they happen. That’s the direction we’re heading.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Dave Lewanda, the Director of Baseball Applications at the Miami Marlins, an MLB team.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here is a picture of Dave on the field:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on Dave’s professional journey and what led him to become Director of Baseball Applications at the Miami Marlins, including the key experiences that shaped his path into sports technology. We explored how he approaches innovation in a tradition-rich sport like baseball and the ways his team bridges legacy systems with new, data-driven applications.

The conversation also delved into how he balances the needs of diverse stakeholders—from coaches and players to analysts and executives—when developing software tools for the organization. We discussed the broader sports technology landscape, where he sees the greatest opportunities for innovation, and how AI is already influencing workflows and decision-making. Finally, we looked ahead to his vision for the future of sports tech, including the growing roles of AI, automation, computer vision, and emerging technologies in shaping the next generation of baseball performance and operations.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Dave located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Dave:

🧩 Q1. Background & Path

“I’ve been in technology, specifically software engineering, for over 20 years now. I grew up in central Connecticut, just outside of Hartford, and I’ve always had a deep interest in both technology and sports. I was never much of an athlete—I flamed out of Little League at 11 years old and only played golf casually—but I was always fascinated by how technology could intersect with sport.”

“I studied computer engineering at Lehigh University, where I earned both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees. From there, I started my career working for a Department of Defense contractor, then moved into television broadcast technology, and later into consumer electronics at companies like Samsung.”

“My transition into sports came when I joined Major League Baseball’s New York office, working on the consumer-facing MLB app. That was really a defining moment for me—getting to merge my engineering background with my lifelong love of baseball. As Director of Software Engineering for MLB, I led the team responsible for the MLB app on Apple platforms, working closely with Apple to bring fans scores, videos, and live updates.”

“After five and a half years there, I joined Diamond Kinetics, a sports tech startup out of Pittsburgh that focused on baseball and softball training technology. That experience gave me a deeper appreciation for how data, analytics, and hardware can come together to help athletes at every level.”

“And now, joining the Miami Marlins has been incredibly exciting. We’ve just wrapped up a really successful season—17 more wins than last year—and we’re pushing hard to integrate analytics and technology to help the team put the best possible product on the field. I feel like I’ve come full circle—bringing my tech experience directly to where it can make a difference in competition.”

⚙️ Q2. Innovation in Baseball

“I’ve always been a fan of Moneyball—and I like to say I read the book before it was a movie. Baseball has always attracted the ‘stat nerds’ because it’s so state-driven. There’s no clock, and so many small, variable events determine the outcome. It’s the perfect sport for data because there are so many permutations and little moments that matter.”

“In other sports, you can give the ball to Patrick Mahomes or LeBron James and know they can directly influence the game. Baseball isn’t like that. You can’t control every play, and that unpredictability is what makes analytics and modeling so critical. There’s so much information that can give you an edge.”

“Our role in the Baseball Applications team is to leverage all of that data—from player tracking to scouting reports—and figure out how to present it in a meaningful way for each user. That could be the front office trying to decide who to draft or trade for, or the coaching staff trying to help a player improve today.”

“We see our mission as enabling the organization to ‘get better players and get players better,’ as our President of Baseball Operations puts it. And that means replacing applications that bridge the legacy systems our team has relied on for years with new, more dynamic technologies that support real-time analysis and decision-making.”

🧰 Q3. App Development & Workflow

“Before this role, I spent most of my career building products for mass consumption—where your goal is to grow revenue, maximize daily active users, and analyze usage data at scale. At MLB, for instance, the app had millions of active users during the season.”

“With the Marlins, I’m now building tools for maybe a few dozen people—coaches, analysts, scouts, and front office staff. That’s an entirely different kind of challenge. The impact is smaller in numbers, but much greater in depth. I can meet directly with users, understand exactly what they need, and design tools that are essential to their jobs.”

“For me, earning their trust is everything. They need to believe that the tools we create will help them, not slow them down. I often say I want our apps to be like power steering or anti-lock brakes—technology that enhances performance so seamlessly that people don’t have to think about it. When they need to make a quick decision, they can rely on the tool without hesitation.”

“The other big advantage we have is the opportunity to build something fresh. Unlike other teams who’ve been layering on technology for years and have to deal with technical debt, we get to start with a clean slate. We have an older system that we’re keeping on life support while we build its replacement, and that’s a dream scenario for any software engineer—creating a modern, purpose-built system that truly fits our users.”

“And because many people on our team have worked in other organizations—both inside and outside of baseball—we can learn from what’s worked elsewhere and avoid repeating past mistakes. That’s been a huge benefit in shaping our roadmap.”

🚀 Q4. Sports Tech Landscape

“The biggest opportunity in sports tech right now? Efficiency and intelligence. Every team, at this point, must be thinking about AI. For us, as a small engineering team of four going to maybe six, we’ll never be a 30-person department—so we have to think like a startup. That means using AI tools like GitHub Copilot and OpenAI’s Codex to speed up our development and make better use of our time.”

“But beyond coding, large language models open a whole new world for summarizing data. Think about scouting reports: a player might have hundreds of reports from different scouts, all slightly different. LLMs can synthesize those into key themes, trends, and summaries instantly. That’s incredibly powerful for analysts and executives who need to make fast, informed decisions.”

“We’re still early in that process—I like to say we’re crawling, not walking yet—but ignoring AI would be a huge mistake. It’s clearly here to stay. While there’s a lot of hype around it, there’s also real substance. AI isn’t going away. It’s going to become part of the foundation of how every sports organization operates.”

🌐 Q5. Vision & Future

“When I was at MLB, I saw firsthand how quickly the technology advanced. Back in 2017, the motion tracking systems in ballparks had a resolution roughly the size of a watermelon. By the time I left in 2022, that resolution had improved to the size of an M&M. That’s multiple orders of magnitude more precise—and that level of precision completely changes what’s possible.”

“Computer vision, motion capture, and 3D modeling are transforming the sport. We can now analyze a player’s swing mechanics or pitching delivery frame by frame, compare performance over time, and even detect subtle changes—like a player’s hand position—when things are going well versus when they’re not.”

“Injury prevention is another huge area. If you can track fatigue, stress, or workload in real time, you can potentially prevent injuries before they happen. Every team would love to avoid losing a pitcher for 12 to 24 months to Tommy John surgery. There’s a massive opportunity for AI, wearables, and predictive modeling to work together there.”

“And automation is coming, too. We’re already seeing AI-controlled cameras in some minor league parks that can follow plays automatically, replacing some of the traditional camera operations. There are even companies developing AI-generated audio commentary and summaries. We’re not looking to replace people, but the efficiency gains are real and significant.”

“Ultimately, I see a future where all these technologies—AI, computer vision, mixed reality, even quantum computing—work together to help us make faster, smarter, and more data-driven decisions across every part of the organization. The teams that embrace that now will be the ones who thrive in the coming years.”

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This week we had the honor to interview a group of ATP sports performance experts in pro tennis.

• Al Murphy, senior S&C coach at Tennis Australia. Al works with tennis players such as Rinky Hijikata, Emerson Jones and Aleks Vukic. He is also the head of sports science at Tennis Australia.

• Zack Evenden, an experienced performance coach. Zack has worked with top tennis players like Frances Tiafoe, and Michael Mmoh.

• Dirk Spits, the National Physical Performance Manager at Tennis Australia. Dirk works with pro tennis players such as James Duckworth, and Ajla Tomljanovic.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the following topics:

• Q1. Women’s Tennis & Gender-Specific ResearchAre we seeing more tailored training, recovery, and injury-prevention approaches for women athletes, and where is the research still lacking?

• Q2. Longevity & Aging AthletesWith players competing effectively into their late 30s and even 40s, what adjustments in training load, recovery, and nutrition are proving most impactful for extending careers?

• Q3. Travel, Jet Lag & Scheduling

Given the relentless global calendar, how are teams using sleep science, circadian rhythm tools, or wearable data to minimize the impact of jet lag and travel fatigue on performance?

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with them:

Q1. Women’s Tennis & Gender-Specific Research

Al Murphy:

“From the research perspective, absolutely there are still big gaps in the literature—not just in tennis, but in sport and exercise science in general. We always try, where possible, to include both genders in studies or at least factor gender differences into the analysis, because we work across the full athlete pathway. But the differences between men’s and women’s tennis are very real, both technically and physically. The women’s game is generally faster through the court with lower trajectories, which changes movement patterns and means female athletes often have less time to react. That has a knock-on effect on the strength and power training they need. Add to that a generally lower relative strength profile compared to men, and you get athletes who manage forces differently in both movement and technique. So we’re constantly adjusting training, recovery, and injury-prevention work to match those realities, but the research base is still catching up.”

Dirk Spits:

“I think education amongst coaches is one of the most important factors here. How we train female athletes isn’t just about sets and reps—it’s about communication style, motivation, body image, and confidence. Menstrual cycle considerations and RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport) are crucial topics, but there are also cultural and behavioral barriers, like misconceptions around strength training. Some female players still worry about looking too muscular if they lift weights, so part of our job is breaking down those myths. At the same time, you can’t just assume every female athlete has the same limitations—you have to treat each athlete as an individual, with a proper needs analysis that considers age, training history, lifestyle, and psychology. I’ve worked with female athletes who are more resilient and recover faster than many male players, so the key is individualization, not blanket assumptions.”

Zack Evenden:

“From my experience working with female players, everyone really is different—some can be pushed harder, others can’t, and a lot of the time you run into beliefs that athletes hold onto which block their progress. For example, I’ve had female players tell me flat out, ‘That’s not for me,’ even when I could see it would help their game. They want programs tailored specifically to them, but on tour not everyone can afford a full-time trainer or custom support. That creates a gap, because players know they need something individual but don’t always have the resources. So you get this tension between what they want, what they believe, and what’s actually possible within their circumstances.”

Q2. Longevity & Aging Athletes

Dirk Spits:

“For me, the biggest shift with aging athletes is training smarter, not harder. That doesn’t mean they don’t train hard—it means the focus is on quality over quantity. With older players, my priority is intensity rather than volume, and I never do consecutive days with multiple hard sessions. The goal is to keep them available to train and compete, rather than chasing performance metrics that might break them down. We don’t call it ‘injury prevention’ anymore, because you can’t prevent injuries. We call it body management—daily habits that maintain mobility, recovery, and readiness. If you’ve had a long-haul flight, then your body management focus that day is mobility. If you’ve had a tough match, then it’s about recovery. That mindset is key for keeping older athletes competing into their late 30s and 40s.”

Al Murphy:

“I’ve become a huge believer in joint health and functional range conditioning, especially with older players. Tennis changes an athlete’s joints over time—bone structures adapt, ranges of motion narrow, and strength through certain positions declines. If we don’t address those changes, they eventually limit careers. So I focus on helping athletes know exactly what their joints can and can’t handle, and how to maintain strength through ranges of motion that matter for tennis. The internal strength models and isometric profiling tools we now use let us be very specific about what kind of stimulus we’re giving the body. With older players, volume is always the enemy, so you have to be precise about what adaptation you’re targeting. Honestly, I wish I’d known this earlier in my career, because if we started addressing these issues at junior level, many athletes could extend their careers by years.”

Zack Evenden:

“From my experience, one of the biggest adjustments older players make is with diet and recovery routines. I’ve seen athletes completely change their diets—going gluten-free, plant-based, or anti-inflammatory—because they believe it helps them recover and stay healthier. A lot of that is mental, but mental buy-in is half the battle anyway. Federer is the perfect example—when we played him in Basel, we barely saw him hit balls in practice. He lived on the physio table, making sure his body felt right. For him, training wasn’t about more reps, it was about arriving in perfect condition when it was time to perform. Other players like Nadal adjust by mixing in elliptical or cross-trainer sessions instead of pounding their knees with runs. And soft tissue work has become huge. Older players survive because they’re willing to change how they train, recover, and even eat, while also having the discipline to stick to those changes.”

Q3. Travel, Jet Lag & Scheduling

Zack Evenden:

“Every player handles the global travel grind differently. Some players prioritize sleep, others prioritize getting on court right away, and some build detailed travel routines with mobility sessions and workouts after they land. But the truth is, you have to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable. There’s no luxury of saying, ‘I had a bad night’s sleep, so I won’t play well tomorrow.’ Matches don’t wait for you. I’ve worked with players who believe they need 10–11 hours of sleep or else their day is ruined—but that’s unrealistic on tour. The players who last are the ones who figure out how to perform when conditions aren’t perfect. You don’t get a pass for jet lag. You don’t get a pass for a noisy hotel. You have to turn up and compete.”

Al Murphy:

“Jet lag and recovery are huge challenges in tennis, especially for Australians traveling to Europe or the U.S., where the time zones are basically opposite. For older players, the flights take more out of them, even though they know how to handle travel better than young players. What we try to do is prepare before the flight—using jet lag apps, adjusting sleep schedules ahead of time, planning when to sleep and when to stay awake on the plane—so that the circadian rhythm is already shifting before they land. Once they arrive, mobility and movement prep is vital so their body is ready before they go straight into heavy on-court work. Wearables can help, but it’s very individual—some players love the data, others get anxious if they see they didn’t get enough sleep. So again, it’s about finding what works for that player and using it consistently.”

Dirk Spits:

“Sleep hygiene is one of the most important tools we have. That means limiting screen time before bed, using blackout curtains, trying nutrition-based aids like tart cherry juice to boost natural melatonin, and building routines that help players wind down after late matches when adrenaline is still high. But at the end of the day, as I tell athletes, you don’t really have time to get jet lagged. The schedule doesn’t wait. So we build resilience by exposing players to a bit of adversity in training—getting used to competing when they don’t feel 100%. The key is combining good habits—hydration, mobility, nutrition—with mental toughness. Winning helps too—when you’re winning, fatigue and jet lag seem to matter less, but when you’re losing, those imperfections come to the surface very quickly.”

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This week we had the honor to interview a group of NCAA sports performance experts.

• Dr. John DeWitt, Director of applied sports science in the athletic department and a faculty member, Rice University (NCAA team).

• Paul Silvestri, Sr director of sports health and performance, University of Florida football (NCAA team).

• Drew Lukes, Senior PT at Duke University and the head of sports science, Duke university’s women soccer team (NCAA team).

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

Q1. Evaluating Technology Claims

• With so many vendors making bold claims about performance gains, recovery benefits, or injury reduction, how do NCAA programs separate real value from marketing hype?

Q2. NIL & Athlete Opportunities

• How is the NIL era reshaping the way student-athletes and universities think about recruiting, brand partnerships, and long-term athlete development?

Q3. Team Culture & Leadership

• In today’s environment of constant change and external pressures, what strategies are most effective in building and sustaining a strong, values-driven team culture across NCAA programs?

Q4. Adversity & Resilience

• What lessons have you seen athletes and teams learn from adversity—whether it’s injuries, setbacks, or off-field challenges—that can translate into both performance and life skills?

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

You can leave a comment by clicking on the button below:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with them:

Q1. Evaluating Technology Claims

John DeWitt:“One of the really cool things, but also one of the real problems today, is that technology vendors are being born weekly. A new tool is always coming out. That can be good, because data flows that used to take a long time are now accessible faster and more conveniently. But the real question is: what’s your current workflow, and what do you need that would actually help coaches and medical staff make better decisions? That’s where we separate value from hype. It doesn’t matter how cool something looks or how precise it claims to be—if it doesn’t fit into our workflow or slows us down, it’s not real value.”

“Improving workflow means either adding data we don’t already have, like nutrition, or making current processes faster. For example, motion capture in the lab is precise but takes hours and removes athletes from their natural environment. If a new system can give us kinematic data quickly, without slowing us down, that’s worth considering. If not, it’s hype.”

Paul Silvestri:“On the recovery and injury side, I almost demand proof. If you’re making bold claims about speeding recovery or reducing injuries, I want to see the research. A lot of companies sprout up, make flashy claims, but lack any scientific backing. Some things we use are anecdotal or even placebo-driven, but when you’re talking about athlete health, you need evidence. Otherwise, you risk redundancy and data overload—‘paralysis by analysis.’ That’s where programs can lose sight of what’s important.”

Drew Lukes:“For me, it starts with the end in mind. Does this technology solve a real problem we’re facing? If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t matter how impressive it looks. I also lean heavily on my network—people I trust who will tell me the truth, not the sales pitch. If they’ve tried it and can vouch for it, that’s worth more than marketing slides. And with schools like Florida or Duke, vendors are often eager to provide free trials just to have their product associated with our brand. That’s a great way to test if the tool actually delivers or if the claims fall flat.”

Q2. NIL & Athlete Opportunities

Paul Silvestri:“The NIL era has completely reshaped the landscape. The first question recruits ask now is, ‘How much are you going to pay me?’ Years ago, they cared about facilities, staff, and development. Now, money is front and center. That changes recruiting, roster management, and long-term development. On the medical side, we carry a huge responsibility: if we’re investing NIL dollars, we can’t afford to overlook major red flags. With transfer athletes, we can review medical histories more easily, but with high school athletes it’s tougher. Still, we do our best to flag potential issues—like cartilage problems that could derail a career in short order.”

“It’s not just about injuries either. Character matters more than ever. If an athlete is solely motivated by money, it rarely works long-term. They’re more likely to transfer at the first sign of a better deal, or to sit out for minor injuries because they don’t want to risk their ‘investment.’ Coaches now have to evaluate: is this athlete bought into our program’s culture, or are they just chasing a paycheck? That’s the reality of NIL. And as programs add roles like general managers, this whole process is going to keep evolving.”

Q3. Team Culture & Leadership

Drew Lukes:“Culture is a top-down process. It starts with the coaches casting a clear vision, but it also depends on the support staff being consistent. Athletes can’t hear one message from the coaching staff and another from medical or performance. Consistency is critical. For us, culture is also about boundaries—letting student-athletes know what’s expected and holding them accountable. That can be challenging in an athlete-driven NCAA environment, but without consistency, culture falls apart.”

John DeWitt:“I don’t define culture by winning or losing. If you say your culture is winning, then one loss means your culture is broken. True culture is about excellence. Excellence is controllable—how we prepare, how we treat people, how we work daily. Winning is the outcome of excellence, not the definition of it. If you focus culture on excellence, it sustains you through both victories and losses.”

Paul Silvestri:“The foundation of culture is having the right people in the room. If athletes only care about money, they won’t buy into the culture. They’ll transfer at the first chance. But when you recruit people who align with your values, culture is what keeps programs strong, even with all the external pressures of NIL and constant change.”

Q4. Adversity & Resilience

Paul Silvestri:“I tell athletes all the time: in a split second, you can go from feeling 100 percent to having your season lost. Don’t ever forget that feeling. When you’re out with an ACL or another long-term injury, use that pain, that hunger, to fuel your return. Adversity makes you stronger if you embrace it. But if you go into a shell, you lose the lesson. We hammer that into our athletes—don’t take being on the field for granted, because in a heartbeat it can be gone.”

“Even for us as staff, adversity is real. When the team isn’t winning, it’s easy to get discouraged. But I remind my staff: our job doesn’t change when the scoreboard isn’t in our favor. We still have to show up, provide the best care, and be the positive voice in the building. It’s harder during losing streaks, but that’s when it matters most.”

John DeWitt:“Resilience isn’t fixed—it’s learned. Athletes don’t come pre-packaged with grit; they develop it through setbacks. We have to help them see that failure is where growth happens. I’ve worked with NASA astronauts who trained thousands of hours, making countless mistakes, just for a three-hour spacewalk. That’s the mindset athletes need: failure in training is preparation, not a reflection of your ability. Resilience comes from practice, from falling short and learning, not from avoiding failure.”

“For me, culture is consistency. I don’t change my approach whether we’re winning or losing. Culture is about how we operate every day, not about the scoreboard. If you’re Real Madrid and you define culture as ‘winning,’ every single loss feels catastrophic. But if your culture is excellence, then you don’t lose it when results go against you—you sustain it, and that helps you bounce back.”

Drew Lukes:“Rehab is one of the hardest adversities a young athlete will face. These are 18- to 20-year-old kids, and for many, it’s the toughest thing they’ve ever gone through. My job is to give them perspective. I’ll tell them: take a snapshot on day three after surgery when you can’t even lift your leg. Six months later, when you’re frustrated you can’t score in practice, look back at that moment. Rehab is brutal, but it’s also a trial by fire. The athletes who embrace it come back stronger, hungrier, and often become the most inspiring leaders on the field.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Ted Munson, the sports nutritionist of Brentford fc, a Premier League club.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here is a picture of Ted on the field:

📝Show Notes: During the interview we discussed Ted’s journey into performance nutrition, where he focuses on player personalization, health, and rehab. He explained his approach of adapting guidelines to each athlete, periodizing nutrition to match training loads, and using behavior change to build buy-in. Ted highlighted tech like Hexis for GPS-linked fueling, DEXA scans, and MX3 hydration testing, and sees the future of nutrition moving toward deeper personalization, gut testing, and better products. If given unlimited resources, he would create an AI-driven athlete data platform and even a “robot chef” that teaches players to cook meals tailored to their needs.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ted located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Ted:

1. Tell me about your background

“I’ve been practicing in performance nutrition for just over 10 years now. I started out working in elite sport up north after completing my BSc and MSc in sport and exercise science, followed by a postgraduate diploma in sport and exercise nutrition to get on the British Dietetics Association’s Sport and Exercise Nutrition Register. That qualification allowed me to work in elite sport settings here in the UK. Early in my career, I was with Hull City Football Club as a sort of hybrid sports scientist and nutritionist, because back then very few Premier League clubs had dedicated nutritionists. Later, I joined Science in Sport (SIS), working across a broad spectrum of sports like cycling, rugby, and football, which really opened my eyes to different performance environments beyond team sports. About six or seven years ago, I launched my own consultancy, and that led to roles in the English Championship, Formula One, Premiership Rugby with Harlequins, and Luton Town Football Club. More recently, I’ve been with Brentford in the Premier League, now going into my fourth season, and also supported the Danish national team at Euro 2024 and in the Nations League. It’s been a pretty broad journey, but I’m really enjoying working in the Premier League at a club that’s so focused on development.”

2. What do you do as a sports nutritionist?

“When people outside of sport think of a nutritionist, they assume it’s just meal planning—but in reality, it’s far more comprehensive. My role as sports nutritionist is very broad and focuses heavily on player personalization. That means tailoring strategies both inside and outside the club, based on individual player goals. These goals might be physical, like gaining muscle mass or dropping body fat, or performance-based, like increasing high-speed running capacity or improving jump height to win more headers. Everything we do as performance nutritionists is linked back to performance on the pitch. But beyond that, a huge part of my job is keeping players healthy, because illness prevention is just as important as performance. We monitor body composition with tools like DEXA, hydration status, and blood work multiple times a year, looking at markers like CRP, antioxidants, and inflammation. Athletes, especially in the Premier League with so much travel, are prone to upper respiratory tract infections, and avoiding time lost to illness is crucial. Another area is rehab—we support injured players so that they come back faster, stronger, and better recovered. Shaving two or three weeks off a long-term injury is incredibly valuable at this level. On top of that, I work on acute fueling strategies around training and match days, supplementation, menu planning for hotels and travel, and coordination with consultants like psychologists and sleep specialists. It’s about so much more than menus—it’s about being part of a truly integrated multidisciplinary team.”

3. What is your approach towards nutritional strategies in elite sports?

“Early in my career, I made the mistake of sticking too rigidly to guidelines. Guidelines are useful as a starting point, but they’re not always practical in the real world. For example, guidelines might recommend more than 10 grams of carbohydrate per kilo of body mass the day before a match. For a 140-kilo rugby prop, that’s an enormous amount of food and often not realistic. What I’ve learned is that the key is always putting the player first—understanding who they are, what they’ve done before, and then slowly developing strategies that suit them. I also believe nutrition should be periodized just like training loads. We increase carbs on high training load days, especially with double sessions or gym work, and reduce them on lighter days. This improves energy levels and helps with body composition. One of the biggest evolutions in my approach over the last five years has been focusing on behavior change. You can have all the knowledge in the world and quote guidelines perfectly, but if you can’t get athletes to follow them, it’s meaningless. It’s about building trust, using behavior change models like COM-B, and understanding intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Nutrition isn’t just about telling players what to eat—it’s about meeting them where they are, building relationships, and creating buy-in so that changes actually stick.”

4. What are your preferred tech and why?

“I’ve always been cautious about technology in nutrition, because while tech can give us great information, it should never take away the conversation with the athlete. For me, technology should help us share information quickly, make decisions quickly, and educate—but it must fit into the workflow and support, not disrupt, those important relationships. A great example is Hexis, which I’m a huge fan of. It links fueling recommendations directly to a player’s GPS data, so it’s personalized in real-time based on what they’ve actually done, not on estimates or equations. That’s the level of personalization we need. Another area where tech has been really valuable is body composition—we’ve moved from skinfolds to DEXA scanning, which gives us much more detailed insights. I prefer focusing on muscle mass rather than body fat, and players respond really positively to that framing. Hydration testing is another example. We’ve been using MX3 saliva testing, and while I was skeptical at first, after comparing it against urine tests in-house, it’s proved accurate and much easier for players to buy into—because let’s be honest, no athlete enjoys peeing in a cup. These tools are fantastic for education and for turning data into meaningful actions, as long as they don’t replace the conversations we need to have with players.”

5. How do you see the future of nutrition in elite sports evolving in the coming years?

“I think the future is going to be about going even deeper into personalization. Personalization has been a buzzword for a few years, but now we’re finally getting the tools and resources to make it a reality—apps, more nutritional staff in clubs, and better integration with training data. Blood testing has already been a huge step, but I think gut testing will be the next frontier. We’re learning more about the gut-brain axis and how it influences performance, recovery, and even sleep. The challenge will be making data collection less invasive and more actionable. Another area is product innovation—highly concentrated carbohydrate shots, isotonic drinks, and recovery products that taste better are game changers because better taste means better adherence. On the research side, I think we’ll see more individualized guidelines for specific sports. FIFA’s nutritional guidelines are a good start, but we need follow-ups that are more sport-specific. It’s also encouraging to see more PhD students embedded in elite clubs, doing research directly on players. Over the next decade, I think we’ll see a convergence of better tech, better products, and better research, all making nutrition more personalized and practical for athletes.”

6. If you could build any tech and had unlimited resources, what would you build and why?

“If I could build anything, I’d probably build two things—one realistic and one a bit more fun. The realistic one would be an all-in-one data resource for a club. Right now, nutrition, S&C, GPS, and psychology data often sit in silos. I’d love a system where all of that is integrated, creating an AI-driven model of each athlete. That way, you could draw on all the data holistically and even ‘test’ interventions virtually on a digital twin of the athlete before applying them in real life. That’s a really powerful way AI could help us make better decisions. The more fun idea would be a robot chef—an AI-powered assistant that cooks meals tailored to what an athlete needs on any given day based on their workload. But here’s the twist: for it to work, the robot would have to teach the athlete the recipe, so they actually learn how to make it themselves. I don’t want to just serve food to athletes—I want to support them and help them build understanding. The risk with technology is that it can make people passive, so it has to be designed in a way that empowers learning and independence.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Clayton Green an experience human performance coach that worked in F1. He was at McLaren for 12 years with multiple times F1 champion Lewis Hamilton.

Clayton is a health, wellness, and performance specialist who spent over a decade with McLaren’s Formula One team, serving as their Human Performance Manager from about 2008 to 2020. During that time he was responsible for integrating mind, body, technology, and data to develop performance systems for both drivers and support staff—he also served as Lewis Hamilton’s performance coach during the 2010 season. After his tenure at McLaren he founded Ground + Air, where he continues to apply his expertise to optimize performance through lifestyle coaching, physical conditioning, and holistic methods drawing on both Eastern and Western science.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During this interview, we discussed Clayton Green’s journey into human performance and how it led him to McLaren and working with Lewis Hamilton, what it was like operating inside one of the most iconic F1 teams and supporting a world champion, and the lessons he learned from that experience. We explored his approach to training and recovery for drivers facing unique physical and mental demands, the role of technology in monitoring and optimizing performance, and how the human side of F1 is evolving to keep up with the car’s cutting-edge innovation. Finally, Clayton shared his perspective on what separates the great drivers from the rest — and what makes Lewis Hamilton such a unique and exceptional competitor.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Clayton:

Q1. Background & Path into F1

• “I’m classically trained as a sports scientist, and I really became fascinated with what was possible in terms of transforming the human body just through manipulating load, recovery, and environmental demands. After running my own personal training business for 10 years, I had a friend at McLaren who told me about an opening. Honestly, I had no real interest in motorsport — I thought it was just drivers sitting in a car moving the wheel a bit faster than everyone else. But I went to the interview, really liked McLaren, and from there the role just escalated quickly — first managing the fitness and wellbeing center, then working with pit crew, simulator drivers, and eventually, when Lewis Hamilton’s trainer stepped down, I interviewed and became his performance coach in 2010.”

Q2. Experience at McLaren

• “Walking into the McLaren Technology Center for the first time was a truly epic experience — it felt like something out of NASA or James Bond. Everything about the place was designed around precision and performance. The vision statement at the time was simply, ‘We exist to win,’ and that mindset was everywhere. Every decision was based on whether it helped the team win more often or more effectively. Working directly with Lewis was incredible because he was already a world champion, extremely focused, and very set in his habits. That was inspiring but also challenging, because when someone has already proven their methods lead to success, it can be difficult to convince them to change anything, even if you believe it might be for the better.”

Q3. Performance Training Philosophy

• “The F1 season is relentless. You get maybe six to eight weeks in pre-season where you can really push the driver in terms of strength and fitness. Once the season starts, though, time in the car essentially becomes the workout. At that point, the real focus is on how well you manage the demands of constant travel, recovery, and hydration so that the driver arrives fresh at every race. Drivers absolutely need to be strong and fit, but there’s also a performance ceiling. Being twice as strong as another driver doesn’t make you faster — it just risks injury or wastes energy on maintenance. The key is getting them to the level where they’re strong enough and fit enough, and then it’s all about offsetting fatigue so they can perform cognitively under pressure. We used to say driving was more of a cognitive task that was influenced by physical fatigue — the brain only works as well as the body supports it.”

Q4. Role of Technology

• “The car had hundreds of sensors monitoring everything in real time, but for the driver we were still fairly old school when I started. We would measure body mass before and after races to estimate fluid loss, and someone like Lewis could lose two or three kilos in a single race even while still wearing sweat-soaked overalls. We did push hard to integrate more technology in the simulator because it gave us control over conditions you couldn’t replicate on the track. We experimented with ECG and EEG sensors, EMG to measure muscle fatigue, neck loaders to simulate g-forces, even heating the drivers to mimic hot environments. The big question was always: can we correlate what we see in the body to what happens in lap time or cognitive performance? And ultimately, can we make changes in the driver that deliver a measurable return on investment in terms of performance for the team?”

Q5. The World of F1 Performance

• “In Formula One, no stone was left unturned when it came to measuring the car — sometimes to the point of drowning in too much data. But with the driver, it was almost the opposite. They were treated as a constant in the cockpit, expected to always deliver their best without being measured the same way. Going forward, the biggest opportunity is in wearable technology that’s light, unobtrusive, and capable of providing real insight into what a driver is going through in the heat of battle. Motorsport is unique because a driver can’t make the car go faster than physics allows, but they can definitely make it slower if they’re fatigued or dehydrated and start making micro-errors — braking a fraction too late, missing an apex, or hesitating in a reaction. Once those mistakes happen, you can never get that time back. So performance training is really about optimizing the driver so they can remain consistently accurate and sharp under extreme conditions.”

Q6. What Makes Lewis Hamilton Unique

• “Lewis’s standout skill was his adaptability. Cars in Formula One are constantly evolving — from one race to the next there are always updates, and it’s never exactly the same car you drove the previous weekend. Lewis had this exceptional ability to instantly feel those changes, understand them, and then communicate clearly with engineers, which isn’t easy since drivers speak in sensations and engineers speak in numbers. Beyond the skill, though, what really set him apart was his absolute focus and dedication. He demanded every ounce of performance not only from himself but also from the team and the car. That level of commitment could sometimes be interpreted as selfishness, but in reality, it raised the standards for everyone around him. He made sure that every single person involved was aligned on the singular goal of extracting the maximum performance and winning.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Matt Eller, CEO of Aris Training, a leading platform in sports technology.

Aris Training is a next-generation resistance training system designed to help athletes build strength, speed, and power through controlled, variable resistance. Unlike traditional weight-based methods, Arise leverages advanced technology to adjust resistance in real time, allowing practitioners to fine-tune load, monitor performance, and reduce injury risk. It’s used across elite sports to replicate sport-specific movements, track progress with precise data, and optimize both rehabilitation and performance training.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here is the picture of the Aris Training machine:

Picture: Aris Training

Here is a picture of Aris Training’s mobile app:

Here is a picture of athletes using Aris Training:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, his company and product, the benefits for teams to use their product and platform. We also talked about his competitive advantage, business model, and his plans for the next 12 months.

Please note that Aris Training will be exhibiting at our 2025 Upside US Summit on October 21 at the Florida Panthers (NHL) stadium.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Matt:

Q1. Tell me about background

“I’m a former basketball player, college basketball player at Lee McCrae College. After so many years in basketball, I was looking forward to a break, so I studied international business and had a chance to do some corporate sales within the food industry. I grew pretty fast and enjoyed it, but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do forever. Being young, I thought, this is my time to get back into my passion. I started really studying performance and getting into data analytics, and it kind of put me on a trajectory here in this industry that I’m really excited about.”

Q2. How did you get the idea of launching your company?

“My business partner, Sam Wason, and I shared a lot of common interests when it came to performance. For me, when I was getting recruited in high school, I was a 6’4 shooting guard, and people told me I wasn’t big enough or quick enough to guard certain players—even though I could put my elbow in the rim. I didn’t understand where those problems were coming from, and there weren’t coaches or options to test and understand my performance. That opened my eyes to the idea that everybody’s got an elite athlete inside of them; they just need the right process to bring it out. Once I became a trainer and opened a facility, I saw how manual and labor-intensive it was to do performance analytics for every athlete. We thought, there’s gotta be a better way to scale this and automate it so athletes don’t lose personal attention while coaches can still grow and manage their business effectively.”

Q3. Tell me about your product

“At the center of our ecosystem is Aris Pro, our digital resistance trainer. It delivers 100 pounds of constant resistance, meaning whatever resistance you program is consistent through the entire motion, whether it’s 25 yards or 12 inches. Everything operates through the Aris app, which allows coaches to command training sessions, capture data, and have it all automated so they can focus on the athlete instead of spending time on manual data collection. We’ve seen great improvements in acceleration and athletes reaching peak power faster using our resistance method. And because it’s tied into a complete athlete management system, coaches can easily manage speed, change of direction, and power output data by athlete, team, or sport, and generate custom reports for whatever they need.”

Q4. How is your product unique?

“It’s really about simplicity. With Aris Pro, it’s one tool—you don’t need speed gates, sleds, and other equipment alongside it. Every motion is testing and training at the same time. We’ve also built unique features to make the coach’s and athlete’s experience smoother, like audio signals that beep when you cover 10 or 20 meters, and safety zones that stop athletes from bursting through the resistance line at the end of a rep. Those things make training safer, easier, and more precise. Our focus has been: how do we simplify and amplify the process? And that’s what sets us apart—we’re giving athletes and coaches an effective, all-in-one tool that just works.”

Q5. What gives you a competitive advantage?

“We pride ourselves on building a tool that can handle the highest level of athlete performance while staying simple to use. For example, with football, you’ve got 250–300 pound guys generating massive force. Many products struggle with that, but we’ve built a system that can withstand it. At the same time, we’ve integrated features like audio cues, safety zones, and automated data capture that support coaches as much as athletes. Every rep isn’t just training, it’s also testing, so they’re always collecting valuable data without having to add extra steps. That’s where we feel our advantage lies—building something powerful enough for elite athletes but easy enough that coaches can integrate seamlessly into training without losing time or accuracy.”

Q6. What are the benefits for teams?

“For teams, the biggest benefit is versatility. Coaches can create specific workouts for athletes, execute them, review the data, and make adjustments later. It gives them the ability to be in many places at once. Teams use it for activation before games, for testing, and especially for return-to-sport protocols. Having baseline data on an athlete’s peak performance makes it much easier to plan their comeback after an injury. We also designed it with accessories and processes for vertical jump, change of direction, and linear speed, so it’s not just one type of training—it’s a complete, flexible system that can integrate into any organization’s workflow without friction.”

Q7. What is your take on the resistance training market?

“Right now the resistance training market is complicated and fragmented. There are a lot of great, sophisticated products out there, but for most coaches, that’s not what they need day-to-day. Eighty percent of coaches and organizations really just want four or five key data points that they can work with and apply directly to training. The challenge is integration, setup, and usability—it’s often tough to get everything to work together smoothly. But resistance training is such a critical part of sports performance—every team needs sprinting data, power output data, and change-of-direction metrics. I think the market will keep growing, but more importantly, it will start to commercialize and become more accessible to athletes beyond just the top 1%. As innovation continues, coaches’ hunger for clear, actionable data will drive the market toward easier, more transparent solutions.”

Q8. What are your plans for the next 12 months?

“We’re currently raising capital for the release of our Version 2 system, which we plan to launch in 2026. Alongside that, we’re building machine learning and AI modules that help with velocity thresholds and personalized training to reduce the burden on coaches and adapt training to individual athletes. But what we’re most excited about is the launch of Aris Suite, which includes our Aris Flight vertical jump tester with LIDAR sensors—like a modernized version of a Vertec plate—and our Aris Speed gates. These tools will integrate seamlessly into the Aris platform, so all the training and testing data is centralized in one place. It allows teams to test more athletes faster, with athletes even able to do it more self-sufficiently, while coaches still get accurate, actionable data without losing time.”

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This week we have the honor to interview again a group of sports performance executives to talk about the latest trends in the world of sports performance and rehabilitation.

• Jason Han, the former head of rehabilitation at LAFC (MLS). Jason is also the head of business development in North America at OneBase health.

• Michael Messer, the head of rehabilitation, Nashville SC (MLS).

• Tyler Harris, the director of sports medicine, St Louis CITY SC (MLS).

• Darcy Norman, the director of performance, Chicago Fire FC (MLS).

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• Team Culture & Cohesion“How are MLS teams evolving their approaches to building strong locker room culture—especially with diverse international rosters—and what practices have you seen work best to maintain unity throughout a long season?”

• Leadership Development“What strategies are being used to develop leadership skills not just in captains or veterans, but across the roster so younger players also step into leadership roles?”

• Dealing with Adversity“Adversity—whether it’s losing streaks, high-pressure games, or off-field distractions—comes with the territory. How do MLS teams build mental resilience and help players bounce back quickly?”

• Performance Tech & Vagus Nerve Stimulation: “One of the latest trends in performance technology is the use of vagus nerve stimulators to help reduce anxiety, regulate HRV and blood pressure, and improve sleep. What are your thoughts on this technology, and how do you see it being applicable or valuable within MLS environments?”

• Generative AI & Team Strategy“Generative AI (Open AI, Google Gemini.. is starting to impact clubs across many areas—operations, marketing, player performance, injury reduction, even fan engagement and customer service. Has your club begun implementing a Gen AI strategy, and where do you see the biggest opportunities or challenges for MLS teams?”

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

You can leave a comment by clicking on the button below:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Michael, Tyler, Darcy, and Jason:

Q1. Team Culture & Cohesion

“It really starts with having a clear vision of the club from the top down—with clear missions across departments and values that everyone has agreed upon. When people at every level know the standards, they can hold each other accountable and live by those values, not just talk about them. The clubs I’ve seen stay strong over time aren’t the ones built around one star or one season; they’re the ones that build an ethos that survives player turnover, staff changes, and the natural ups and downs of results. Culture is only real if it’s sustainable, and that comes from clarity, consistency, and accountability.” – Darcy Norman

“A team, at the end of the day, is like a business—you need systems in place to make sure people are aligned and onboarded quickly. That applies whether it’s a star signing arriving midseason or a role player joining the roster. At LAFC, for example, there were times when the medical staff was overwhelmed with injuries and new players were coming in, and you could lose track of the basics. Who shows them where the locker room is? Who explains recovery routines? When you have good systems, none of that slips. You can plug new people into the culture, and it continues to function without starting over.” – Jason Han

“One of the biggest shifts I’ve seen is the effort to make sure international players truly understand what the culture is—not just hearing it but actually feeling part of it. That means translating communication, making signage available in their first language, and ensuring expectations are crystal clear. If players can’t understand what’s being asked of them, they can’t buy in. It sounds simple, but those small steps make a huge difference in building unity across a diverse roster.” – Mike Messer

“Culture has to outlast individuals. Players will move on, staff members will come and go, but if you’ve built something aligned from the top down, then the ethos of the club endures. What matters is not just setting goals at the start of the season, but having processes in place that carry people through the grind of a long year. Culture is about alignment—getting everyone moving in the same direction, even when the daily grind threatens to wear people down.” – Tyler Harris

Q2. Leadership Development

“Younger players don’t always see themselves as leaders, but they are in their own way. They look up to staff and veterans almost like big brothers or father figures, and those day-to-day conversations in the training room matter. They see the guys who do the right things—not just the ones who get by on talent—and it sinks in. The message we try to get across is: football is important, but there’s more to it. You won’t be the young guy forever, so you need to mature faster and start leading yourself now, because in a year or two it’ll be your turn to set the standard.” – Jason Han

“Rehab can serve as a reset for younger players. It gives them space to observe what it really means to be a professional—how to build habits, how to take care of their bodies, and how to come back stronger, not just back to baseline. That’s where leadership starts for them: by learning how to manage themselves. And increasingly, clubs are recognizing the need to connect leadership development across the whole pathway—from academy to second team to first team—so it’s not just one-off moments but a consistent evolution.” – Mike Messer

“We’ve built leadership councils to make sure decisions reflect the whole group, not just the veterans. Six players are voted in by their teammates, representing different ages, backgrounds, and nationalities, so that the conversations reflect the full locker room. The council meets with staff, coaches, and sometimes management, which creates open dialogue and makes it truly a player-led environment. Everyone still has to lead themselves day to day, but the council formalizes the idea that leadership is distributed, not just for captains.” – Darcy Norman

“A big challenge for academy players stepping up is that they’ve often been the star in their youth environment, and suddenly they’re no longer the top dog. That can really shake their confidence. We rely heavily on mental performance coaches—whether in small groups or one-on-one sessions—to help those players develop the resilience and self-belief to keep growing. Leadership for them is about learning to carry that confidence into the next level, even when they’re not the star anymore.” – Tyler Harris

Q3. Dealing with Adversity

“That’s why you establish mission, vision, and values at the start of the year—because when adversity comes, those are the anchor points. You can go back and ask: are we living up to what we said we’d do? Are we sticking to the processes we agreed on? Adversity is never easy, but if you have that foundation, you can regroup and refocus without it turning into finger-pointing or panic. In MLS, you’re always going to have ups and downs, but if the structures are there, you can ride them out and keep the group together.” – Darcy Norman

“Sometimes adversity isn’t about grinding harder—it’s about taking a reset. That might mean time away from football, a team outing, or just giving players the mental space to recharge. Over a long season, you need those breaks, whether for individuals or the group. Otherwise, the weight of losses, injuries, or off-field distractions can snowball. The teams that manage adversity best are the ones that know when to step back, reset, and then return to the process.” – Tyler Harris

“The best way to handle adversity is to balance emotion with objectivity. Emotion can fuel you, but if you stay in it too long, it clouds your judgment. Football is an emotional sport, and players feel things deeply. Our job as staff is to stay calm, stay objective, and help them reset. Some of the best players I’ve worked with—like Carlos Vela at LAFC—were misunderstood as being detached, when in reality they just knew how to block things out and stay focused. That ability to reset quickly is what separates those who survive adversity from those who drown in it.” – Jason Han

“If everything is framed around your identity as a team, then the results, whether wins or losses, don’t shake you as much. You keep moving toward the bigger picture, and that consistency builds belief. Adversity is inevitable, but when the identity is strong, players and staff can look past the noise and stay focused on what actually matters.” – Mike Messer

Q4. Performance Tech & Vagus Nerve Stimulation

“I’ve experimented with devices like Apollo Neuro and Sensate myself before ever putting them on players, because if I don’t feel the effects, I can’t expect them to. Personally, I found some improvements in relaxation and recovery when I used them during meditation. With players, the context matters. In a noisy training room, it’s hard to get that effect. But on long flights or for individuals struggling with sleep or anxiety, it might be a tool that helps. I’m not convinced it’s an everyday solution, but for the right use case, it has value.” – Jason Han

“The bigger question is: why do you need it in the first place? If players are anxious or struggling with recovery, maybe the root issue is lifestyle, environment, or workload. Sometimes technology adds another layer of compensation without addressing the cause. That’s not to dismiss vagus nerve stimulation—it clearly has a physiological impact—but as practitioners we need to ask whether the real solution is deeper than a device. Otherwise, you risk treating symptoms instead of solving problems.” – Darcy Norman

“We’ve had good anecdotal results with the Neubie system, part of the NeuFit platform. It has a parasympathetic setting we’ll use when players show poor recovery or early signs of illness. Just a 15–20 minute session over a couple days has helped restore sleep and aid recovery. We’ve especially used it during tough travel stretches across time zones. It’s not a magic bullet, but if players come in after a rough trip and we can get them sleeping better quickly, that makes a big difference in their readiness.” – Tyler Harris

Q5. Generative AI & Team Strategy

“I’ll admit I was skeptical at first—I even said on a previous podcast I needed an AI 101 class. But recently I used ChatGPT to build a rehab protocol for an unusual injury, and it gave me a really solid framework to start from. It wasn’t perfect, but it saved me hours of searching and gave me references I could double-check. For me, that was the moment where I realized this can be a practical tool in sports medicine if you know how to ask specific questions.” – Mike Messer

“The potential game-changer is predictive modeling. If we can feed in baseline data at the start of the season and build risk profiles that we can monitor throughout the year, AI could help us anticipate injury risk before it becomes reality. It has to be paired with clinical expertise and real knowledge of the players, but as a tool, it could transform how we manage performance and health.” – Tyler Harris

“We use AI as a sounding board. It helps us brainstorm, process large amounts of information, and even critically evaluate our own protocols. We’ll put in a procedure and ask it to stress-test it—what would a lawyer, a coach, or a scientist say about this? That kind of critical feedback makes us sharper. At the end of the day, AI doesn’t make the decision for us, but it challenges our thinking in ways that are incredibly useful.” – Darcy Norman

“I use it every day, sometimes even in the sauna with the voice feature. I’ll literally have a 30-minute conversation with ChatGPT about an athlete case or a business problem. It doesn’t give me the final answer, but it makes me think differently, and it raises questions I might not have asked otherwise. That’s its real power. It’s not replacing us—it’s expanding our perspective and forcing us to execute better.” – Jason Han

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Mike Potenza, M.Ed., C.S.C.S., TSAC-F, the Director of High Performance for the San Jose Sharks (NHL). Mike is also the Co-Founder of Metabolic Elite, a cutting edge supplement and nutrition company.

At the the San Jose Sharks, Mike oversees the performance department, sports medicine, player reconditioning, nutrition, budgeting, and facilities for both the Sharks and Barracuda teams. Now in his 17th season with the Sharks, Mike also spent two years with the Golden State Warriors (2022–2024), where he managed player physical training, coordinated performance testing, supported nutrition planning, and designed return-to-play programs. Beyond professional sports, he co-founded Metabolic Elite, a precision sports nutrition company, and serves as Managing Partner and Director of Performance for Tactical Fitness and Performance, extending his expertise into both athlete and tactical populations.

Mike has held leadership positions as Vice President (2015–2019) and President (2019–2022) of the NHL Strength Coaches Association, where he worked closely with the league on training protocols, performance testing, COVID policies, the Combine, and equipment standards. His work also includes a decade of collaboration with U.S. Air Force Pararescue teams, implementing performance programs that became standardized across all National Guard Bureau units. Earlier in his career, he served as Strength and Conditioning Coach for the University of Wisconsin’s men’s and women’s hockey teams, helping both capture Division I National Championships in 2006. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Applied Exercise Science from Springfield College and a master’s degree in Physical Education with a concentration in Human Movement Science from Boston University. He lives in San Jose with his wife, Bonnie, and their three children, Griffin, Natalie, and Luca.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here is the picture of some of the Metabolic Elite products:

You can use the special code (UPSIDE15) which is an exclusive 15% off discount code (for 60 days) and click on the button below to buy Metabolic Elite products at a special rate:

Here is the video of the Elite minds podcast between Mike Potenza and Christian LaValle, Director of Operations at Metabolic Elite.

📝Show Notes: We discussed Mike Potenza’s role leading high performance for the San Jose Sharks, how NHL teams have evolved to embrace larger integrated performance staffs, and the strategies he uses to balance strength, speed, durability, and recovery over an 82-game season. He also shared the inspiration behind launching Metabolic Elite, a supplement company focused on targeted, banned-substance-tested products, the benefits for athletes and teams, and his vision for growth, including expanding into new markets and publishing independent studies to validate product efficacy.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Mike:

On His Role and Philosophy

1. How his role evolved & shifts in NHL performance training

“When I first came into the league, the NHL functioned with three main positions on the support side: the head athletic trainer, the head equipment manager, and the head strength coach. That was pretty much it, and you had to make do with very little staff or support. There were no assistants, and in the minor leagues you might have a part-time or volunteer person if you were lucky. Fast forward to today, and the role of performance has completely evolved. Teams are investing in bigger staffs, in analytics, in sports medicine, and nutrition. During my two years with the Warriors, I got to see how the NBA builds out large and very specialized staffs around just 15 players—because those 15 guys represent such high value. That opened my eyes to how structured and well-resourced a performance team could be, and I’ve been able to bring those lessons back to San Jose. Now, I oversee the entire high performance department for both the Sharks and the Barracuda—medical, nutrition, and performance—and we’ve grown into a 12-person staff. I think that’s the biggest shift: the NHL finally seeing the value of putting a whole team of experts around the athlete, instead of relying on one or two people to do everything.”

2. On balancing strength, speed, durability & injury risk

“Hockey is one of the toughest sports to train for because you’re dealing with a unique combination of explosive speed, heavy contact, and one of the longest and most grueling seasons in professional sports. My philosophy is to start with a very robust assessment at the beginning of the year—performance testing, range of motion, medical history, force production data, and dynamometry scores. That gives us a clear profile of each athlete: where their deficiencies are, what asymmetries exist, and equally important, what their strengths are. I think it’s vital not just to fix weaknesses but also to remind players of what they’re already good at and build confidence around that. From there, we customize programming to fit those needs. It doesn’t stop at training camp—we reassess frequently throughout the year with blood work, body composition, jump scores, and force data. For players with longer injury histories, we monitor even more closely to stay ahead of potential issues. The goal is always the same: balance strength, speed, and durability while reducing the risk of injuries and keeping them on the ice for as many of those 82 games as possible.”

3. On strategies for sustaining performance over 82 games

“The NHL season is a grind—82 games, constant travel, late nights, and the physical wear and tear of collisions every single game. There’s no single magic solution that guarantees recovery, so our strategy is about layering small but meaningful interventions that add up. Sleep is the number one factor, and we take it very seriously. It starts with the basics: making sure the sleep environment is right, from the temperature of the room to the quality of the bed and pillow. It sounds trivial, but players will tell you immediately which hotels have bad beds, and that can make a huge difference. We also focus on nutrients that support both energy systems and sleep—things like magnesium, which gets depleted during high anaerobic work in games but is also critical for sleep quality. Then we use tools like breathing strategies and specialized chairs that help players downregulate and shift into parasympathetic mode after games. Travel adds another layer, so on planes we use compression garments, electrical muscle stimulation, and even customized deep-sleep hoodies that create a cocoon-like environment for rest. None of these things alone are a magic bullet, but together they make a real impact. The players notice it, and it helps them stay consistent through the season when recovery windows are short.”

4. On strategies for sustaining performance over 82 games

“If I look back now at what’s out there and compare it to what we didn’t have, it’s amazing how fast things have evolved. I think devices are going to get smaller, more portable, and require less infrastructure. For example, with Catapult, the chip is already small, but I think it’ll get even smaller and more convenient. Clear Sky systems in arenas might eventually disappear as everything gets tracked directly through accelerometers or a single hub. What does make me nervous is the AI component—AI designing workouts or projecting performance. I don’t think we’re there yet, and coaches still need to be coaches, but I do see AI playing a bigger role in program design and injury projections. At the same time, we still need better consolidation—systems that can truly bring everything together in one place. Right now, even with APIs, you often still have to revert back to Excel or build custom systems. Hopefully, that becomes more streamlined. The other area that excites me is biomechanics and wearables. Hockey is starting to see more advanced video-based biomechanical analysis, and I think we’ll get to a point where you don’t need tethers or belts—it’ll all be tracked through video overlays or chips. Some companies are already working on wearables that measure speed, stride, force output, and biomechanics in real time. That’s where the future is heading.”

On His Startup

5. Inspiration for launching Metabolic Elite

“The inspiration for Metabolic Elite really came from a frustration with the supplement and sports nutrition industry. I’ve been in pro sports long enough to see how inconsistent, confusing, and sometimes downright shady the supplement world can be for athletes. My co-founder, Jim LaValle, is one of the most respected experts in blood analysis, nutrition, and clinical pharmacy, and I remember telling him, ‘Why don’t you just do it yourself? Build your own sport line, call it Metabolic Elite, and make nutrients that are actually specific to the needs of athletes.’ Jim has decades of experience and has even formulated products for some of the biggest companies in the industry, but we wanted to do it differently—with integrity, with scientific backing, and with products designed for very specific use cases. We pulled together a board of advisors made up of performance coaches who live this world every day, and together we created a line of products that fill real gaps for athletes in training, recovery, and health. It wasn’t about making another generic protein powder or vitamin C—it was about building precise solutions that truly make a difference.”

6. On benefits for athletes and teams

“One of the biggest benefits we bring is trust and confidence. Every single product we make is banned-substance tested through BSCG, which means athletes at any level can use them without worrying about contamination or compliance. Beyond that, we’ve developed a liposomal chewable technology that’s shelf-stable for two years and has incredible absorption—something that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the market. That’s a huge differentiator. We’re not just repackaging generic formulas—we’re developing products like Enduro2, which uses a high-dose, clinically validated compound from Rhodiola to improve aerobic capacity, time to exhaustion, and recovery, or Synapsin, which sharpens focus and attention without caffeine or stimulants. These products aren’t theoretical—they’ve already become popular among NHL and NBA players, endurance athletes, and even everyday people who want to perform and recover better. The other exciting piece is how diverse the use cases are. We’re seeing adoption in sports, in rehab and clinical settings, and even among executives and weekend warriors who want more energy and focus. That broad appeal is where I see us making the biggest impact in the next few years.”

7. On pricing model & goals for the next 12 months

“Our model is designed to be flexible depending on who you are. Consumers can purchase directly online, trainers and coaches can join affiliate programs to promote the products, and clinics or performance centers can buy wholesale at 50% off retail. That way, whether you’re an individual athlete, a training center, or a rehab clinic, there’s an accessible pathway. Looking ahead, the next 12 months are critical for us. We know we need to raise capital—not just to drive marketing and awareness, but to hire more people and expand sales. Our biggest goals are to push deeper into professional and endurance sports, get our products into more clinics, and validate everything we do with independent university studies. We already have multiple studies lined up with major institutions, and we want to be one of the few companies in this space that can back up claims with real science. In three years, I want Metabolic Elite to be recognized not just as another supplement brand, but as the go-to company for high-level, targeted formulations backed by education, transparency, and evidence.”

8. On the best way to reach out to Mike about Metabolic Elite:

“The best way is my Metabolic Elite email—mike@metabolicelite.co. I’ll respond back and we can even jump on a call if you’re interested in any of the products. You can also go right to the website, where there’s a lot of information to browse through. I think people will find it educational.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Steve Walsh, and hand on angel investor in Sports and Tech.

Steve Walsh isn’t just another name in the startup ecosystem—he’s a powerhouse mentor and investor who’s redefining what it means to support early-stage companies. As a Techstars' Mentor-in-Residence and the founder of Hands On Angel LLC, Steve has poured his energy, expertise, and capital into over 60 promising startups, helping them not only secure millions in funding but also build invaluable connections that propel them to success.

What sets Steve apart? It’s his unparalleled, “hands on” approach. He doesn’t just write checks; he rolls up his sleeves and dives into the trenches with founders, becoming personally invested in their journey. With a network bursting with strategic relationships and partnerships, Steve is the ally every founder needs in their corner.

Discover more about his mission at Hands On Angel.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: In our interview with Steve Walsh, we touched on several key themes that shaped his journey and perspective as an angel investor. We explored his background and what led him into angel investing, particularly within the sports tech space. He shared his investment philosophy, explaining how he evaluates early-stage startups, manages risk, and focuses on providing value beyond capital. We also discussed some of his favorite investments, where he highlighted the qualities in founders and technologies that impressed him most. Walsh then explained why he chose to focus on sports tech and how he sees the sector evolving compared to traditional tech verticals. Finally, he offered practical advice for founders, stressing the importance of preparation, real traction, humility, and coachability when pitching to investors.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Steve located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Steve:

Q1. Background & Journey"My journey is a little different than most angel investors. I spent over 20 years as an operator in the US broadband space, working for two of the largest companies in the world. I helped grow one from nothing to a billion-dollar business and another to $10 billion, which was exciting. But after two decades, running a $500 million business unit with 200 people reporting to me wasn’t fun anymore, and at 46, I wasn’t ready to retire. I’d always been a big investor in public and private markets, so I started exploring alternative assets like wine and art. Then it hit me—why not use my experience in scaling businesses to help the next generation of entrepreneurs? That’s when I began angel investing. I’d show up at demo days telling founders, ‘I’ve got capital, a massive network of super-helpful people, and two decades of experience building businesses—do you need any of this?’ At first, people looked at me like I was crazy, but that’s really where it all began about eight years ago."

Q2. Investment Philosophy"My investment philosophy has definitely evolved. When I first started eight years ago, I was investing broadly—I wanted to learn, so I dipped my toes into all kinds of sectors. But the longer you do this, the more you realize your thesis needs to narrow, because you begin to recognize what good really looks like. For me, that’s B2B, SaaS, Sports Tech, and Fitness Tech—spaces I understand, am passionate about, and where I know I can add value. I don’t just write checks; anyone can provide money. I look for early-stage companies with real traction, maybe $10,000 or more in monthly revenue—something that shows me they have customers beyond friends and family. If I invest, it becomes my mission to see how my network can accelerate their growth. Maybe they need introductions for distribution, sales, or fundraising. Maybe they’ve got a gap in go-to-market or legal. My role is to help fill those gaps quickly so they can grow faster. To me, that’s the responsibility of an angel investor—protecting the investment by helping the founders succeed."

Q3. Favorite Investments"One of my favorite sports tech investments is Fitbod. I discovered it as a user before AI was even part of everyday conversation. It’s essentially like having a professional trainer in your pocket—tracking your workouts, monitoring recovery, and guiding what you should do next. What impressed me most was the founder. When I asked why he was raising capital, he told me the company was already profitable and throwing off free cash flow. He didn’t need the money; he just wanted to accelerate growth. That mindset—raising only to go faster, not to survive—was incredibly appealing. Today, Fitbod is doing $25 million a year with 300,000 users and has never raised another round. That’s what I mean by capital efficiency and humility. Another favorite is Rook, a company that built an API connecting over 300 wearables so the data can be used seamlessly by insurers, trainers, and sports teams. When I told the founder Marco that he needed to reincorporate in Delaware and move operations to the US if he wanted to raise venture capital, he literally sold his house in Latin America, moved his family to Miami, and did it. That level of commitment—being willing to do whatever it takes—is what separates great founders from the rest. You really do have to be a little crazy to succeed as a founder, and I love backing people like that."

Q4. Focus on Sports Tech"Sports tech has always been a passion for me because I was an athlete, I played college lacrosse, and I’ve spent my life surrounded by sports. So it was a natural area to focus on. What’s really interesting is how the sector has evolved. Eight years ago, very few teams were seriously investing in technology. Maybe you’d see an owner doing deals quietly on the side. Today, it’s completely different. Nearly every major sports team now has an investment arm, a venture fund, or a sidecar strategy. And it’s not just about on-field performance. Teams are investing in venue technology, food services, operations, fan engagement—anything that can give them a competitive edge. I mentor with Techstars, and I’ve seen firsthand how accelerators with teams like the Minnesota Twins are focused on not only sports tech, but venue and operational tech as well. That shift—teams putting innovation at the center of their growth strategy—has been one of the biggest changes I’ve seen in the sector. Sports tech is no longer on the periphery; it’s at the heart of how organizations think about staying ahead."

Q5. Advice to Founders"The best advice I can give to sports tech founders—or any founder—is simple: be better in every aspect. That means being prepared when you meet an investor. I can’t tell you how many times I get on a call and a founder knows nothing about me, when they could have spent 30 seconds on LinkedIn or YouTube learning who I am and what I invest in. Do your homework—it matters. Second, don’t raise money too early. Wait until you have paying customers. A waitlist, non-paying users, or letters of intent aren’t traction. Traction is revenue. Fundraising should be about pouring gas on a fire that’s already burning, not about trying to spark one. And finally, be humble. Investors have options. You need the money, not the other way around. If you come across as arrogant, it’s not going to work. Coachability is one of the most undervalued traits in founders. If you’re not humble and willing to learn, how are you going to grow from two employees to 20, to 100? The founders who are prepared, revenue-driven, and humble—the world is their oyster."

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This week we had the honor to interview again Dr. Ron Dick, associate professor of sports marketing at Duquesne University in the school of business. Ron also worked for 20 years in sports, including 15 years in the NBA with the Sixers and the Nets, and then five years in the NCAA.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ron located at the top of this blog post.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the following topics:

• MLB playoffs

• NFL 1st week

• NHL/NBA training camps start.

• NBA Expansion: NBA going global. China, Paris, Berlin, London

• Alcaraz Vs Sinner..the new rivalry in pro tennis?

• Netflix doc on Dallas Cowboys

• College sports & the NIL

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Ron:

MLB Playoffs

“What an exciting time to be a sports fan, right? Coming up into September and October, we’ve got the Fall Classic on the horizon, and our Fighting Phils are looking strong—up 10 games in the Eastern Division. In the Central, the Brewers and Cubs are in a dogfight, while out West you’ve got the Dodgers, Padres, and Giants all jockeying for position. Over in the American League, Toronto has a narrow lead over the Yankees and Red Sox, Detroit looks like they’re going to run away and hide in the Central, and then in the West, Houston, Seattle, and Texas are all right there. It’s going to be an absolute thrilling finish, especially for some of those wild card spots. That’s what makes this time of year so incredible—you’ve got meaningful games every night, and on top of that, the NFL, NBA, NHL, and college football are all starting up. It’s one of the best stretches on the sports calendar.”

NFL 1st Week

“When the NFL kicks off, you can feel the energy—it really feels like business time. Every single week is so critical that it feels like a playoff game, because if you start losing, the season can slip away quickly. What’s fascinating this year is the international expansion—we now have seven regular season games across five different countries. We’ve already seen the Chiefs and Chargers play in Brazil, and for the first time ever we’ll have NFL games in Dublin, Ireland, and Madrid, Spain. The Steelers are going to face the Vikings in Ireland, the Dolphins will play the Commanders in Spain, and then of course London continues to be a hub with its 40th regular season game, followed by more in Berlin. This is where the growth is—the U.S. market is saturated, the NFL is the number one sport domestically, but going global is the next frontier. Just like the NBA did years ago, the NFL is laying the groundwork for international players and fans to become part of the ecosystem.”

NHL/NBA Training Camps Start

“Believe it or not, NHL training camps are already here. Rookies started on September 12th for orientation, the veterans return on the 18th, and then by September 20th we’ll already see preseason action. The regular season begins October 8th, and it’s a huge year for storylines. One of the biggest rumors swirling is around Sidney Crosby—he used to say all the time that he’d be a Penguin for life, a one-jersey guy. But lately, when asked the same question, his answers have shifted. He’s not saying it as definitively anymore, which makes you wonder: could he be traded in what might be his final chapter? Imagine him finishing his career in Montreal or Toronto, bringing a championship-starved franchise like the Maple Leafs back to glory. Toronto hasn’t won a Stanley Cup since 1967—that’s astonishing for a franchise with so much history and resources. A Crosby trade could both replenish the Penguins with picks and young players, while also giving a city like Toronto the kind of storybook ending LeBron James gave Cleveland. It’s only a rumor for now, but it’s one of the most intriguing possibilities of the season.”

NBA Expansion: Global (China, Paris, Berlin, London)

“The NBA is pushing hard on global expansion. We’re seeing preseason games like the Raptors vs. Nuggets in Vancouver, and the Suns vs. Nets in China, cultivating huge markets. Regular season games are going global too—the Pistons and Mavericks will play in Mexico City, the Magic and Grizzlies will tip off in Berlin on January 15th, and then three days later they’ll square off again in London. Everyone in the league knows that the real growth is outside the U.S.—we’ve got 325 million people here, but billions around the world hungry to see NBA basketball live. And it’s not just about the fans. Of the 450 NBA players, between 90 and 100 were born outside the U.S., and that number keeps rising. Players like Luka Dončić, Nikola Jokić, and Victor Wembanyama aren’t just participating—they’re MVP-caliber players redefining the league. The average salary in the NBA is now over $11 million, and the pipeline of international talent is only getting stronger. Basketball has become a truly global game, and the NBA is leaning into that future with these expansion moves.”

Alcaraz vs Sinner – The New Rivalry in Pro Tennis?

“We might be witnessing the birth of the next great rivalry in tennis. Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are already dominating the sport—Alcaraz just beat Sinner in the U.S. Open Final, number one vs. number two in the world. If you look at the past year, they’ve been squaring off in almost every major final, and it feels reminiscent of Nadal vs. Federer in the early days. What makes it even more compelling is what Novak Djokovic himself admitted: ‘If it goes into five sets, there’s no chance I can beat those guys.’ That’s Djokovic—the ultimate competitor—acknowledging that these young stars have surpassed him in stamina and intensity. Alcaraz, at just 20, is already being called the new Nadal because of his versatility on every surface—he can win at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, and the French. Sinner, who grew up as a skier in Italy before choosing tennis, brings a completely different style, but just as much fire. This feels like the beginning of a rivalry that could define the next decade of men’s tennis.”

Netflix Documentary on the Dallas Cowboys

“The Netflix documentary on Jerry Jones and the Cowboys was absolutely captivating—I binge-watched it straight through. It tells the story of how Jones wasn’t even supposed to own the team; Jerry Buss of the Lakers actually offered more money, but the NFL owners rejected him over his Playboy lifestyle. Jones, down to his last big drilling bet, struck oil and used the windfall to buy the Cowboys for about $90–100 million in 1989. What followed was one of the great turnarounds in sports history—hiring his college teammate Jimmy Johnson, enduring a brutal 1–15 season, then building a dynasty through the Herschel Walker trade and shrewd draft picks. But the documentary also shows the pitfalls of ego. Jones and Johnson couldn’t share the credit when they started winning, and their rift ultimately ended one of the most promising dynasties in NFL history. Imagine how many more Super Bowls Dallas could have won if they had stayed together. The film also doesn’t shy away from the mishandling of Tom Landry’s firing or Michael Irvin’s controversies, though Jones still controlled the narrative to make himself look good. Still, as someone who lived through that era, I can say it’s must-watch television for anyone who cares about the NFL’s history.”

College sports & NIL

“The only other quick thing I wanted to announce—we talk about the collectives, the whole name, image, and likeness (NIL) system that’s paying players—It doubled this year. We now have the final numbers: $1.9 billion was spent on college football players this year. That’s up from $950 million the year before, so essentially it has doubled in just one year. And I only see that number continuing to rise over time”.

“We’re only one or two games into the season, but already the top 10 is shaping up with powerhouses like Ohio State, Penn State, LSU, Oregon, Miami, Notre Dame, Texas, Georgia, Illinois, and Florida State. Locally, we were supposed to have the Backyard Brawl—Pitt versus West Virginia—on national TV at 3:30 Saturday, but because West Virginia lost at Ohio University, they flexed that game out for another matchup. Still, it’s an exciting start to the season.”

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This week we have the honor to interview a group of NFL sports performance executives to talk about the latest trends in the world of sports performance in the NFL.

• Ted Rath, Director of sports performance, New Orleans Saints (NFL team).

• Roderick Moore Jr, coordinator of sports science, Pittsburgh Steelers (NFL team).

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the best practices related to:

• Team culture,

• Handling adversity,

• Leadership councils,

• Their roles’ challenges,

• Underrated technologies

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Ted and Roderick:

Q1. Team Culture

• Roderick Moore Jr: “With culture here, especially with Coach Tomlin, he does a great job establishing it and then repeating it so consistently that it becomes ingrained. One of his favorite quotes is, ‘the standard is the standard,’ and that’s the anchor for everything we do. In the offseason, he sets expectations—how we practice, how we prepare, how we approach games. Then in camp, the same message is reinforced, and in-season it gets repeated again, but tailored toward our weekly opponents. Even last year when we started 10–3 and then lost five in a row, it didn’t feel like a losing streak because the message never changed. We addressed what needed fixing, but it was always about us versus us. If we’re not locked in on assignments and execution, the opponent doesn’t matter. That consistency—echoed not just by Coach but also by our captains and leadership group—is what carries the team through both highs and lows.”

• Ted Rath:“Rod nailed it with consistency. To me, the best leaders in sports and in life have that as almost a superpower. Culture isn’t static—it’s a living, breathing organism that evolves week to week in the NFL. It’s not about what you put on a wall or graphics in the weight room—it’s about whether your actions truly match your words. The star of the team is the team, and if everyone—from the 70 players on the roster to the coaches, front office, medical and performance staff—isn’t aligned, things fall apart fast. I’ve been fortunate to see it with young head coaches like Sean McVay early on and now with Kellen Moore, and the common thread is that they keep things simple, clear, and consistent. When your captains and leadership council uphold that standard, you can literally see the culture being lived out every day.”

Q2. Handling Adversity

• Ted Rath:“Mike Tyson said it best: everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. In the NFL, adversity is constant—it could be an injury, a fourth down you don’t convert, or a losing streak that tests everybody. What I’ve found is that when you’re losing, people become more self-critical, they look inward, they ask, ‘What can I do to fix this?’ But ironically, long winning streaks can be even more dangerous because they mask underlying problems. You can sweep issues under the rug by saying, ‘We still won.’ That’s when you have to be most self-critical and brutally honest. Every week feels like its own mini-season, and how you respond to setbacks—whether it’s with open communication or recommitting to your process—is what determines if you’re going to grow or crumble under pressure.”

• Roderick Moore Jr:“Winning can cover up a lot of issues, but losing exposes everything. When you’re on a skid, it’s about being honest, identifying the root causes, and asking: are we repeating the same mistakes? Division games are a great example—you might lose to a team that knows you inside out, but when you play them again, it can’t just be about revenge. It has to be about the ‘get right’ mentality: fixing what we didn’t execute, correcting details, and making sure we’re in position to succeed. That’s how you shift the focus from being stuck in a losing streak to regaining confidence and momentum. Adversity tests everyone, but if you control what you can control, the morale and the message stay steady.”

Q3. Leadership Councils

• Roderick Moore Jr:“We rely heavily on our captains and those senior-type leaders who might not wear the title but lead by example every day. They mirror the culture we’re trying to build, and they’re the ones who make sure the message coming from Coach and staff gets lived out in the locker room. The way we do it isn’t overly formal—it’s organic and impromptu. Sometimes they meet weekly, sometimes only when an issue arises. What matters is that the communication is honest and timely. That flexibility has worked well for us because it allows leaders to step up naturally and ensures that the culture isn’t just top-down, but reinforced laterally among the players themselves.”

• Ted Rath:“The leadership council is really an extension of the head coach’s voice and the culture itself. We make sure those guys are part of key conversations early on, whether it’s travel logistics—like explaining why we leave early for a West Coast game for circadian rhythm reasons—or how we structure recovery. When the council understands the ‘why,’ they communicate it to the locker room in a way that resonates. That prevents confusion and ensures buy-in. These players are the bridge for teammates who might not feel comfortable going directly to the head coach or staff. They drive the message, they live the culture, and in the best situations, they embody it so fully that you can feel the alignment across the entire building.”

Q4. Role Challenges

• Roderick Moore Jr:“People often underestimate how much of our job is about relationships and communication. You have to wear a lot of hats—psychologist, sociologist, sometimes even family counselor. These are adults with kids, spouses, pets, and lives outside of football, and those factors affect performance. Asking, ‘How’s your family doing?’ or ‘How’s your dog?’ builds trust. When athletes know you genuinely care about them as people, not just players, they open up. That bond becomes critical when things get tough. Outsiders see the weight room and practice field, but they don’t see the conversations behind the scenes that strengthen the fabric of the team.”

• Ted Rath:“I’ve told young professionals coming into the field to consider a master’s in psychology because honestly, so much of what we do is people-driven. Communication is never good enough—we’re always working on it. Every issue that a player or staff member brings into your office is the most important thing in their life at that moment, and you have to give it the attention it deserves. Add to that the reality of the hours—missed birthdays, missed family time, constant travel—and it’s a sacrifice not just for you but for your family. Work-life balance doesn’t really exist; it’s an integration. But when you can build a family-oriented environment inside the facility, those moments help. At the end of the day, it’s about mind, body, and soul—helping athletes be better on the field and better human beings off it. That’s what makes a team special.”

Q5. Underrated Technologies

• Roderick Moore Jr:“A lot of teams use GPS to track mechanical load, but I think physiological load—the body’s response to that stress—is still undervalued. Heart rate monitoring, recovery markers, readiness—all of that tells you how the athlete is really responding. But it’s not just about collecting numbers; it’s about relationships and trust. Athletes are wary of data because they want to know: how will this help me, and how is it being used? If they believe it’s about career longevity and performance, they’ll buy in. But if you collect data and don’t apply it—or worse, you still have the same injuries—players notice that. The tech only matters if you use it to make sound, science-based decisions that actually improve outcomes.”

• Ted Rath:“There are endless technologies we can use, but one of the most underrated tools is the subjective wellness questionnaire. It’s simple, but it provides invaluable context. Asking a player, ‘How sore are you today? How did you sleep? Where are you feeling discomfort?’ opens the door to meaningful adjustments. If a player reports soreness in his quad, maybe we change his squat pattern that day. That context drives action. And sometimes, if a player is giving the same answer every day, that’s a flag too—it tells me something deeper might be going on, whether physically or mentally. The tool isn’t about the form; it’s about the conversation it sparks. When you combine technology with trust and human connection, that’s when you really get value.”

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This week we have the honor to interview a group of experts in AI Agents in elite sports to talk about the latest trends, best practices and case studies related to AI Agents in elite sports.

• Ben Levicki, AI solution architect, Cleveland Cavaliers (NBA)

• Andre Antonelli, CEO of Machina Sports., a leading AI Agent platform for sports.

• Garrett Wang, CEO of Cerbrec, a leading AI Agent platform for sports.

• Jesse White, Sr Partner Sales Manager for US Sports & Live Events, Amazon Web Services

Here are the topics that we covered during the video interview:

• Best Practices in AI Agent adoption

• AI Agent’s case studies in elite sports.

• Balancing human and AI expertise.

• Trust and Ethics

• AI Agents - Future direction

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Ben, Jesse, Andre and Garrett:

Q1. Best Practices in Adoption

• Andre Antonelli:“Usually it’s always a good idea to start small, ship fast, and iterate fast as well. That way you can always apply the learnings and create a feedback loop from real usage. Even if it’s just a small group of people testing inside the organization, the growth of improvements goes much higher once you have actual real users. You’re not just engineers working on it—you’re getting feedback from coaches, staff, or fans. Once you have real users, you can improve the prompts, the experience, and the agents themselves. The improvements come much faster when it leaves the engineering team and goes to the people actually using it.”

• Jesse White:“Working across so many teams, what I’ve seen is that everyone’s at a different stage of their AI journey, but the best place to start is always small and scale gradually. At Amazon we call it ‘working backwards’—you identify a pain point tied to a real business impact. That ensures the first use case you pick actually delivers value and measurable ROI. If you target the wrong problem, it’s hard to get adoption, but if you hit the right use case that truly moves the needle, you get buy-in across the organization.”

• Ben Levicki:“With the Cavaliers, we’ve really found success by creating a business-driven roadmap. It’s about prioritization and alignment—getting everyone on the same page with how an AI project will affect their KPIs and the organization as a whole. We use what we call our ‘core four’ questions: does AI enable something that wasn’t possible before, does it solve a real pain point, does it solve the problem better than traditional methods, and does it improve the user experience internally and externally? We weigh each one by impact and use that framework to prioritize projects. That way, adoption isn’t just a technical exercise—it’s organizational alignment that drives lasting impact.”

Q2. Case Studies in Elite Sports

• Garrett Wang:“We’ve had real success with contract value analysis for pro teams. Imagine negotiating an upper eight-figure contract—it’s high stakes. Our AI agent acts like a playbook for GMs and VPs. Every couple of weeks, they run updated reports on all the players they’re monitoring. The system ingests the latest information, updates valuations, and flags risks. That means when they go into negotiations—whether it’s free agency, restructuring, or a rookie extension—they’re equipped with a constantly refreshed view of player value. The AI helps mitigate risk and improves ROI on contracts that could define a franchise’s future.”

• Andre Antonelli:“From a fan engagement side, DAZN used our AI agents for multimodal gamification during the Club World Cup. The system automatically generated quizzes and posts using live statistics, historical data, and real-time news. It worked across more than ten languages, which immediately expanded reach. The ROI was twofold—time savings for studio teams who normally create that content manually, and the ability to cover far more events than they ever could before. The same technology is now being used by sportsbooks to generate content and conversational betting copilots that are always aware of the latest odds and stats. It’s a clear example of how AI agents scale human capacity.”

• Jesse White:“With AWS we’ve seen use cases across multiple sports. The NFL’s Next Gen Stats are powered by AI and ML. MLB is far ahead—teams are using AI for pitch analysis, talent ID from scouting videos, and real-time decision-making on the field. NBA teams are using AI for injury prevention, analyzing video of hip and knee flexion to flag potential injury risks before they happen. Swimming Australia uses our AI tools to optimize training and performance—helping athletes peak when it matters most, like at the Olympics. These aren’t hypothetical; they’re measurable improvements teams are already implementing.”

• Ben Levicki:“Beyond performance, AI has proven useful in unexpected areas. Our security team was struggling with managing underground parking, so we tried Perplexity’s Labs. Within two days, using no code, they built a fully functioning app to manage it. That was done by a non-technical manager, not IT. It showed us how general-purpose AI can empower people across the organization, saving budget and reducing reliance on external vendors. Sometimes the transformative case studies aren’t in the obvious places like player development—they’re in everyday operations that free up resources and time.”

Q3. Balancing Human and AI Expertise

• Jesse White:“The way we see it at AWS, AI should augment, not replace human expertise. Some people think AI should replace junior employees—that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. The reality is younger workers are often the ones leaning in hardest, using AI in their daily workflow. Experienced staff can be resistant, but the future is about balance. Let AI handle the heavy lifting—data crunching, repetitive analysis—so humans can focus on judgment, leadership, and higher-level decision-making. That’s where the real value comes.”

• Andre Antonelli:“What AI really does well is narrow the scope and surface the right data at the right time. Coaches, scouts, and doctors are drowning in data—game stats, social chatter, medical records, wearable feeds. AI organizes that chaos. But at the end of the day, especially in high-stakes decisions like health or player selection, a human expert must make the call. AI supports by reducing noise and flagging what might otherwise be missed, but it never replaces human judgment.”

• Ben Levicki:“In scouting, every scout has their own style and voice. That makes it hard to standardize reports and compare across the organization. Our AI tools help normalize those inputs and reduce data overload, especially with advanced tracking data like Hawkeye, which records 50 body joints per player at all times. AI structures that mountain of raw data into something decision-makers can actually use. But the scout’s insight still matters—the AI just helps elevate their observations into a standardized framework so leaders can act faster and with more confidence.”

• Garrett Wang:“What we’ve seen is that the best results come when AI and humans form a feedback loop. Take contract negotiations: the AI flags blind spots, trends, or inconsistencies, but the management team—who’ve been doing this for decades—can spot when something doesn’t make sense. Their feedback refines the AI. Over time, both sides improve: the AI gets smarter, and the humans get sharper insights. Remove the humans, and the AI’s value drops. Keep them together, and you get far stronger outcomes than either could deliver alone.”

Q4. Trust and Ethics

• Andre Antonelli:“We designed our platform from the start for explainability. Every output is traceable—you can see which stats, news, or data points were pulled into the context that led to that AI decision. That makes debugging possible when something goes wrong. And because some teams want tighter control, we support on-prem deployments. For sensitive data like customer or medical records, keeping AI inside your own infrastructure builds trust and compliance from day one.”

• Garrett Wang:“The first question teams ask us is always about data security. Running on AWS gives us credibility immediately, but we go further—we show where the data came from, how it was transformed, and how conclusions were reached. Raw data alone isn’t useful. What builds trust is transparency around the reasoning: how the AI connected the dots. That lets teams validate or challenge the outputs, and it builds confidence over time.”

• Jesse White:“At AWS we say security is job zero—it’s non-negotiable. Customer data stays within their environment and never flows back to model providers. With tools like Bedrock Guardrails, we filter out profanity, hate speech, sensitive data, and hallucinations. That way, AI doesn’t go rogue or make up answers. But beyond the tech, we advise teams to create regular feedback loops. Practitioners should label data and check outputs so the system gets more accurate over time. Transparency about the input, the output, and the process is what builds credibility with players and staff.”

• Ben Levicki:“Our philosophy is ‘built by you, for you.’ We start with non-technical workshops—asking stakeholders to explain in plain terms what they want, how they would do it manually, and what success looks like. Then we build guardrails to reduce variability and ensure outputs stay within expectations. One example: if the AI already knows who Evan Mobley is, we can whitelist or anonymize names to ensure bias doesn’t creep in. That kind of transparency—showing not just what the AI is doing but why—helps people trust the outputs and feel ownership of the solution.”

Q5. Future Direction

• Ben Levicki:“Five to ten years from now, I see fan engagement as the most transformed area. AI agents will unify scattered fan data and personalize every interaction—tickets, communications, even in-venue experiences. Imagine creating your own ticket package with an AI agent that knows your preferences, pulls together the best options, and buys it for you. Imagine a game-day concierge that meets you on the platform you use most and anticipates what you’ll want before you even ask. The ceiling for fan impact is massive, but it depends on whether we can centralize and unify fan data into something usable. Garbage in, garbage out still applies.”

• Jesse White:“I like to say sports should feel like airlines. When you fly, from the moment you wake up, your operating system is taken over—your flight details, when to leave, where to go, what gate. Why can’t sports be the same? On game day, your AI concierge could tell you where to park, which gate to enter, which concession stand has your favorite food, even update suggestions in real time based on traffic or game flow. Hyper-personalization will define the fan experience, whether you’re in the venue or watching from home.”

• Andre Antonelli:“The real step change will come when agents are always aware of the full sports context—live stats, news, social chatter, fan preferences. That constant ingestion builds a living brain that can power hyper-personalized fan experiences. Once agents are continuously aware and updating in real time, the number of use cases that become possible—across engagement, marketing, and operations—explodes.”

• Garrett Wang:“From our perspective, the biggest transformation will happen in business operations. Areas like risk management, recruiting, and player investment are ripe for disruption. AI won’t replace people—it will superpower them. Non-technical staff will become 10x more efficient because AI handles the complexity in the background. That means every manager, every coordinator, every back-office staff member gets augmented with superhuman capabilities, which changes the economics of running a team.”

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This week we have the honor to interview a group of NHL sports performance executives to talk about the latest trends in the world of sports performance in the NHL.

• Alexi Pianosi, Head S&C coach, Colorado avalanche (NHL Team).

• Devan McConnell, High performance director, Utah Mammoth (NHL Team).

• Chris Stackpole, VP Athlete Care, NJ Devils (NHL Team).

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the best practices related to:

• Data & Metrics

• ROI of Technology

• Emerging Tech

• Balancing Data with Human Observations

• Team Culture & Leadership

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Alexi, Chris and Devan:

Q1. Data & Metrics

Devan McConnell:

“Our sports science platform is built around collecting as much relevant information as possible, but the trick is knowing which data actually matters for decision-making. On the ice, we use wearable technology to help us understand workload and intensity—things like skating volume, speed profiles, and heart rate data. In the weight room, we lean heavily on force plates and velocity-based training to track neuromuscular readiness and performance over time. More recently, we’ve incorporated technologies like the 1080 Sprint and 1080 Cables to create individualized force profiles on players. That kind of insight allows us to tailor training programs more precisely, rather than assuming a one-size-fits-all approach. It goes beyond traditional performance metrics and gives us a competitive edge in customizing how we load, recover, and develop each athlete throughout the season.”

Chris Stackpole:

“For us, the critical data isn’t just about performance output—it’s also about making sure players maintain their physical capabilities across a long, grueling season. So, we track things like muscle mass, fat mass, and even treatment frequency. Range of motion data is huge too, because when athletes start losing mobility, their risk of injury skyrockets. So it’s not always about hitting top speed or max wattage—sometimes it’s about maintaining the basics so they don’t break down. If we can catch those subtle changes early and intervene, we’re not just improving performance, we’re reducing time lost to injury.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“The challenge in hockey is that the data doesn’t always capture what’s really happening on the ice. In field sports, GPS metrics like acceleration thresholds or max velocity are easy to interpret—you sprint, you stop, you change direction. But in hockey, you’ve got gliding, edge work, contact, puck battles—none of which show up in clean data points. That creates a disconnect between testing numbers and actual game performance. So the real work for us is bridging that gap—figuring out how to connect the dots between lab-based data and the chaotic, unpredictable demands of hockey. That’s where the real edge lies.”

Q2. ROI of Technology

Devan McConnell:

“Return on investment is one of the trickiest things about sports tech. The reality is, the true payoff often comes down the road—better injury resilience two years from now, or improved development curves for young players that you won’t see until they hit their prime. But we don’t always have the luxury of waiting years to find out if something works. So we have to make decisions quickly and be pragmatic. For me, ease of use is absolutely critical. Our environment is chaotic—multiple games a week, travel, short practices—and if a piece of technology makes the workflow harder, it better be solving a problem we can’t solve any other way. Otherwise it’s just noise. If the staff can’t use it seamlessly and consistently, it’s not worth the investment.”

Chris Stackpole:

“Technology is only as good as the people using it. If the practitioners don’t really understand what it does or how to implement it properly, then you’re going to end up giving players and coaches misleading feedback. That’s dangerous, because once trust is broken, it’s hard to get it back. For me, ROI isn’t just about the money spent—it’s about accuracy, practicality, and making sure the information you provide actually improves decision-making. If it doesn’t check those boxes, then it’s not a good investment, no matter how shiny or popular the technology might be.”

Q3. Emerging Tech

Devan McConnell:

“If you look at where we are as a field, we’re pretty good at making athletes stronger, faster, and more powerful. The next big frontier, in my opinion, is recovery. For us in the Western Conference, travel is brutal—you’re dealing with time zone changes, late nights, early mornings, and long flights. The question we’re constantly asking is: how do we help players recover faster and get back to baseline more quickly? That’s where I see the next wave of innovation coming—tools and strategies that truly optimize recovery, not just for the next practice, but for long-term health and longevity.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“One of the challenges with emerging tech is that there’s always a latency period. A new device or idea comes out, but it’s not always clear how it applies to hockey right away. Hockey is such a unique sport biomechanically—things built for field sports often don’t transfer seamlessly. That’s why I think the real breakthrough won’t necessarily be some new gadget, but rather integration. Getting all the existing systems—wearables, AMS, force plates, GPS—to talk to each other and actually give us a clear, unified picture. That’s the impact tech that will really move the needle.”

Chris Stackpole:

“I think the next big leap will come in skill acquisition and decision-making. We’ve gotten so good at developing the physical qualities—strength, speed, conditioning—but hockey is ultimately about applying skills in the game. The question is: how do you maximize limited practice exposures and make players better at reading situations, making faster decisions, and executing skills under fatigue? That’s where I think tech can help us—bridging that gap between training and actual on-ice performance.”

Q4. Balancing Data with Human Observations

Chris Stackpole:

“For us, data is there to either confirm or defend. If a coach comes to me and says, ‘This player looks slow,’ we can look at the numbers and either validate that or show otherwise. It gives us an objective layer to either back up the observation or challenge it. But the point isn’t to replace the coach’s eye or the athlete’s feedback—it’s to give everyone more confidence that the decisions we’re making are grounded in reality, not just opinion.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“You always have to weigh where the subjective information is coming from. Some coaches or players you trust more than others, because their feedback tends to align with the data over time. If a veteran tells me, ‘I don’t feel right today,’ I’m probably going to trust that a lot, because usually the numbers will confirm it. But at the same time, there are players who might always say they’re tired, and you have to put that in context. So it’s always a blend—using the data to support the human side, not override it, but also not being blinded by one player’s feelings.”

Devan McConnell:

“Good sports science is both art and science. Data is incredibly valuable, but it doesn’t make decisions for us—we still have to apply context, experience, and judgment. The skill lies in knowing when to lean more on the objective side and when to trust the subjective. That’s where the best practitioners separate themselves—not in collecting the most numbers, but in knowing how to interpret them alongside what they see and hear every day.”

Q5. Team Culture & Leadership

Chris Stackpole:

“Culture, to me, is probably the single most important thing. You can have all the talent in the world, but if you don’t have shared values, accountability, and a common vision, it won’t matter. Every year we spend time not just talking about performance and rehab, but also about what kind of culture we want to build and protect. It’s not a buzzword—it’s a real driver of performance, not just for players but for staff across the entire organization.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“Culture is everything. It’s not built by one star player or one coach—it’s built by the whole organization. And it’s not just in the locker room; it shows up in the weight room, in the medical room, in how you handle adversity when things don’t go well. With a strong culture, players are more open-minded, more adaptable, and more willing to embrace new technologies and methods because they trust that everyone’s aligned. Without culture, you end up with silos, and that’s when things break down.”

Devan McConnell:

“Culture is the foundation. You can have all the motivational slogans you want, but if the organization doesn’t live up to them day in and day out, they’re meaningless. The truth is, whatever the lowest common denominator is—that’s your real culture. If even one part of the group isn’t aligned, that sets the tone. When everyone’s accountable and pulling in the same direction, that’s when you see special things happen. That’s when all the science and technology we talk about actually makes a difference, because it’s built on a foundation of trust and shared commitment.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Ciara Burgi, the director of health and performance at the Las Vegas Aces, a top WNBA team.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: In our interview with Ciara Burgi, Head of Health and Performance for the Las Vegas Aces, we explored her professional journey and what drew her into sports performance, the scope of her role and how it evolves throughout the season, and how she manages the balance between strength and conditioning, recovery, and rehabilitation in a demanding league. We asked how her department contributes to sustaining the Aces’ championship culture, the challenges of maintaining player health across a long, travel-heavy WNBA season, and the key differences in performance management between women’s basketball and men’s leagues. Finally, we discussed her vision for the future of performance science in the WNBA over the next five to ten years.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ciara located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Ciara:

Q1. Journey into sports performance

"My career has really been a succession of opportunities that I just said yes to. I started in strength and conditioning, but as a female I wasn’t sure what my longevity in that field would look like. So I decided to diversify, went to physical therapy school at Duke, and worked in outpatient PT for a few years. Eventually I got curious about higher-level sport—not because it was my dream to work in college or pro sports, but because I wanted to experience that environment. I ended up doing a fellowship at Duke in Division I athletics, which I loved because of the collaborative nature—you’re working with dieticians, mental health professionals, physicians, coaches, athletic trainers. After that, I joined the Houston Texans in the NFL, and later the Las Vegas Aces came calling. It wasn’t just about the director title, but about the opportunity to create a structure and culture within an organization already known for excellence. That curiosity and challenge drew me here, and now I’m in my second season with the Aces."

Q2. Role as Head of Health and Performance

"When I first arrived, it was three weeks before the season started. Honestly, it was survival mode—just all hands on deck, filling needs wherever they were. Last season was about making it through. This off-season was when we really started to build: figuring out what pieces of the staff fit, where we needed new ones, and shaping the culture. My role is both leadership and hands-on clinical, and as we’ve moved into my second year it’s become more about fine-tuning—onboarding new staff, refining systems, and making sure we’re heading the bus in the right direction. Each season feels like a cycle: first survival, then adjustment, then refinement, and eventually you get to that well-oiled machine."

Q3. Balancing S&C, recovery, and rehab

"The biggest shock moving from the NFL to the WNBA was how unpredictable the schedule is. In the NFL, you have a seven-day rhythm—Sunday games, Monday recovery, Tuesday off, Wednesday prep. In the WNBA, it’s eight games in 15 days across five cities, or 18 games in 36 days. You’re either stressed or recovering every other day. That density is the biggest challenge. So we keep our highs high and our lows low. Game days are high days—sometimes even high-minute players lift postgame just to keep the stress on the high day. Low-minute players follow a different schedule, but everything has to be individualized. With only 11 women on the roster, individualization isn’t just ideal, it’s required—because a low-minute player can suddenly become a high-minute player overnight. So every player’s stress-recovery cycle has to be carefully mapped across microcycles of 7, 10, or 12 days. It’s not easy, but it’s the only way to keep them always ready to perform."

Q4. Contributing to the Aces’ culture of excellence

"Our organization is surrounded by excellence. Our president, Nikki Fargas, has championship expectations. Becky Hammon is a champion. We have four potential future Hall of Famers on our roster. When you’re in that kind of environment, you can’t help but rise to the occasion. Mediocrity just isn’t tolerated here. At one point this season we were .500, and you would have thought we were 0–30—that’s the standard. For us in performance and health, our job is to make sure the athletes have everything they need to succeed. The culture isn’t about ‘win at all costs,’ it’s about demanding excellence in a healthy way. The belief in the locker room never wavers, even during tough stretches. That resilience, paired with high expectations, is what sustains a championship culture."

Q5. Challenges of the WNBA schedule

"The density and intensity of the WNBA schedule is nothing to take for granted. In school we learn about recovery timelines for hormones, tissues, and systems—but in this league, nothing ever fully returns to baseline when you’re playing every 48 hours or back-to-backs. So you have to throw out the rigidity of textbook ‘optimal.’ It becomes about weighing risk and reward: what’s the best low-risk, high-reward intervention we can do today that sets us up for three days or three weeks down the line? You have to zoom out, plan ahead, and know what the next 14 days look like while still being present in the moment. There’s no perfect answer, only the best decision for that stretch of time. And with a small roster and staff, we don’t have an excuse not to be individualized. If we’re not having those detailed conversations about each athlete, we’re not meeting the standard."

Q6. Differences between women’s and men’s leagues

"One of the biggest differences is roster size. In the NFL, with 53 players, individualization is limited. In the WNBA, with 11 players, it’s mandatory. The other big difference is culture. Football is very militant—yes sir, yes ma’am, follow the program. Women’s basketball is not that culture. Our players have had to make it overseas, often without resources, so they’ve become incredibly educated about their bodies and how to care for themselves. They come with strong opinions and expect collaboration. They’ll share what works for them, and they expect us to listen and meet them halfway. It’s not that they’re less disciplined, it’s that the sport’s culture is built on self-reliance and collaboration. If you come in with a dictator-style, militant approach, you won’t succeed in women’s basketball. It requires curiosity, adaptability, and respect for how the athletes have learned to survive and thrive."

Q7. Future of performance science in the WNBA

"The future isn’t just about high-budget technology. The lowest hanging fruit is still the basics—nutrition, sleep, facilities, recovery resources. Not every WNBA team even has its own practice facility or provides consistent post-game meals. We just got charter flights last year. Until the basics are equalized across the league, technology is secondary. My hope is that over the next few years, the CBA and growing resources will level the playing field so every athlete has access to those essentials. Then, once the foundation is solid, we can start layering on the advanced tech—AI-driven injury prediction, biomarker tracking, menstrual cycle monitoring, and other innovations. But if I have $100,000 right now, I’m not buying an AMS. I’m making sure our players have meals and the basics. Do the basics extraordinarily well first, then build toward the future of performance science."

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This week we had the honor to interview again a group of sports performance experts (NHL, FIFA, Ligue 1).

• Pierre Barrieu, the director of performance for the Canadian men national soccer team.

• Alexi Pianosi, the head S&C coach for the Colorado avalanche (NHL team).

• Rick Cost, the High Performance Director at l’Olympique Lyonnais (Ligue 1).

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• Resistance training trends

• Physical therapy innovations

• Recovery modalities in practice

• Leveraging diverse expertise

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with them:

1. Resistance Training Trends

Rick Cost:

“What we try to do is sort of a healthy mix, but it starts most of all with microdosing on a daily basis. It’s not about doing massive strength sessions, because in Europe the most important moment of the day is being on the football field. No training should ever negatively influence movement quality on the field. We use flywheel training mostly for its eccentric braking power and the timing of different movements. But the keyword for us is microdosing—lots of small, functional implementations. Then on an individual level, we target more specific needs—sometimes hypertrophy, sometimes isometric work, sometimes dynamic work like sprinting, which itself can be considered power training. So it’s very individual, very functional, but always built around the concept of microdosing.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“These technologies—whether it’s isokinetics, flywheels, or velocity-based training—have given us a variety of ways to approach the process and tailor the stimulus more specifically, and perhaps more safely, with less guesswork. You can put a Tendo unit on a bar and check if the load is moving at the right speed, but some of these systems allow you to skip steps and customize the load exactly to what you want. It’s new tools on an old process—we’re still chasing hypertrophy, motor unit recruitment, and power, the same things coaches have talked about for decades. But now we can do it more efficiently. The key, though, is not getting distracted by the shiny new toy. Too many practitioners jump on technologies just because they’re new or cool, not because they solve a problem. If you don’t start with the problem and then find the solution, you’ll just bounce from product to product and never really move forward.”

Pierre Barrieu:

“In my career, only once have I actively looked for a technology to fill a specific gap. Most of the time, I’ve discovered tools through colleagues, not vendors. You want equipment that meets a need, but you also want buy-in from players—because if they don’t use it, it doesn’t matter how good it is. Sometimes a tool only works for two or three players, and that’s fine. To me, that’s also microdosing—individualizing interventions so they have meaning. Too often people buy equipment just because another team has it, or because a GM says, ‘Look at this.’ That’s risky. Players aren’t blind—they see when tech gets bought and then collects dust in the corner of the gym. So for me, the decision comes down to: does it solve a problem we actually have, and will the players buy into it?”

2. Physical Therapy Innovations

Pierre Barrieu:

“There used to be almost a race to get players with ACL injuries back on the field in six months. But the reality is, most of them ended up injured again at seven. Now the accepted return is closer to nine months, which is what it always should have been. For me, that’s the biggest innovation—not a new gadget, but a rational, science-based respect for biology. You still hit the same KPIs, you still progress step by step, but over a safer timeline. Unless surgical techniques themselves change, the real progress has been in communication, and in getting coaches and organizations to accept that biology doesn’t care about your season schedule.”

Rick Cost:

“I think the biggest innovation isn’t a machine or modality, but a cultural one. There’s more respect for practitioners and more understanding from coaches. Ten years ago people tried to push ACL return-to-play to five or six months. Now coaches understand that nine months is what’s realistic. The same with hamstrings—people used to think a player could be ready in a few days, but now there’s more understanding of location, history, and the individual context. That shift in communication and respect has changed rehab more than any technology has.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“The real improvements in rehab come from understanding that what you do in month one and two matters more than what you do in month seven. We used to keep players at home for weeks after surgery, but now we know the quality of tendon starts degrading almost immediately if you don’t move. So we get people moving right away—in the pool, with small exercises—because that’s what helps us truly shorten the timeline. As for modalities, most of them just promote blood flow. Whether it’s BFR, compression, or stim, they’re all basically trying to deliver oxygen and remove waste. The key is matching the modality to your environment. For us, with long flights, it’s compression boots, stim, or recovery shoes, because we need to combat hours of sitting still. For another team, it might be circadian tools for crossing time zones. It’s less about reinventing the wheel, more about finding the right fit for your specific context.”

3. Recovery Modalities in Practice

Alexi Pianosi:

“Most recovery tools—cryotherapy, compression, BFR—they all do the same basic thing: promote blood flow. The real question isn’t which tool is the flashiest, but which one addresses the challenges of your environment. For us, we spend more time in the air than most teams, so compression and electrical stimulation make sense to combat immobility. If you’re a team that constantly changes time zones, maybe it’s circadian rhythm strategies. It’s about pairing the right tool with the problem you actually have, not buying everything because it looks good.”

4. The Human Side of the Role

Rick Cost:

“People still call me the ‘warm-up guy,’ but that couldn’t be further from reality. My job is strategy, budgets, individual development plans, and making sure the structure is in place for specialists to do their jobs. At big clubs, you might oversee 30 to 70 people. You rarely touch players directly anymore. That’s what’s misunderstood about the role—it’s much more executive and managerial than people realize.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“The hardest part is the sheer amount of time. You’re at the facility hours before and after players, you’re on the road constantly, and even in the off-season you don’t really get time off. The pressure is challenging, but in a way it’s fun—that’s why you sign up for pro sports. The real cost is time away from family, from friends, from living any sort of normal life. Charter flights and fancy meals are exciting for a year, but eventually you just miss being at home on the couch with people you care about. That’s the side most people don’t see.”

Pierre Barrieu:

“The biggest challenge for me is federating a diverse group of specialists around the same project—giving them freedom, responsibility, and respect, but also leading them. In national teams, it’s easier. In clubs, it’s the grind: the hours, the toll on families, the constant need to coordinate people from different areas and avoid frustration. The only way it works is if you put experts in positions of responsibility, sometimes people who know more than you, and then coordinate the whole machine so it functions daily. That’s the part people don’t see.”

5. Leveraging Diverse Expertise

Pierre Barrieu:

“At the end of the day, it’s about people. Assemble good characters first, because the real test comes when results dip. Never too high when you win, never too low when you lose—that applies to staff as much as players. Cultural context matters too: in some countries you can raise your voice, in others it’s counterproductive. If you don’t adapt to the cultural context of your staff and players, you set yourself up for failure. That’s something leaders often underestimate.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“With bigger staffs you’ll never have total harmony. You’ll always have disagreements, and that’s okay. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s progress. Real culture forms when standards are clear, vulnerability is allowed, and everyone is held accountable with care. If you can do that, you can handle disagreements, move on, and get ready for the next challenge. And in pro sports, there’s always another challenge—somebody tired, injured, or upset. If you acknowledge that imperfection is part of the process, you’ll build something resilient.”

Rick Cost:

“For me, the key is transparency and autonomy. Everyone should know their role and feel empowered to make decisions, not wait for me. The more accountability you give people, the more they enjoy their work, and the more they push themselves to deliver quality. In sport, there is no small job—because everyone’s work impacts everyone else. Finding the right people is half the battle. Once you do, you need to trust them, support them, and hold them accountable, so the whole group can function together.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Kevin Kidd a top motor sports executive in NASCAR.

Kevin Kidd is a seasoned NASCAR executive with extensive experience in motorsports engineering, data strategy, and team management. Over his career, he has played pivotal roles in helping NASCAR teams leverage advanced analytics and performance insights to gain a competitive edge on and off the track, including his time at RFK Racing where he contributed to advancing performance innovation. Known for his deep technical expertise and forward-thinking approach, Kidd has championed innovation in how data is collected, shared, and applied across teams, recognizing the importance of collaboration while still driving individual team performance. His leadership reflects a balance of technical precision and strategic vision, making him a respected figure in the evolution of NASCAR’s data-driven era.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During our interview with Kevin Kidd, we asked him about the best practices he has seen in applying data and analytics to drive innovation in NASCAR, both on the track and in team operations; how technology such as sensors, AI, and simulation has impacted driver and car performance; how teams leverage real-time data during races to influence split-second strategy decisions; what lessons from motorsports could be applied to other elite sports like football, basketball, and soccer; and where he sees the biggest opportunities for data and technology to shape the future of performance and safety in racing.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Kevin located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Kevin:

1. Innovation in Data Use

"When we talk about innovation in NASCAR, the conversation always starts with the problem you’re trying to solve. I’ve told people for years: racing is actually pretty easy if you know exactly what the problem is. But getting to that clarity is the hardest part. Once you define the question, then the data becomes useful. The challenge in our sport isn’t that we don’t have data—if anything, it’s that we have too much. There’s no shortage of information coming at us from sensors, cars, simulations, and operations. The best practice, in my opinion, is making sure the data you’re working with is clean and governed properly. There’s nothing worse than making strategic decisions based on bad or misinterpreted data. So as a leader, one of the things I focused on at RFK Racing was building processes around data governance—publishing clean data, in clean formats, to the right users at the right time. That’s how you unlock innovation—by ensuring the information foundation is trustworthy and focused on the real problems, not just noise."

1. On the Various Groups (Drivers, Pit Crew, Engineers, Mechanics, Fabricators) In NASCAR

On the Main Groups:

• "There are three main groups: The drivers, pit crew, and engineers. I would add on a fourth group, which would be the mechanics and the fabricators who actually build the cars”.

On Drivers and Pit Crew:

• "Drivers and pit crews are actually pretty similar. The typical athletic human performance-type things are of main interest to them."

• "With the drivers, it's a lot about endurance conditioning. A lot of the technology we use is really about understanding their ability to operate over a four or five-hour period in high heat and other extraneous circumstances."

• "The pit crews are a little bit different; they're almost like a sprint. Those guys do their job in about eight or nine seconds, so you have to really focus on a completely different thing with them, where a lot of their strength and conditioning focuses on explosive techniques and the ability to make quick cuts and pivots."

• "By and large, for drivers and pit crews, it's a lot of human and mental performance. A lot of focus and the ability to make quick decisions are really important for both groups."

On Engineers:

• "For our engineers, it's a little bit less athletic and a whole lot more analytic. A lot of the focus is on reducing cognitive load throughout a race weekend and particularly during the race itself."

• "Anything we can do from an analytics perspective to reduce the cognitive load and help them make decisions without having to go mine for data or do a whole lot of work—those are wins in their world. Providing them the right data at the right time to be able to make those decisions are all critical things for them."

On Mechanics and Fabricators

• "For our mechanics and fabricators, a lot of the data we focus on is really about operational workflow. We make sure they have the right information at the right time to be able to build cars the way the engineers call them out and have best practices on how to build those cars."

2. Technology and Performance

"If I had to pick one area where technology has transformed NASCAR in my career, it would be simulation. Simulation is the absolute lifeblood of motorsports today. We don’t get much practice or testing on track, and even in series that offer more track time, it’s never enough. The reality is there are millions of possible combinations of setup parameters for a car—you could never physically test all of them on the track. That’s where simulation comes in. Over the years, the tools have improved beyond anything I could have imagined when I first started. Today, before a single lap is run on race weekend, we’ve run hundreds of thousands of combinations through simulation to optimize the car’s setup. That gives us a much better starting point, and the precision with which we can hone in on the right balance is better than ever. But I’ll be honest—simulation isn’t bulletproof. There are still areas where the models don’t have enough data to be as predictive as we’d like. Those black boxes are where the next frontier is—if we can fill in those gaps, our simulations will become even more powerful. But even with limitations, the advancements have fundamentally changed how we prepare, how we engineer, and ultimately how drivers perform on race day."

3. Real-Time Decision Making

"Real-time data is where motorsports really distinguishes itself from other sports. NASCAR races are filled with split-second decisions, and the engineer or crew chief has to process an enormous flow of data in real time. The trick is reducing the cognitive load—if an engineer is drowning in raw data, they can’t make the critical calls when it matters most. A good example is fuel strategy. Most fans don’t realize this, but NASCAR vehicles don’t have fuel gauges. Drivers literally don’t know when they’re going to run out of gas—it’s by design, and it’s one of those quirks of the sport that has been there since the beginning. So it’s up to the engineers and strategists, using real-time data, to calculate fuel consumption lap by lap and project how far the car can go. We can get that projection down to almost the exact point on the track where the car will run out. That matters a lot when you’re trying to stretch a fuel window, make it to the end without pitting, or optimize your stop strategy. That kind of precision can win or lose you a race. And that’s just one example—there are dozens more layers of complexity happening simultaneously. The key is building systems and processes so that the data doesn’t overwhelm the team, but instead gives them clarity to make the right decision at the right moment."

4. Cross-Sport Lessons

"One of the things I’ve always appreciated about motorsports is that we’re often ahead of other sports in terms of data use. NASCAR, F1, IndyCar—these series have been ingesting and analyzing massive data streams for years. I’ve been watching the NFL introduce Hawkeye for first down measurements, and it’s gotten a lot of attention. But the truth is, we’ve been using video capture and machine learning to judge position in NASCAR for almost a decade. That’s not to downplay what the NFL is doing—on the contrary, I think it’s a smart, measured approach. And that’s the key lesson for other sports: don’t adopt technology just for the sake of it. Be thoughtful, be calculated, and bring it online where it actually adds value to the competition or the fan experience. Motorsports has taught me that not every shiny new tool will move the needle. You need to focus on the technologies that genuinely make the game safer, fairer, or more competitive. If you do that, you not only improve performance—you also build trust in the technology from athletes, coaches, and fans alike."

5. The Fact that NASCAR Teams are Sharing Data with Other NASCAR Teams during Races

“In NASCAR, what’s really unique is that each team in a race gets data not only about their own cars, but also about every other car in the field. Compared to F1, where you only get your own car’s data, that’s a huge difference. Even though we have fewer channels per car than F1, the fact that we can analyze our competitors’ data gives us a tremendous opportunity to understand our performance relative to theirs, see where they’re vulnerable, and find areas to exploit. That’s one of the things that makes NASCAR really fun—you’re not just optimizing your own car, you’re analyzing the entire field in real time.

6. The Fact that there is a Large Amount of data (12B) similar to F1 collected by Teams during NASCAR Races

Julien Blin: ”I remember reading that in Formula 1 they capture about 12 billion data points per race across all the teams”. Kevin Kidd:”In NASCAR, it’s probably similar or even more, but the types of data are very different. Each team only gets a limited number of channels on their own cars—that’s by rule, NASCAR doesn’t allow us to just capture everything. Compared to F1, you’d look at the data coming off one NASCAR car and say it’s not apples to apples. But what makes NASCAR unique is that we don’t just get our own car’s data—we get that limited set across every car in the field. So instead of having deep telemetry from one car like in F1, we’re analyzing the entire grid. That creates incredible opportunities to see where we stack up, find competitor vulnerabilities, and adjust strategy in real time”.

7. Future of Data in Racing

"Looking ahead, the frontier in NASCAR is clearly around AI and machine learning. Engineers and crew chiefs are already maxed out from the moment the green flag drops. Their mental bandwidth gets consumed immediately, and that can leave them without the clarity to make the hardest calls later in the race. If we can use AI to automate some of the simpler decision-making processes reliably, we free up our best people to focus on the complex problems where human judgment still matters. That’s a huge opportunity. On the human performance side, the innovations won’t stop either. We’re experimenting with hydration monitoring, biomechanics, movement analysis—all the things that can make drivers and pit crews stronger, faster, and more consistent. In pit stops, for example, we’re always chasing what we call ‘free speed.’ If you can shave one second off a stop, that can be the difference between winning and losing. Sometimes it takes an entire green-flag stint on track to gain that one second, but if your pit crew can do it instantly through better technique and technology, that’s a massive advantage. The same goes for drivers—if we can better understand their endurance and recovery, we can make sure they’re at their absolute best every time they strap into the car. So the future is about pushing the frontier of both machine intelligence and human performance—and doing it in ways that keep raising the bar for what’s possible in motorsports."

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Ryan Peterson the assistant S&C coach for the Chicago Bulls, a top NBA team.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, his role at the Chicago bulls, his approach towards training, S&C, rehab and innovation. We also discussed his preferred technologies, how he sees the future of S&C evolving in the coming years. He also gave us his thoughts on what he would build if he could build any tech and had unlimited resources.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ryan located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Ryan:

1. Tell me about your background

• “I’m originally from southern Idaho, from a fairly small town. I grew up playing football, basketball, baseball, and spending a lot of time outdoors. I went to the University of Utah where I studied biology and chemistry with a pre-med plan, but as I got closer to graduation I realized physical therapy was a better fit for me personally. I went to PT school at the University of Montana, spent three years there, and then worked in outpatient orthopedic clinics. Over time I found myself most interested in the athletes I was treating, which was a small part of my caseload but the most engaging for me.”

• “When I moved back to Salt Lake, I connected with the US Ski and Snowboard team—at first just volunteering, but eventually traveling with their teams as a physical therapist. At the same time I did a strength and conditioning internship with the University of Utah football staff, and later stayed on as a kind of hybrid rehab and strength coach. That blend of rehab and performance was what I really wanted to do, and it’s what opened the path that eventually led me to the NBA.”

2. What is your role at the Chicago Bulls?

• “My position is assistant strength and conditioning coach, with an emphasis in rehab and injury mitigation programming. We have an excellent athletic training staff, so I’m not involved in day-to-day clinical work, but I have a lot of influence in late-stage return-to-play testing and programming. I also lead programming on soft-tissue injury mitigation while contributing to all of the team’s daily strength and conditioning work.”

• “I personally travel with the team to every game, home and away. Sometimes when a player has a long-term rehab they’ll stay in Chicago and work with staff who rotate staying behind, but many times even guys in rehab will come on the road and do their work with us. It just depends on their situation and what resources we have access to on the road.”

3. What is your approach towards training, S&C, rehab and innovation?

• “At a base level my approach is to keep things as simple as possible and do the simple things really well. Early in my career I fell into the trap of trying to do too many things at a moderate level instead of focusing on a few things and executing them really well. Simplifying allows the athlete to get a ton of repetitions, perfect their coordination, and build a foundation that makes everything more complex down the line much more effective.”

• “I see rehab and strength and conditioning as much closer than most people think. It’s a continuum—early rehab is cautious and limited, but we can still train the rest of the body hard. As healing progresses, it blends naturally into performance-based training. Our job is to keep the gap between ‘injured’ and ‘ready to perform’ as small as possible so the return doesn’t come with a big spike in load or risk.”

• “You can get so much out of calisthenics, running, skipping, change of direction, bodyweight squats, planks—just really refining how you move your body in space. Those simple things are hugely powerful, especially for younger athletes. They build an incredible foundation that sets them up to get the most out of heavier loading and advanced training later on.”

4. What are your preferred tech and why?

• “I’ve always valued simple, cost-effective tools. Before the NBA, budgets were very different, so I relied on things like a strain gauge called Tindeq. It’s small, portable, easy to use, and it gives an objective number for force output. That’s incredibly useful both for guiding rehab progression and for performance training.”

• “I also like app-based tools like My Jump, My Sprint, and Runmatic. With just a phone camera you can measure contact times, jump height, and break down running mechanics. They’re cheap, simple, and accessible to any practitioner at any level. Of course now we have access to force plates and motion capture, which provide richer data, but even with advanced tools I think you can build great programs just using the basics.”

• “The main criteria for me are: does it solve a problem we actually have, is it validated and reliable, and can I use it consistently with athletes without friction? I don’t want tech just to have tech—it has to fit the workflow and add value every day.”

5. How do you see the future of S&C evolving in the coming years?

• “We’re seeing a big expansion in quantification—velocity-based tracking, portable sensors, variable resistance machines. All of that is valuable, but we’re also asking: is there a point where it’s too much data? How much of it is actionable? At some stage I think the pendulum will swing back toward the art of coaching—having a skilled eye for movement, building strong relationships with athletes, and getting their buy-in. If you can’t connect with athletes, it doesn’t matter how advanced your tech is.”

• “I think the real skill of the future will be in coaches who can filter. There will be so much tech available that the best practitioners will be the ones who can determine what’s genuinely useful and ignore what’s distracting or irrelevant. Those who stay grounded, have a clear vision, and only adopt what aligns with their goals will move ahead of everyone else.”

6. If you could build any tech and had unlimited resources, what would you build and why?

• “If I could build anything, it would be a really reliable way to evaluate what’s happening to a tendon when it’s loaded. Tendon health is a huge point of emphasis in the NBA right now—reducing tendon injuries and catastrophic events. Right now we have proxy measures like strain gauges, ultrasound, and shear wave imaging, but they only tell part of the story. Two athletes can produce the same external force, but their tendons respond very differently.”

• “I’d love a tool that could tell us, in real time and at a microscopic level, how load is being transmitted through a tendon—the rate, the magnitude, how much it stretches, and how it changes over time. That would completely change how we prescribe weight-room work, manage load, and design rehab. It would take us from estimates and extrapolations to precision.”

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This week we have the honor to interview again a group of NBA sports performance executives to talk about the latest trends in the world of sports performance and rehabilitation.

• Dr Marco Nunez, the former head athletic trainer for the LA Lakers (NBA).

• Derek Millender, the head S&C coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers (NBA).

• Ryan Petersen, the assistant S&C coach for the Chicago Bulls (NBA).

Here are the topics that we covered during the video interview:

• Q1. Life after the NBA: “From your experience, how do you successfully transition from an NBA team settings to having your own practice outside of the NBA? What are the best practices there?”

• Q2. Technology adoption: “How do you evaluate when it’s the right time to implement a new technology, and what are the key factors that determine whether it actually adds value in an NBA setting and how long does it typically take to integrate and adopt a new technology into the workflow?”

• Q3. Leveraging diverse expertise: “NBA teams now include specialists from a wide range of backgrounds—performance science, data analytics, psychology, and more. What’s the best way to integrate these perspectives so they enhance, rather than compete with, each other, and best collaborate during tough conversations?”

• Q4. Performance optimization: “With the intensity of the NBA schedule, what are the most effective approaches you’ve seen to maintain peak performance throughout an 82-game season and playoffs?”

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Marco, Derek, and Ryan:

Q1. Life after the NBA

Marco Nuñez:

“When I first left the Lakers and started my own practice, I was reluctant to use my NBA credibility. I thought it might come off the wrong way, until someone told me, ‘You’ve got to use that—people want that experience.’ And it’s true. Clients—whether they’re athletes or weekend warriors—want to be treated like pros. The value isn’t just in what you do, but in knowing which ‘screw to turn,’ like in that old story about the engineer who charged $15,000 for knowing where to make a single adjustment. That’s what our experience at the NBA level gives us. Transitioning means you also have to hustle—learn marketing, business, even entrepreneurship—things we’re not taught in athletic training or strength programs. You have to decide whether you’re going for scale, like training a large pool of athletes, or the VIP concierge model where you work with fewer clients but give them full access. Either way, you need to lean into the credibility you earned.”

Derek Millender:

“It’s not easy for NBA coaches and trainers to think about life after the league, because we’ve worked so hard to get here. But the reality is—it’s not if, it’s when. At some point, this ends. That doesn’t mean you’re not professional or capable, it just means change is inevitable. So you need to start preparing while you’re still in it. Do you want to open your own facility, consult, or join forces with others? It’s about being proactive rather than waiting until you’re out and asking, ‘Now what?’ I think the biggest mindset shift is realizing that planning for what comes next is not a weakness—it’s a necessity.”

Ryan Petersen:

“I actually went the other way—I started in private practice and then came into the NBA. Running my own clinic taught me hard lessons in marketing, operations, and entrepreneurship. None of that was taught in PT school, so I learned by making mistakes. That perspective helps me know what the transition back might look like when my NBA career ends. I think it’s similar to players—many of them have no plan after basketball because they’ve been locked in for 20 years. For us as practitioners, we need to avoid the same trap. Having that foresight and being honest with yourself is key. Otherwise, you wake up one day and it feels like the dream just ended with no plan for what’s next.”

Q2. Technology Adoption

Derek Millender:

“The process for us is collaborative. It might start with a strength coach, an AT, or a dietitian who identifies a need. Then we research devices—look at scientific reviews, talk to peers, test them—and bring it to our high-performance group. From there, it’s about alignment. Even if the strength staff champions it, we want the PTs, ATs, and coaches to see how it adds value for them too. If it only helps one department, adoption stalls. When it works, it’s a slow burn. Year one, maybe you only use a device for one or two things even though it has 20 features. Over time, as comfort builds, usage grows. But that’s the reality—it takes at least a full season before technology really integrates. And if you swing and miss on a $30,000 purchase, it’s much harder to get buy-in the next time.”

Ryan Petersen:

“It starts with vision. If a piece of tech doesn’t align with your team’s philosophy, it’s wasted time and money no matter how good it is. The other big factor is friction. If a device is complicated, players won’t buy in and staff won’t use it consistently. I’d rather have a tool that does one or two things very well, with almost no friction, than something that claims to do everything but slows us down. For me, the best way to learn is hands-on—I’ll test it myself, do hundreds of reps, make mistakes—so I can teach athletes and staff with confidence. The easier it is to use daily, the more likely it’s going to stick.”

Marco Nuñez:

“I think it takes at least one full year to truly evaluate whether a new technology makes a difference. You can’t just test it in pre-season and assume it works. And the decision has to come from the inside out: what are our biggest injury risks or performance gaps? Then you look outward and see which tools might help solve those problems. You also need the staff bandwidth to use it properly. Sometimes there’s pressure—if another team wins a championship using a certain device, front offices start asking why we don’t have it. But just because it worked for them doesn’t mean it fits your environment. The real question is: does it make sense for us, right now?”

Q3. Leveraging Diverse Expertise

Derek Millender:

“Working across disciplines starts with relationships. You need to know the person before you can handle tough conversations with them. It might be grabbing dinner on the road, talking about music, family, or hobbies—something human. Once that trust is built, disagreements aren’t personal anymore. And you learn to recognize stress in each other, whether it’s someone eating more sweets during a losing streak or someone working out extra to cope. That’s when you step in with support, even small things like grabbing their favorite coffee. Those personal deposits make it easier to collaborate when pressure hits. At the end of the day, if everyone remembers we’re here for the players, it keeps us aligned.”

Ryan Petersen:

“I think humility and curiosity are the two most important qualities. If you walk into a room full of experts trying to prove how much you know, it doesn’t work. If you walk in genuinely curious, willing to learn, and clear that the goal is the player, then collaboration becomes natural. Some of the best meetings I’ve been in are when everyone—from PTs to data scientists to coaches—shares their piece of the puzzle, and you come away with a plan that reflects all perspectives. That only works if people check their egos and actually listen. It sounds simple, but it changes the whole dynamic.”

Q4. Performance Optimization

Derek Millender:

“The best systems I’ve seen are collective. Performance optimization isn’t about one department—it’s constant communication between strength, medical, nutrition, sports science, and coaching. It’s about stitching together all those small conversations—what the dietitian heard at breakfast, what the PT saw in treatment, what the coach noticed in practice—so the full picture of the athlete emerges. Data matters, but so does context. Maybe the force plate says one thing, but you know he’s dealing with family stress or a nagging issue. That blend of science and art—reading both the numbers and the person—is how you sustain performance over 82 games.”

Ryan Petersen:

“What stands out to me is how consistent the veterans are. The players who last 10, 15, 20 years all have simple, rock-solid habits—sleep, nutrition, warm-up, recovery—that they do every single day. It’s like brushing your teeth. Those habits don’t look flashy, but they compound over time. For younger players, one of the greatest gifts we can give them is exposure—let them try things, make mistakes, and eventually build their own routine. Because when the season gets hard—when they’re not playing well or not playing at all—that routine becomes their anchor. It gives them something they control in a world where so much is out of their hands.”

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This week we had the honor to interview a group of ATP sports performance experts in pro tennis.

• Al Murphy, senior S&C coach at Tennis Australia. Al works with tennis players such as Rinky Hijikata, Emerson Jones and Aleks Vukic. He is also the head of sports science at Tennis Australia.

• Zack Evenden, an experienced performance coach. Zack has worked with top tennis players like Frances Tiafoe, and Michael Mmoh.

• Dirk Spits, the National Physical Performance Manager at Tennis Australia. Dirk works with pro tennis players such as James Duckworth, and Ajla Tomljanovic.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with them:

Q1. Recovery Innovations

Al Murphy:

“When you’re on the road for forty-plus weeks of the year, recovery tools need to be portable and practical. Players can’t be dragging around bulky devices to every city, so what we’ve been focusing on are compact, travel-friendly solutions. We still lean on the basics—contrast therapy, cold water immersion—when tournaments provide them, but the newer tech that excites me is neuromodulation and cooling. We’ve trialed companies like Firefly and Pulsetto, which target nerve stimulation, and even products like the CoolMitt for portable cooling on court. The key is, if a player can pull it out of their bag anywhere in the world and use it easily, it has a real chance of becoming part of their routine.”

Dirk Spits:

“We can’t underestimate the placebo effect in recovery. A big part of our philosophy is exposing players to different modalities and letting them decide what works for them. If they believe a device is helping, that belief alone can move the needle as long as it’s safe and backed by our applied science team. But we constantly remind them that gadgets don’t replace the fundamentals. Sleep hygiene, nutrition, and mental recovery are still the foundation. As an organization we place emphasis on well-being as part of recovery hence players can be direct to mindfulness apps like Calm, Headspace, or even Healthy Minds, which tracks your stress and meditation journey. Recovery isn’t about one magic tool—it’s about building a hundred-point scale of recovery habits, and each player needs to figure out their unique mix of strategies to hit that hundred.”

Zack Evenden:

“In my experience, recovery devices are as much about psychology as physiology. Sometimes a player tries something during a good week, and from that moment on, they swear by it—even if the science says otherwise. I’ve seen guys lug NormaTec boots across continents because they believe it gave them the edge. That belief makes them more disciplined in their recovery, so in a strange way it does work. At the same time, it has to fit their personality and habits. If the tool is too complicated, too heavy, or doesn’t mesh with how they travel, it won’t last. What matters is consistency. If a player finds something they trust—whether it’s neurostimulation, ice baths, or simply meditation—they’ll stick to it, and that routine becomes a cornerstone of their performance on tour.”

Q2. Nutrition & Hydration in Extreme Conditions

Zack Evenden:

“Science gives you the framework, but execution and discipline decide whether it works. Too many players think hydration starts an hour before the match, and they’re chugging bottles courtside trying to make up for it. By then, it’s too late. Hydration is a habit—you’ve got to be ahead of it the night before and even days leading in. I’ve seen everything courtside—pickle juice, Coca-Cola, maple syrup, even pasta sauce sachets. Some of it is superstition, some of it works neurologically, but ultimately it comes down to consistency. Are you hydrated before you step on court? Are you clear-headed and fueled? That’s the difference between surviving three hours in brutal heat and completely shutting down.”

Dirk Spits:

“Cramping isn’t always about fluid loss—it can also be neurological. That’s why interventions like pickle juice or menthol lozenges work: they disrupt the brain’s cramp signal, not the muscle itself. We’ve experimented with everything from sour lollies to menthol sprays to slushies pioneered by the Queensland Academy of Sport during the Beijing Olympics. The trick is not just cooling the body, but convincing the mind that conditions are tolerable. At Tennis Australia, we’ve moved away from putting all our faith in sweat testing and focused more on day-to-day behaviors: are players eating breakfast, are they drinking with meals, are they fueling consistently? Because if you don’t store fluid properly through food and routine, you’re setting yourself up for dehydration regardless of what drink is in your bottle on match day.”

Al Murphy:

“Heat adaptation is non-negotiable. It takes at least two weeks to properly adapt to high heat and humidity, and yet every year we see players try to fly straight into Melbourne or Miami and expect to cope. They end up shocked by the conditions. We’ve had players fly from winter in Brisbane to Florida, and the first few sessions are brutal—they’re sweating buckets, struggling with the heat load. So, we use saunas, steam rooms, and staged exposure in training blocks to start that adaptation before the trip. It’s not glamorous, but it’s the difference between a player who thrives in a four-hour Australian Open marathon and one who cramps out. You can’t fake physiological adaptation—it has to be built systematically.”

Q3. AI-Driven Analytics

Zack Evenden:

“One of the first times I really saw the power of live analytics was at the Next Gen Finals, where coaches had tablets courtside. Francis was over-covering the wide serve against Ugo Humbert because he assumed the lefty pattern would dominate. But the live data showed Ugo was punishing him with flat serves down the middle. With that information, we shifted Francis’ position by just a single step. That small tactical tweak completely changed the match dynamic—suddenly the pressure disappeared. For me, that was a lightbulb moment. When the data is clear and applied in real time, it feels like cheating—in the best possible way. It’s a competitive edge that can tilt a match with just one adjustment.”

Al Murphy:

“AI will never replace a coach’s eye, but it massively accelerates the process of analysis. What used to take a staffer a week of coding can now be done in hours through machine learning and pattern recognition. That means coaches can spend their time asking better questions rather than sifting through raw video. At Tennis Australia, our data teams are feeding Hawkeye and Bolt6 information live, which gives us a tactical breakdown as the match progresses. It’s not as useful early in the match, but once trends emerge—like a serve location bias or movement pattern—we can feed coaches actionable insights faster than ever before. The impact isn’t that AI changes the role of the coach; it’s that it empowers the coach to act with sharper, real-time intelligence.”

Dirk Spits:

“The danger with AI is creating over-reliant athletes. Players must still be able to solve problems themselves under pressure. If all the answers come from a data feed or a coach whispering adjustments, they lose the resilience to adapt in the moment. I see AI as a complement—something that accelerates learning, gives us richer scouting reports, and helps coaches refine match plans. But during a five-set battle, it’s still the player’s mind that has to figure it out. Matches at the elite level are often decided by a handful of points. Sometimes the right call is to stick to the game plan and trust your instincts. Technology can inform, but it can’t replace internal decision-making under stress.”

Q4. Virtual Reality & Immersive Training

Al Murphy:

“We’ve tested VR with PhD projects using AO match data, and the technology is improving, but in professional tennis it hasn’t crossed the threshold of adoption yet. The big hurdle is buy-in from both players and coaches. Most pros still prefer time on the court or traditional film review over strapping into a headset. For serve and return training, there’s potential—especially for juniors who’ve never seen the speed or shape of a top-10 player’s ball—but in general the transfer to live hitting isn’t there yet. Until VR can replicate the sound, the feel, and the timing of a real rally, it will remain on the fringes.”

Dirk Spits:

“I see VR as a tool with niche value rather than a mainstream training method. It might be powerful for juniors stepping up in competition—they could virtually experience what it’s like to face Novak Djokovic’s serve before ever standing on that baseline. It could also be a rehab tool for injured players who can’t hit balls but want to stay mentally sharp. But for tactical awareness, I still believe in old-school methods: players should be watching more tennis, studying patterns with their coach, and having real dialogue about how to construct points. VR can simulate, but it can’t yet replicate the sensory richness of live tennis—the sound, the timing, the depth perception. For me, film study is still the superior tool for developing tactical intelligence.”

Zack Evenden:

“For some players—especially those who are younger, injured, or into gamification—VR can keep them engaged and give them decision-making reps off court. But at the end of the day, tennis is a game of feel. You have to hear the ball, feel the spin, and judge the pace in real time. No VR system has captured that yet. I see it more as a supplemental tool, something you plug into very specific situations, rather than a core part of development. In other sports like Formula One or the NBA, VR is world class because the environments are more controlled. But in tennis, nothing will replace standing on the court and facing the reality of a live ball under pressure.”

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This week we have the honor to interview again Dr. Ron Dick, associate professor of sports marketing at Duquesne University in the school of business. Ron also worked for 20 years in sports, including 15 years in the NBA with the Sixers and the Nets, and then five years in the NCAA.

Watch the full video interview by clicking on the link below:

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ron located at the top of this blog post.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the following topics:

• WNBA: Should WNBA players get paid more?

• NCAA basketball: Colin Gillespie

• NFL: Shedeur Sanders, is he NFL ready? Tom Brady’s statue with the Patriots.

• MLB: First female empire in the MLB.

• MLB has no salary cap.

• MLB. MLB teams standings

• NBA: KD trade, coaching trade (Mike brown to the NY Knicks..).

• NBA's team expansion in Europe.

• SEC Football Netflix documentary

Here are the best quotes from our interview with Ron:

1. WNBA – Should WNBA players get paid more?"You have to look at where the league is now compared to when it started in 1997. The value of teams is going up. Television ratings are going up. Ticket sales — especially with Caitlin Clark’s games — are going up. Parking, concessions, merchandise — all of it is trending upward. The revenue is there. The players are helping create that revenue, so it’s only fair that they share in it. They’ve already made progress — for example, they don’t fly commercial anymore; now they fly charter. That’s the same change the NBA made in the mid-80s. Other women’s leagues failed in the past because they didn’t have that foundation the WNBA had through the NBA — arenas, sales teams, sponsorship people. Now, with the growth we’re seeing, it’s time to pay these players more."

2. NCAA Basketball: Colin Gillespie"When you look at players like Colin Gillespie, he was on a two-way contract and made less than a million dollars last year, while two of his former Villanova teammates were making over a million dollars each to play just 30 games. I just don’t see how schools like Villanova or others in the Big East can sustain paying 12–15 players on a roster that kind of money. The television and ticket revenue just isn’t there, nor is the annual giving. I think we’re heading for a sort of dot-com bust moment where we’ll move backward a bit to reevaluate the money situation. The big conferences will be fine — the TV money will keep them afloat — but there will be growing pains and resentment within conferences like the ACC when certain teams get more exposure and more revenue than others."

3. NFL – Shedeur Sanders & Tom Brady’s statueOn Shedeur Sanders:"You’ve got to give credit where credit is due. He came in, had a couple of injuries in that quarterback room in Cleveland, and played better than a lot of people thought he would. They drafted a quarterback ahead of him, they had three veterans already in the room, but he proved he could play. Now, does one good performance make him Hall of Fame material? No. But it does earn him another opportunity. He still had some non-traditional, even bizarre, interviews before the draft that scared some teams away. But good for him, and good for his dad — if he plays well again in his next game, maybe he becomes the opening day starter. And for a franchise like Cleveland, which has had some of the worst luck with quarterbacks, finding a capable starter could be huge."

On Tom Brady’s statue:"How could he not get a statue? He absolutely deserves it. The bigger question is whether Bill Belichick will get one too. Right now, there are some bad feelings between Belichick and ownership, and it reminds me of situations like Jimmy Johnson with the Cowboys. It took decades before he was properly honored despite his Hall of Fame status. If you’re in the Hall of Fame, you should be on the wall of fame or have a statue. We’ll have to see how the Patriots ultimately handle Belichick’s legacy."

4. MLB – First female umpire"On August 9th, Jen Pawol became the first female to ever umpire a Major League Baseball game. She’s 48 years old, went to Hofstra, and is from West Milford, New Jersey. This prompted me to look at other sports — the NBA had Violet Palmer in 1997, the NFL had Sarah Thomas in 2015, who’s even officiated playoff games and a Super Bowl. The NHL, however, still has zero female referees. My prediction is that Kate Guay will be the first. She’s done Olympic games, went to Brown, and has worked a ton of AHL games. I think by 2025 or 2026 she’ll break that barrier. Honestly, I don’t know what the NHL is waiting for — it’s time to make that move."

5. MLB – No salary cap"For casual fans, enjoy the rest of 2025 and all of 2026, because in 2027 we’re heading toward a major work stoppage. The owners want a salary cap like the NFL, NBA, and NHL have. Right now there’s only a luxury tax — if you go over a certain payroll, you pay into a pool that’s supposed to be shared with smaller markets. But players want unlimited salaries and also a salary floor so small market teams have to spend up to, say, $100M–$125M on payroll. Many small market owners don’t want that floor. So both sides are entrenched, and it’s going to get ugly — whether it’s a strike from players or a lockout by owners."

6. MLB teams standings"Right now, the Brewers are white hot and have the best record in baseball. The Phillies are doing better than the struggling Mets. In the West, the Dodgers are two games ahead of the Padres. But the Yankees — who just won the World Series last year — are six and a half games back of Toronto, with Boston in between. In the Central, Detroit is up six games over Cleveland. And in the AL West, Houston and Seattle are battling it out. On the flip side, the Colorado Rockies are in real danger of having one of the worst records in MLB history — they’ve only got 30 wins at the 118-game mark. Hopefully they can at least get to 40 or 42."

7. NBA – KD trade, coaching changesOn KD to Houston:"Texas is attractive to players because there’s no state tax, and Florida has that same advantage. KD’s still playing at a high level despite his age and mileage. He’s had a Hall of Fame career, and moving to Houston could work out well for him if he’s surrounded by the right talent. I hope he has the supporting cast to make a run in the West."

On Mike Brown to the Knicks:"The NBA is a carousel for coaches — it’s constant movement. Mike Brown has plenty of head coaching experience, including success with LeBron in Cleveland. Personally, I would’ve stayed with Tom Thibodeau, but I’m biased because I worked with him in the Sixers organization. Still, Brown is experienced, and with that, you give him a shot."

8. NBA – Team expansion in Europe"Expansion is going to happen — I think it’s inevitable. I can see teams in Paris, London, maybe Berlin. Europe will be first, then Asia — possibly a team in China or Japan. It’s going to be a challenge logistically, but the NBA has the global brand and the financial incentive to make it work. Imagine the ticket sales and TV revenue from those markets. My prediction: Europe first, Asia second, within the next 5–10 years."

9. SEC Netflix documentary"The SEC is the closest thing to the NFL in terms of talent level and fan passion. Along with the Big Ten, it’s where most NFL players come from. The stadiums are sold out, the rivalries are intense, and for people who haven’t worked in college athletics, the scale might be eye-opening. The documentary gives that behind-the-scenes look fans love — just like NFL training camp series where you see players get cut or make the team. It even captures moments like Vanderbilt upsetting bigger programs, which is huge for those schools. And yes, Nick Saban once famously said the SEC was a war every week ‘except when you go to Vanderbilt’ — and he had to eat those words."

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Johnny Ferlito, CEO of MaXXX-Force, an innovative strength training device that takes performance enhancement to a whole new level.

MaXXX-Force enhances athletic performance to levels that can never otherwise be achieved. Unlike any other strength equipment in the industry, MaXXX-Force adaptive resistance provides athletes the ability to safely train at their maximum concentric, isometric, and most importantly eccentric load capacity curves within the same rep. This is simply not possible with any other machine in the market today.

This unparalleled and intense method of resistance maximizes athletes force outputs, explosive power, neuromuscular recruitment (Type II), muscle mass, flexibility and injury prevention. MaXXX-Force is raising the ceiling of athletic performance higher than ever before.

Here are some videos explaining how the MaXXX-Force machine works:

You can listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page,

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, his company and product, the benefits for teams to use his product. We also talked about the state of the resistance training market, his competitive advantage, and his plans for the next 12 months.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Johnny located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Johnny:

Q1. Tell me about your background

“I’m a former athlete—I played college football and then spent four years in arena football. So, for most of my life, everything revolved around training in one way or another—whether it was on-field drills, strength training, or recovery. Performance enhancement became a core passion. After I stopped playing, I became a certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) and launched my own athletic training company. I worked with athletes across all age groups to improve their speed, strength, and agility. Over time, I expanded to multiple locations and eventually transitioned the business into one of the first 7-on-7 football training programs in Illinois. My passion for both coaching and performance development is really what led me down the path to founding MaXXX-Force.”

Q2. How did you get the idea of launching MaXXX-Force?

“It started back in 2013. I came across a line of equipment that made a bold claim—it said it could deliver better results in a 15-minute workout than a typical two-hour free weight session. That instantly grabbed my attention as a strength coach and former athlete. I started using it and quickly realized the potential. It was like a ‘holy cow’ moment—I could see what it was trying to do. But the equipment had some major design limitations. You needed eight different machines to train your whole body, it had fixed planes of motion, the motors weren't strong enough, and it wasn’t customizable.

So I thought, ‘What if I built something better?’ That’s when I started developing my own proof of concept at the end of 2013. I took it to the NSCA conference in Louisville and the response was overwhelming—our booth was packed the whole time. Coaches were ready to buy it on the spot. That’s when I knew I had something real. From there, I hired engineering firms, went through countless prototypes, tested and refined the product for years. Fast forward to now, 10 years later, and we finally launched our production model in February. That’s how MaXXX-Force was born—from recognizing a need and deciding to go all in on solving it.”

Q3. Tell me about your company and where you are currently

“MaXXX-Force has come a long way since our early prototype days. We spent nearly a decade fine-tuning every detail—working with professional engineers, strength coaches, and athletes to make the most comprehensive, efficient, and effective strength training machine out there. We officially launched our production model at the 2024 HFA show, and we’ve already exhibited at major conferences like CSCCa. The machine is now live, and the feedback has been phenomenal. Teams are seeing how it can fit into their programs immediately—whether for strength gains, performance enhancement, or rehab. We’re at the beginning of a major push to get Max Force into elite programs, universities, training centers, and beyond.”

Q4. Tell me about your product

“MaXXX-Force is an adaptive resistance machine—meaning the resistance dynamically adjusts in real time throughout each phase of the exercise. Our muscles aren’t equally strong across a movement. Think about a squat—you’re stronger at the top and weakest at the bottom. You’re also stronger during the eccentric phase (lowering the weight) than the concentric phase (lifting it).

Traditional weights don’t account for that. You lift the same fixed load through the entire range. But with MaXXX-Force, the machine adjusts to your maximum output at each point—concentric, eccentric, and isometric. It reads your force production in real time and responds instantly. Athletes are training at their max capacity—safely—through every rep, every phase, every set. That means faster and more efficient gains, with less wear and tear.

We’ve built in software that creates individual athlete profiles, tracks their baseline performance, and prescribes personalized workouts. You can customize every variable—intensity, volume, tempo. It’s a fully integrated training ecosystem that’s built for performance, rehab, or general strength training.”

Q5. How is your product unique?

“What really sets MaXXX-Force apart is our ability to deliver true eccentric overload across the entire strength curve. Other machines say they do it, but we actually achieve it. Eccentric overload is when the load exceeds what you can handle concentrically, forcing the muscle to resist in a way that fires up every fiber—it's a huge driver of neuromuscular adaptation and growth.

Plus, with MaXXX-Force, athletes hit mechanical failure right from the first rep. They’re training under maximal stimulus for the entire set. That’s incredibly rare. Traditional lifting might give you one or two meaningful reps in a set—on our system, it’s 60–90 seconds of continuous, targeted stress on muscle and connective tissue.

And all of this happens with precision and safety. The system automatically protects the athlete by responding to their output, rather than forcing them to match an external weight. That’s game-changing.”

Q6. What gives you a competitive advantage?

“There are three big things. First, we offer true eccentric overload across the full range of motion. That alone puts us in a different class. Second, the training stimulus is constant and meaningful. Athletes aren’t just moving weight—they’re being pushed to their max safely, which drives faster gains in strength, power, and muscle mass.

Third—and this is huge—athletes can now train at max intensity year-round, even in-season. With free weights, coaches often have to scale back during the season to avoid injuries. MaXXX-Force eliminates that trade-off. It allows for intense, high-quality training with far less risk. Coaches can now keep athletes strong and resilient without worrying about overloading or tweaking something in the weight room. That’s why teams are so excited about it.”

Q7. What are the benefits for teams?

“Teams get more out of their athletes in less time. Period. MaXXX-Force helps them build strength, power, force output—all the things that translate to better performance on the field, court, or ice. And we do it safely, efficiently, and with data.

Coaches can track baselines, progress, and make adjustments in real time. Whether it’s for a football team trying to maintain power during the season or a basketball player coming back from an injury, MaXXX-Force adapts to their needs. It’s a one-stop system for performance and rehab. And because it works across sports—football, basketball, hockey, tennis, you name it—it’s truly universal.”

Q8. What is your take on the resistance training market?

“  I really believe the strength and conditioning world is evolving, like it always does, but this time with an even bigger focus on safety efficiency and just flat out better results in less time. we're in a digital age and we're seeing a huge shift towards smart feedback tools. Coaches now have access to deeper performance insights, not just rep sets and how how much weight they did, but real time data that shows how their athletes are actually moving and progressing. And one area that's really exploded is digital resistance. Isometrics and eccentric overload are finally getting the attention they deserve.

And for good reason. I mean, eccentric training is arguably the most important phase of strength development, but up until now, it hasn't been possible to train that phase properly or consistently. And due to MaXXX-Force that's now changing. It's all about training with intent, maximizing results in a way that's safe, measurable, and effective.

With MaXXX-Force, it's twofold. Athletes get the benefits of the adaptive resistance and max loading in all three contraction phases, but they also get that real time digital feedback and data that allows them to track and push their limits. Every single rep coaches can gauge effort now. Not just per workout, but literally second by second.

So there's no more guesswork and no more wasted reps. So we're seriously excited to be leading the charge with adaptive resistance technology. MaXXX-Force isn't just another tool. It really is a complete shift in how we train for performance. The future of strain training is about efficiency, data-driven and built to bring out the best in every athlete, and we're proud to be a part of that”.

Q9. What are your plans for the next 12 months?

“The goal is simple: get MaXXX-Force into as many elite performance and rehab programs as possible. We’ve spent nine years refining what we believe is the most versatile and effective strength machine in the world. Now we’re focused on expansion.

That means building relationships with college teams, pro organizations, private training facilities, sports medicine centers—even corporate wellness and gym chains. Long term, we may explore an in-home version, but for now, our focus is on high-performance environments. We’re just getting started, and the momentum is real.”

Q10. What is the best way to reach out to you?

“The best way is through our website: www.maxxxforce.com — and that’s with three Xs, MAXXFORCE.com. All our contact info, emails, and phone numbers are listed there. We also have an Instagram account: maxx.xforce (we had to add the dot because of the triple-X).

On the site, we’ve got a full video library that breaks down how the machine works across different user types—athletes, rehab patients, general fitness. Coaches can see the machine in action and understand exactly how it could plug into their program.  We can also be reached via email. Our email is info@maxforce.com. That again, that's three Xs info@maxxxforce.com.”

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This week we have the honor to interview again a group of MLS sports performance executives to talk about the latest trends in the world of sports performance and rehabilitation.

• Michael Messer, the head of rehabilitation at Nashville SC (MLS).

• Darcy Norman, the Director of Performance at Chicago Fire FC (MLS).

• Karam Al-Hamdani, the Director of Sports Medicine and Head Athletic Trainer at the CF Montreal (MLS).

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Michael, Darcy, and Karam:

Q1. What’s one innovation or methodology in global football that MLS teams should adopt more aggressively?

Darcy Norman:

“The globalization of the game has really flattened the playing field—ideas, tech, and methodologies are traveling fast. But what concerns me is how we interpret and apply research. There’s this trend now where we latch onto headlines instead of engaging critically with the full body of work. For example, the idea that ACL recovery should take exactly nine months becomes gospel, even if the underlying study had a really small sample size or narrow scope. We end up chasing metrics or timelines that aren’t rooted in strong evidence. I think MLS teams—and really all of us—need to get better at being skeptical and intellectually curious, not just grabbing onto flashy data points. Let’s actually read the research, understand the methodology, and apply it within context. That’s something I saw more of in Europe, especially at Bayern and the German national team. The best environments are driven by informed decision-making, not just confirmation bias.”

Karam Al-Hamdani:

“One thing we’re still struggling with in North America is the rigidity around hiring international staff. You might have someone with incredible experience—say a world-class physio from Ligue 1 or the Bundesliga—but bringing them in is a massive legal and credentialing headache. Europe just doesn’t have that same bureaucracy. Their systems are more fluid, and that allows for cross-pollination of people, not just ideas. If MLS wants to grow and really become globally competitive, we have to be more open—not just to importing knowledge but to letting talent in the door. That’s how new philosophies, methodologies, and even rehab protocols spread and improve a team’s capacity to evolve.”

Michael Messer:

“One of the more interesting things I saw during my time in Europe was how clubs brought in PhD students or researchers from nearby universities and embedded them into their performance teams. These weren’t interns—they were conducting real-time research that was immediately applicable to training or recovery processes. There’s this fluid exchange between science and sport, and the players and staff both benefit from it. That kind of embedded academic collaboration is something I think MLS could really benefit from. Right now, we tend to see that more at the NCAA level in the U.S., but it’s rare at the pro level. If we want to stay ahead or at least keep pace, that’s an innovation we should push toward—bringing science into the locker room, not just referencing it from the outside.”

Q2. What recovery modalities have become non-negotiable for your squad this season, and what’s fallen out of favor?

Karam Al-Hamdani:

“Recovery days in Montréal have evolved into comprehensive, full-service experiences. We’re not just doing a quick flush or static stretch anymore. We’ve structured the day around delayed arrival times to allow more sleep, followed by a progression of yoga, Pilates, mobility sessions, and hands-on medical assessments. From there, players move into their individualized recovery blocks—cold immersion, pneumatic compression, and even upper body lifts to stimulate a hormonal recovery response. We’ve partnered with a local wellness provider for optional cryotherapy, red light therapy, and infrared sauna access. These modalities are no longer just nice to have—they’re embedded into our rhythm. The players understand the 'why' behind them, and that’s what makes them stick. What’s fallen out of favor for us are the gimmicky, unvalidated tools—if there’s no evidence and no consistent feedback from the athletes, we phase it out.”

Darcy Norman:

“I use a pyramid model to structure recovery planning. At the base: you need solid fundamentals—sleep, nutrition, and planning. Those are non-negotiable. Then we build in tools like compression, hydrotherapy, soft tissue work, lifting, and parasympathetic recovery methods. Once those are dialed in, we consider the '2-percenters'—things like infrared beds, hyperbarics, and advanced wearables. We’ve also brought in Fly Kit, a nutraceutical solution designed to help athletes regulate light exposure and circadian rhythms during travel. That’s been a game-changer for international trips and jet lag. But we’re always careful not to throw tech at problems without context. The real question is: what fills this player’s bucket? If cold tubs don’t work for them but manual therapy does—we adjust. Our job is to recharge each player’s battery in the most efficient and individualized way possible.”

One tool we’re testing is the Nix Biosensor, which tracks sweat rate and electrolyte loss in real time. That’s helped us fine-tune hydration protocols for different players. But ultimately, recovery isn’t a one-size-fits-all model. It’s about consistency and getting player buy-in, not loading up the room with gadgets and assuming they’ll use them.”

Michael Messer:

“I think Darcy summed it up really well with the pyramid analogy. What I’ll add is that the base of the pyramid is where the most science exists—it’s the most proven to be effective. Our approach has been very centered around that foundation. This year, we've been more intentional about what the athletes are putting into their bodies—whether that’s hydration or food—on specific days of the week. That’s come from the staff growing and collaborating more closely with our coaching staff and director of high performance.

We’ve also adjusted training times depending on where we are in the week, which has helped. More recently, the big issue has been the heat. So we’ve been exploring any cooling strategies we can implement to reduce the negative effects and help the guys recover more effectively. We’ve spent a lot of this season doubling down on the foundation—sleep, hydration, and nutrition. With the heat being so brutal this year, we’ve had to customize our training and recovery windows to ensure players aren’t depleted.

Q3. Are you piloting any AI-driven tools, and how are they being received?

Darcy Norman:

“We’re currently testing a few different tools—vMotion, B1 Sports, and other AI-enhanced movement screening platforms. I also use AI personally to summarize workflows, clean up documentation, and improve efficiency. The catch is: if the system doesn’t fit seamlessly into existing processes, or if it demands a ton of time to validate the outputs, it’s just not practical. You also have to be careful about what data you feed into the system. AI doesn’t remove the need for critical thinking. If you input bad data, you’ll get bad recommendations, no matter how smart the algorithm is. So I still validate everything manually. Until we reach the point where the tech truly understands context, we have to act as the filter between raw data and decision-making.”

Karam Al-Hamdani:

“At the moment, I’d say AI hasn’t made a massive impact on how we work. Sure, there are a few tools we’ve looked at for administrative organization or wellness flagging, but I haven’t seen anything yet that gives us a decisive edge on the pitch. In a game of such fine margins, we need tools that elevate decision-making, not just data collection. Right now, a lot of what’s out there still feels like AI for the sake of AI. I’m not opposed to it—I just don’t think we’ve reached the point where it’s essential yet. Ask me again in five years and I might give you a completely different answer.”

Michael Messer:

“We’re using some AI-adjacent tech, particularly through our Valor system, which provides movement analysis and some automated load insights. It’s useful, but I’ll admit I still like to look at the raw numbers myself. Part of that is trust—if I don’t understand how the model is making its decisions, I hesitate to rely on it. I’ve joked that I need an ‘AI 101 for Coaches’ class, because I’m just not there yet. We’re still in the early adopter phase, and I’m very cautious about letting AI guide decisions without deep understanding. I’d rather have something simple and trustworthy than something that’s cutting-edge but unexplainable.”

Q4. With Apple TV and global exposure increasing, has there been more pressure to optimize performance for primetime matches or international audiences?

Darcy Norman:

“Honestly, compared to my experience in Europe, the schedule in MLS is still quite manageable. At Bayern, we were playing league matches, domestic cups, Champions League, and players had national team duty layered on top. That’s 50 to 60 matches a year—plus travel. In MLS, it’s 34 games in the regular season and the occasional cup. Most of our matches are at 7:30 p.m. local, which gives us a rhythm and allows for better planning. Where the stress hits is during FIFA windows. You might lose 5–6 players to international duty and still have to compete in the league. That’s where we feel the strain—not from broadcast demands, but from roster gaps and condensed fixtures.”

Karam Al-Hamdani:

“I wouldn’t say Apple TV or international exposure directly affects how we operate medically. The pressure is internal. It comes from wanting to do right by the players and the team. For me, it’s about ensuring a player is in the best possible condition to perform—regardless of whether it’s a primetime game or not. If a guy is 90% ready, and we have a national TV game, I’ll still advocate for him to wait if the risk is high. My north star is always the player’s long-term health and performance. External exposure doesn’t change that for me—it actually reinforces the need to be even more thorough.”

Michael Messer:

“I echo what Darcy and Karam said. No one’s knocking down our door saying, ‘You have to perform better because the game’s on Apple TV.’ That said, context matters. If we’re missing two starters because of international call-ups and another guy is coming off injury, we have to navigate those conversations carefully. Coaches want to know: can this guy go? Should he go 45 minutes or 90? The timing of the match—who’s watching, what’s at stake—absolutely influences those discussions, even if indirectly. And yeah, I might take a few extra minutes on match day to make sure I don’t look like a mess on the bench now that the cameras are everywhere!”

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This week we had the honor to interview a group of NCAA sports performance experts.

• Dr. John DeWitt, director of applied sports science in the athletic department and a faculty member, Rice University (NCAA team).

• Drew Lukes, Senior PT at Duke University and the head of sports science, Duke university’s women soccer team (NCAA team).

• Jordan Troester, PhD, Director of sports performance and sports science at the University of Oregon (UO), a top NCAA organization.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with them:

Q1. NIL Impact on Athlete Behavior, Stress, and Wellness Programming

Jordan Troester:

“We’re now about three years into the NIL era, and the shift has been significant. At first, the changes were cosmetic—you noticed the jewelry, the designer clothes, and the upgraded cars in the parking lot. But over time, it’s become much more than surface-level. Athletes are starting to see themselves as brands and entrepreneurs, and with that comes new expectations. They’re becoming more discerning about the resources available to them, both internally and externally. They now walk into our performance environment not just as students or athletes, but as business entities who might have a private trainer, an agent, or a sponsorship. This shift has pushed us to rethink our service delivery model. They’re no longer just recipients of care—they’re stakeholders who expect transparency, optionality, and personalized support. We’re moving into an era where athletes are curating their own development paths. That adds complexity, stress, and a need for better communication, not only with them but across all the support staff. The next 12 months will be critical in understanding what the future of NIL, revenue sharing, and collegiate athletic identity will look like.”

John DeWitt:

“To me, what NIL has done is fundamentally changed how athletes interact with institutional systems, especially in health and medical care. We’re already seeing situations where an athlete gets hurt at ‘State University’ and decides to get surgery at an outside facility, let’s say ‘Hospital B’. But then what happens with the rehabilitation? Does the hospital handle it, or is it now the responsibility of the university again? And what if that athlete transfers mid-rehab to another institution? These are very real challenges that blur the lines of responsibility and care. It used to be that we had a fairly linear system—injury, treatment, rehab, return. Now, that process may involve multiple external parties, and the decisions are influenced by business interests, personal branding goals, or private advisors. That changes how we deliver care and increases the administrative and logistical stress on staff. The ‘professionalization’ of collegiate athletes is creating a fragmented care model that we, quite frankly, are not yet equipped to manage efficiently. These are use cases we haven’t fully thought through, and many of us are learning and adapting in real time.”

Drew Lukes:

“What’s been most surprising for me is how NIL has completely changed the types of conversations I’m having with athletes during rehab. These are athletes in non-revenue sports—many of whom feel left out of the NIL conversation—and they’re starting to express frustration, disappointment, and even identity struggles as they see their peers benefiting financially while they feel overlooked. I’m a physical therapist. I didn’t go into this field expecting to talk about income equity or endorsement deals while rehabbing a hamstring injury. But that’s where we are. These issues are showing up in the training room, in casual conversations, and during care. And what’s tough is that I don’t always have the answers, but I still have to hold space for those feelings. It’s thrown us into uncharted territory where mental and emotional stress linked to economic disparities now directly impacts wellness and rehab outcomes. It’s clear that I—and many of us—need more education around NIL, not necessarily to negotiate deals, but to better support athletes through the emotional and logistical challenges that come with it.”

Q2. Strategies for Overuse and Non-Contact Injuries

Drew Lukes:

“I’m not sure we’ve truly nailed the basics yet. Things like sleep, nutrition, hydration, and self-care—those are still inconsistent. And until we can consistently execute those foundational habits across the board, I hesitate to jump into more complex load monitoring protocols. I’ve talked to coaching staffs about this: we can track sleep and prescribe load all we want, but if the athlete is eating once a day and sleeping five hours a night, that data loses its value. So from my point of view, at Duke, I’m still focused on helping us build a solid base before we start layering in more advanced tools.”

John DeWitt:

“At Rice, what’s evolved isn’t the data—it’s the awareness of the data. A few years ago, load monitoring was siloed. It might’ve been the responsibility of the strength coach, and that’s where it stayed. Now, I’m seeing coaches, athletic trainers, and nutritionists all asking questions about workload, fatigue, and readiness. They’re connecting dots. That’s been the biggest shift—not some breakthrough technology, but a cultural shift toward collaboration and shared responsibility. The information is more cross-functional, and that alone has made a huge impact. It’s also helped get buy-in for injury prevention strategies because now everyone sees how their area is impacted.”

Jordan Troester:

“We call it an ‘integrated high-performance team.’ It’s not a device or software that solves the injury problem—it’s getting everyone aligned on what athlete support should look like. That starts with a shared vision between the head coach, the strength staff, the athletic trainer, and the nutritionist. It even goes as far as the equipment manager and academic advisors. Are we scheduling in recovery time? Are 7 a.m. practices disrupting sleep cycles? Is the training load aligned with where we are in the competition calendar? None of that takes new tech—it takes intention, planning, and honest conversations. And no, we’re never fully there. It’s a process, but the commitment to that process is what’s most important.”

Q3. Standardizing Care Amid Private Trainers and Nutritionists

Jordan Troester:

“What’s new now is that athletes have money, and that creates new behaviors. This summer, during our football team’s off-season, we’ve had a number of players flying out of town on the weekends. Some are just vacationing, but others are meeting with private skill coaches or personal trainers. They’ll say, ‘Yeah, I’m getting some work in while I’m in L.A.’ That’s something we didn’t account for in our training load. And it’s not just the workouts—it’s the travel stress, sleep disruption, and unknown variables. They’re adding training volume that we don’t always have visibility into, and it changes how we plan our weeks. It’s not at the level yet where we’re syncing calendars with every athlete’s private coach, but it’s definitely a variable we need to be more aware of.”

Drew Lukes:

“At Duke, especially with our Olympic sports athletes, I’m seeing more families seek second and third opinions. And that’s not always a bad thing. It creates learning opportunities, and in some cases, it challenges us to be better. But it also requires humility. I have to put ego aside, get the discharge notes or post-op protocol from the outside provider, and re-integrate that athlete into our care plan. It’s no longer a linear rehab process. There are more cooks in the kitchen, and while that’s manageable, it’s also a new reality that forces us to stay nimble.”

John DeWitt:

“Having worked in the NBA, I’m used to this kind of care model. Pro athletes have teams of people working on their behalf—strength coaches, massage therapists, dietitians—and communication between parties is essential. At the college level, it’s newer, and the infrastructure isn’t quite there yet to support that kind of external collaboration. But it’s coming. And the challenge is that every case is different, so you can’t create a blanket policy. You need principles and a case-by-case mindset.”

Q4. Mental Health and Athlete Identity Beyond Sport

John DeWitt:

“Rice University recently hired an Associate AD to oversee mental health, and that’s largely in response to NCAA mandates. It’s a good step forward, but one person can’t meaningfully serve 400+ athletes. So in many ways, the role is more about coordination and system building than direct service. Beyond that, my wife—who is a psychiatrist—started a sports psychiatry program at UT’s McGovern Medical School because she saw a major gap in this space. People hear ‘mental health’ and think about sleep, mindfulness, and stress. But we’re also talking about depression, anxiety, PTSD—clinical issues that deeply affect performance. That layer is often overlooked in favor of wellness strategies. We need to shift our mindset to include clinical care as a pillar of performance, not just recovery.”

Drew Lukes:

“As a practitioner working directly with athletes on a daily basis, I’ve come to realize that supporting mental health isn’t just a part of my job—it’s inescapable. Whether you’re in the middle of a rehab session or a casual check-in, these conversations just happen. Athletes are under more pressure than ever, and many of them don’t even realize how that pressure is affecting them until it manifests physically or emotionally. I’ve had to become much more comfortable having these conversations, even though I’m not a licensed psychologist. I try to listen, validate, and then guide them to the right resources when I can. We’re definitely making strides at Duke—there are more formal mental health resources available, but there’s still a gap, especially for our non-revenue sports athletes. It’s something we’re learning to navigate together. We’re not just rehabbing injuries anymore—we’re helping athletes manage the weight of expectations, identity struggles, and future uncertainties.”

Jordan Troester:

“We’ve tried to be more intentional about how we build connection and psychological safety into the environment. It’s not just about having access to a counselor—it’s about making mental health part of our culture, not an add-on. That means adjusting training schedules to account for academic stress, communicating better with athletes about expectations, and watching for red flags during recovery. We’re also leaning more into our integrated high-performance model where everyone on staff—not just the mental health professionals—is responsible for supporting the athlete’s whole self. Athletes spend more time with performance coaches, athletic trainers, and PTs than they do with any psychologist. So if we’re not equipped to spot signs of burnout, disconnection, or distress, we’re missing opportunities. In my view, mental health is no longer a separate pillar—it has to be woven into everything we do.”

Q5. NIL Resource Gaps and Competitive Readiness

Jordan Troester:

“The performance gap between resource-rich and resource-limited schools is real. But what I find fascinating is how this forces strategic thinking. You can’t compete in everything, so where are you going to invest? At Oregon, we pour into football and basketball. But that means other programs—like women’s soccer—don’t face the same resource gaps relative to their competition. If a mid-major school says, ‘Let’s dominate in softball or women’s volleyball,’ that might be their ticket to relevance. It’s not just about revenue anymore—it’s about brand building and differentiation. Athletics is still the front porch of the university, and with higher ed facing a marketing crisis, schools need to think hard about where they invest for visibility and impact.”

John DeWitt:

“From my perspective, NIL hasn’t changed how I treat athletes. Whether it’s an NFL-bound wide receiver or the last athlete on the tennis team, I provide the same care and attention. But I understand that for the broader athletic department, there are resource allocation decisions that have to be made. That’s where the performance gap shows up—in budgets and priorities—not necessarily in the day-to-day care we provide.”

Drew Lukes:

“I don’t have a whole lot to add beyond what Jordan shared, but I will say I’d never really thought about it the way he framed it—and I found that perspective fascinating. The idea that mid-majors or smaller schools might strategically invest in emerging or non-revenue sports like women’s soccer or ultimate frisbee to carve out a competitive niche… that’s a really compelling way to reimagine what success looks like in the NIL era. I think it’ll be really fun to watch over the next few years to see how different schools respond—whether they double down on traditional revenue sports or explore alternate paths that better align with their institutional identity and resources.”

Q6. Timeframe for Tech Adoption

Jordan Troester:

“There are levels to tech adoption. The first phase—where staff know how to use it—can happen in a month or two. But full integration, where it’s central to our workflow and decision-making, takes a year minimum. For a new tool to truly shape our processes, everyone—from the coaches to the athletic trainers—needs to understand the ‘why’ behind it. What problem is it solving? What decisions will it impact? That cultural buy-in takes time.”

Drew Lukes:

“It varies. If it’s a simple tool—like a hydration tester that doesn’t upload data to the cloud—we can get it up and running in a month. But if it requires IT security approval, legal vetting, and broad implementation, it can easily take six months or more.”

John DeWitt:

“I put together a one-page game day report showing hydration and force plate data for one of our teams. Two weeks later, when I didn’t send it, the coach asked where it was. That’s quick adoption—but it only happened because I had spent a year building trust and showing value. Implementation speed isn’t just about the tool—it’s about relationships, trust, and timing.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing a group of MLB practitioners that are experts in mental performance and preparation.

• Lindsay Shaw, Director of Sport psychology for the Guardians, an MLB team.

• Zach Brandon, Head of Mental Performance and Coach Development, for the Arizona Diamondbacks, an MLB team.

• Len Zaichkowsky, PhD, retired Professor from the Boston University, World-class’ sports biofeedback expert.

• Josh Kozuch, Mental Performance Coach for the Baltimore Orioles, an MLB team.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

In this interview we discussed the following topics:

• Misconceptions & rewarding aspects of the job as mental coach.

• Leveraging failure as a growth tool in the MLB.

• The minor league gauntlet

• The pressure and MLB culture

• The stigma around mental health

You can also read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Lindsay, Zach, Len, and Josh located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Lindsay, Josh, Len and Zach:

Q1 – Misconceptions & Rewarding Aspects of the Job

Lindsay Shaw

“When I first started, I was understandably intimidated. Working at the Olympic Committee, surrounded by some of the best athletes in the world, I thought, ‘What do I know?’ I was a Division I athlete, but this felt like a whole different universe. Over time, though, I realized I did have expertise—deep, meaningful experience in psychology, supported by mentors like Len Zaichkowsky and years of applied practice. What changed for me wasn’t just confidence; it was the realization that these elite athletes often lack development in basic areas like relationships, identity outside sport, and emotional regulation. They’re hyper-specialized in their craft, but often underdeveloped in life skills. Helping them explore those parts of themselves—joining them on that journey—is a privilege I never take for granted. That’s the most consistently rewarding aspect of this job: building trust, helping people become more whole, not just better players.”

Josh Kozuch

“Coming out of grad school, I expected players to be closed off to mental performance. That belief came from my own playing experience—college baseball in an environment where mental skills were never talked about. I had this insecurity too: ‘I didn’t play pro ball—what right do I have to tell these guys anything?’ But I quickly learned that most of the resistance I imagined was just that—imagined. Once players saw who I was and how I approached the work, they opened up. And the most rewarding moments are the unexpected ones—when a guy texts you years later to say, ‘Hey, remember that conversation we had in 2021?’ Sometimes I don’t even remember the exchange, but they do. It meant something. That’s incredibly fulfilling.”

Zach Brandon

“One of the biggest shifts for me was the realization that I didn’t need to be the star of the show. Early on, I thought I had to deliver the insights myself—player by player, one-on-one. Over time, I saw that working through coaches could be just as powerful, sometimes even more so. Coaches are present every day. They live in the clubhouse, on the field, in the cages. They’re the ones reinforcing mindset every single moment. My role became more about empowering them—giving them the tools and confidence to have those conversations themselves. That’s how we amplify our impact. I use a basketball metaphor a lot: I don’t need to score all the points. I’m happy to be the one dishing assists so others can lead. But when the moment demands it—when it’s my time to take the shot—I’m ready. That shift in perspective changed everything.”

Len Zaichkowsky

“When I entered this field over 50 years ago, my biggest misconception was assuming elite athletes already knew how to train their minds. I expected them to be well-versed in mental skills. But they weren’t—and many still aren’t. For decades, physical preparation dominated. We’d measure VO2 max, power, speed—but cognitive development? That was ignored. It’s only in the last several years that I’ve seen a real pivot toward the cognitive domain. And I agree with what the others said—the best thing we can do now is teach the teachers. Working with coaches gives you exponential impact. They’ve got the experience, the credibility, and the presence. When they’re empowered to reinforce mental performance daily, that’s when culture truly shifts.”

Q2 – Leveraging Failure as a Growth Tool

Zach Brandon

“Failure is inevitable in baseball. What separates those who grow from it versus those who crumble often comes down to two things: expectations and explanations. Before the failure occurs, what are your expectations? Do you believe the path will be linear? That your hard work will always be rewarded? If so, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Then, after failure hits, how do you explain it to yourself? Do you view it as evidence that you’re broken, or as a temporary obstacle? I love Derek Jeter’s line—‘Failure should be a speed bump, not a roadblock.’ We use that metaphor with players. And when you unpack failure like that—before, during, and after—you help athletes reframe setbacks into learning. It’s not about avoiding failure. It’s about mastering the way you respond to it.”

Lindsay Shaw

“Failure in baseball comes in so many forms—bad at-bats, not getting called up, season-ending injuries. But athletes often internalize those moments as indictments on their character. They feel shame, they avoid the topic, and they spiral. Our job is to help them see the full story. Sometimes you did everything right and the batter still crushed your best pitch. That’s not failure—that’s reality. And the best performers? They accept that. They don’t dwell. They reset. Those who struggle are often high in neuroticism—they ruminate, they overthink, they lose trust in themselves. We help them interrupt that cycle and rewrite the narrative. It’s a skill. It can be taught. And it changes careers.”

Josh Kozuch

“We try to give players back their sense of control. Failure will happen. It’s built into the game. But you always have a choice in how you respond. You gave up a home run—what’s your next pitch? You didn’t get called up—what are you doing about it? I also make sure players don’t only hear from us when they’re struggling. If the mental coach only shows up during a slump, you become the grim reaper. Instead, we talk during the good times too. What’s working? What are you doing when you’re thriving? That way, when failure comes, you have reference points—and a relationship—that helps you bounce back.”

Len Zaichkowsky

“The long arc of baseball is built on failure. Some of the best players in the league were stuck in the minors for years. But we forget that. I try to bring in real examples—guys who had terrible starts, got written off, then figured it out. When you show players those stories, you normalize the struggle and help them stay the course.”

Q4 – The Minor League Gauntlet

Josh Kozuch

“What people don’t realize is that these guys aren’t just baseball players—they’re growing into adulthood under extreme stress. They’re figuring out relationships, some are starting families, and they’re doing it while living out of suitcases, earning modest wages, and facing constant performance pressure. Most don’t have role models for this journey. That’s why bringing in veteran players to talk with the younger guys is so valuable. When a minor leaguer hears a big leaguer say, ‘I struggled too,’ it reframes their experience. It tells them they’re not alone—and that they can get through it too.”

Len Zaichkowsky

“The best thing I tell guys moving from the minors to the majors is simple: it’s still baseball. Yes, the pitches are faster, the pressure is higher—but the fundamentals haven’t changed. Play it like you did when you were a kid. When you lose that sense of joy and freedom, that’s when you get tight. Keep it simple. Enjoy the game.”

Zach Brandon

“One of the unique challenges of the minor league journey is that it’s not just about baseball—it’s about building a life under constant uncertainty. These are young men navigating adult responsibilities—some are getting married, starting families, dealing with real life—while also chasing an incredibly difficult dream. And what makes it even harder is that most of them don’t come from a background where they’ve seen this path modeled. They may be the first in their families, or even in their communities, to go through this kind of professional pressure. That isolation can weigh heavily.

One strategy I’ve seen work well is having veteran big leaguers talk to minor league players—especially in spring training. It helps normalize the struggles and challenges of the journey. These veterans say, ‘Hey, I went through it too. Here’s what helped me get through those long bus rides, the roster cuts, the not-knowing.’ When younger players hear that from someone who’s made it, it gives them hope, perspective, and a stronger sense of belonging. That human connection—that reminder that you’re not alone—is incredibly powerful in sustaining mental health and resilience through the grind.”

Lindsay Shaw

“Zach’s point is spot on—these players are trying to grow into the best versions of themselves on the field while simultaneously figuring out who they are off it. And the structure of professional baseball doesn’t always make that easy.

From a psychological standpoint, this period can be incredibly destabilizing. You’ve got players who dominated in college or high school suddenly facing daily reminders that they’re not guaranteed anything. Add to that the nomadic lifestyle, the inconsistent feedback, and the constant evaluation, and you have a recipe for identity stress.

What I try to do is re-center them in the ‘why’—why they started playing, what brings them joy in the game, and who they want to become, not just as players but as people. And then I help them build habits and emotional skills to manage those inevitable ups and downs. It’s not just about surviving the minor leagues. It’s about growing through them. That mindset shift—from ‘How do I make it?’ to ‘How do I grow while I’m here?’—can be transformative.”

Q5 – Pressure and MLB Culture

Lindsay Shaw

“The same mindset that gets players to the top can also tear them apart. Many develop a harsh inner voice—hypercritical, demanding, intolerant of anything less than perfection. That may work in the short term, but over time it erodes joy, damages relationships, and leads to burnout. What’s tragic is that many don’t even realize it’s happening—they just think they’re doing what it takes. Our work is helping them develop a healthier inner relationship. You can be elite and kind to yourself. You can strive without self-destruction.”

Josh Kozuch

“Baseball has made progress. Organizations now have full mental performance departments—not just one person trying to cover everything. We’re seeing the system start to evolve. It’s not perfect, but there’s more support now than there was a decade ago. And that’s making a difference.”

Zach Brandon

“I’ll speak more to the baseball system itself, rather than individual psychology. I think professional baseball has made meaningful progress in the last several years—especially when it comes to recognizing that mental performance and mental health support need to be built into the infrastructure, not added on as afterthoughts.

In the past, a single mental coach might have been asked to cover an entire organization—that’s hundreds of players across multiple levels, spread across the country or even the world. That model was never sustainable. What we’re seeing now is that more and more teams are building out true departments—not just mental skills coaches, but licensed clinicians, player care coordinators, and performance psychologists working together.

There’s still plenty of work to be done, but this shift represents a real acknowledgment that elite performance and long-term well-being are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they support each other. I’m encouraged by what I’m seeing, especially from organizations that are truly investing in this space—not just with personnel, but with time, leadership buy-in, and cultural integration. I’m excited to see where that momentum takes us.”

Dr. Len Zaichkowsky

“I think Lindsay articulated it perfectly—there is often a psychological toll that comes with the pursuit of greatness. Across every sport I’ve worked in—from hockey to baseball to Olympic disciplines—the pattern is the same. Athletes become elite because they drive themselves relentlessly, but over time, that drive can morph into self-punishment, emotional isolation, or even burnout.

What we’re starting to understand better—and what I think baseball is beginning to acknowledge—is that resilience and sustainability come from working with the whole person, not just the performer. As I’ve said before, this shift from focusing solely on physical attributes to valuing cognitive and emotional training is long overdue. But it’s coming. And when it does, I think we’ll see not just better performance—but longer, healthier careers and more fulfilled people at the end of them.”

Q6 – Stigma Around Mental Health

Lindsay Shaw

“A decade ago, talking to a psychologist in baseball was taboo. Now, many players have already worked with mental health professionals before they even get drafted. It’s becoming normal. They’re not coming in because they’re broken—they’re coming in because they want to grow. That shift is huge. But stigma still exists in some corners. Some players say, ‘My family told me never to do this.’ So we meet them where they are. We normalize the conversation, make it part of performance. Because that’s what it is.”

Len Zaichkowsky

“The turning point was when elite athletes started speaking out—Michael Phelps, Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles. That gave permission for everyone else. When players see that the best in the world struggle too, it lowers the barrier. It makes it okay to talk about what they’re going through.”

Zach Brandon

“The most powerful thing we do is leverage internal advocates. There’s always one guy in the clubhouse who’s respected and open about mental work. If he talks, others listen. And sometimes, that one conversation changes everything. Culture shifts from the inside out.”

Josh Kozuch

“There’s been a really positive shift in the last few years—more and more players are coming into pro baseball having already worked with mental performance coaches or psychologists. So the stigma isn’t what it used to be, at least not across the board. But that doesn’t mean it’s gone entirely. There are still guys, especially veterans or players from more traditional baseball backgrounds, who carry that mindset that talking to someone means something is ‘wrong’ with you.

That’s why one of the best tools we have is internal advocacy. When someone respected in the clubhouse opens up about using mental tools, others pay attention. You can leverage those voices—whether it’s a veteran player, a coach, or even a younger guy who’s found success—to shift the narrative. It’s one thing for me to say, ‘This stuff works.’ It’s another when a teammate says, ‘Hey, this helped me bounce back after a slump.’

You also have to be intentional about when and how you show up. If you’re only ever talking to guys when they’re struggling, you become the person associated with failure. So I make sure to connect with players when they’re succeeding too. We talk about what’s going well, what mental habits are helping them thrive. That way, when adversity comes—and it always does—they already see you as part of their support system, not a crisis-only resource.

In the end, it’s about relationships. The more trust you build, the more open players become. That’s how we chip away at the stigma—one connection at a time.”

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This week we had the honor to interview Athanase Kollias, CEO of KINVENT, a company that helps sports and rehab professionals assess progress and build engagement and motivation.

Founded in 2017, KINVENT is a leading player in the fields of physical rehabilitation and sports biomechanics producing innovative measuring and training devices for the facilitation of every day and athletic movements. Of note, Raphaël Varane, who is a defender on the French national soccer team, 2018 World Cup Champion, and current Manchester United player, is one of their investors.

Here is the video interview with Athan Kollias. You can also listen to the audio interview located at the top of this page.

Kinvent offers a comprehensive solution combining an intuitive app, KINVENT PHYSIO, with a range of connected sensors, measuring strength, balance and rangeof motion of athletes. KINVENT solution helps fasten teams’ rehab process, and assess athletes in one minute. What is also unique about the KINVENT PHYSIO app is that it can understand the baseline of each individuals and uses data from 600,000 patients globally to compare individual data against similar demographics.

Pictures: KINVENT 11 sensors in 1 ecosystem

The display of the data recorded by the device sensors is transcribed by the KINVENT PHYSIO App, installed on any iOS or Android terminal. All sensors are capable to assess powerful muscular groups and record in real time, giving an instant biofeedback data on the app.

Picture: KINVENT products in action

Here are some pictures of the KINVENT mobile app and dashboard:

Picture: KINVENT mobile app and dashboard

Here is a video showcasing KINVENT products:

Here is a video showcasing KINVENT’s 3D Force plates, which are3 Dimensional force plates combined with MOCAP bringing lab-level precision directly to the field. Unlike traditional force plates that only capture vertical force, 3D Deltas measure movement in all directions, providing a complete picture of an athlete’s or patient’s biomechanics. By combining 3D force plate technology with motion capture, it allows for real-time insights into (1) Change of direction efficiency, (2) Lateral movement & performance metrics (3) Injury risk assessment & rehab progress and (4) Sport-specific movement analysis.

Here is a video showcasing KINVENT’s K Power, an innovative hybrid sensor that combines IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) and UWB (Ultra-Wideband) technology to deliver wireless and highly precise measurements of speed, distance, acceleration, and power in sports and rehabilitation settings.

KINVENT has developed advanced sensors and an application used by over 22,000 professionals across more than 75 countries. KINVENT has also built the world’s biggest database of grip assessments as theyhave collected between 50,000 and 70,000 grip assessments.As shown in the picture below, many other elite teams such as PSG, the Brazilian national soccer team, the French national soccer team, SD Padres (MLB), Houston Dynamo (MLS), Houston Texas (NFL), UFC, INSEP, just to name a few, are using their product today.

KINVENT products are also used by leading healthcare organizations and universities such as Mayo Clinic, HSS, Brooks Rehabilitation, Aspetar, Princeton University, just to name a few.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview with Athanase Kollias, we touched on his 2 latest products the 3D Deltas and K-Power. We also discussed how Kinvent approached product development differently with these new launches. We also touched on their plans for the next 12 months as well as how they intent to stay ahead of the curve in the sports performance tech market.

Best Quotes: Here’s some of the key discussion points and best quotes from our conversation with Athanase:

Q1. Let’s start with the Kinvent 3D Deltas — what’s unique about this product, and how do you see it impacting both rehab and performance workflows in elite sports environments?

“Until today, the vast majority of force plates on the market only measured the vertical component of force — which is useful, but not enough. As humans, we don’t just move vertically. In sports and life, we move multidirectionally. We sprint, cut, pivot, change direction. Most of our motion is horizontal, yet most tools have ignored that. That’s a major gap.”

“That’s why we developed the 3D Deltas. They allow us to capture movement across all three axes — X, Y, and Z — so we’re no longer limited to a two-dimensional understanding of human movement. And this isn't just a product for us — it's a legacy. It started as a dream my father, a biomechanist, had 30 years ago. He knew from his own work that athletes weren’t getting injured in controlled, vertical-only motions like countermovement jumps. Injuries and performance limitations usually show up during lateral cuts, sudden accelerations, or when changing direction under load. So we set out to build a system that could finally reflect the full nuance of real-world movement — and we paired it with Cassandra, our AI engine and motion capture system, to give a complete picture of what’s really happening on the field or in rehab.”

Q2. K-Power is your newest innovation — can you walk us through its core functionality and how it complements or integrates with your existing Kinvent ecosystem?

“K-Power is what I would call a hybrid performance and rehab tool. It’s designed to work both with barbell-based strength training and sprint-based movement analysis. It’s a small pod, lightweight and wireless, that tracks speed, acceleration, distance, and power — in both horizontal and vertical directions. For example, coaches can place it on a bar to measure velocity-based training during a bench press, or set it up behind a sprinter on a tripod to capture force-velocity profiles over 5m, 10m, or 40-yard sprints.”

“The goal with K-Power — as with all our new tools — is to give strength coaches and athletic trainers precise, usable data in real-world environments. That means on the turf, in the weight room, wherever they’re working. And unlike traditional cable systems, there’s no hardware tethering. It’s not just another IMU or barbell tracker — it’s engineered for accuracy and ease of use. We see K-Power as a perfect complement to the 3D Deltas and the rest of our ecosystem, allowing a continuous flow of insights from high-intensity field testing to rehab benchmarking to return-to-play programming.”

Q3. Kinvent has always positioned itself at the intersection of science and usability — how are you approaching product development differently with these new launches?

“That’s something we think about constantly. Historically, performance and rehab tools have either been too scientific — meaning they’re confined to research labs with PhDs interpreting results weeks later — or too simplistic to provide actionable value. We’re trying to bridge that gap. Our approach now is to make the data not only accurate and rigorous but also understandable and relevant for both the practitioner and the athlete.”

“AI plays a big role in that. We’ve been investing in AI for over four years, but we’ve recently accelerated our efforts. Cassandra, our AI engine, is designed to help users quickly extract insights — from identifying the weak link in a movement pattern to recommending next steps. But here’s the key: we don’t just want to say ‘you jumped 40 cm’ or ‘your sprint time improved by 0.2 seconds.’ We want the athlete to understand what that means. Am I improving? Am I at risk of injury? What should I do next? That’s where AI, motion capture, and our new products converge — to make science not just usable, but actionable.”

Q4. What does Kinvent’s AI roadmap look like in the future?

“We’ve already built our AI engine — it’s called Cassandra. Right now, Cassandra helps summarize data, identify weak links in movement patterns, and support motion capture analysis. It also plays a role in assisting practitioners with designing training programs. But that’s just the beginning.”

“Over time, Cassandra will become more capable — that’s part of our internal roadmap. We’re continuously feeding it more and better-quality data to improve its accuracy and usability. But because we’re a medical device company, we have to be very careful. AI can sometimes produce results that don’t make sense, so regulatory compliance and reliability are essential.”

“Eventually, we see Cassandra offering not just analysis, but actionable guidance — things like when a player is ready to return to play, what adjustments are needed in their rehab or training, or even early indicators of potential injury risk. But again, the key is building that on a solid foundation of clean, contextualized, high-quality data.”

Q5. Looking ahead to the next 12 months, what are your strategic priorities — whether that’s product development, market expansion, new partnerships, or deeper integration with pro teams and clinics?

“Without question, the U.S. market is our top strategic priority. We’ve built a strong base in Europe, but North America is the next big frontier for us — and we’re going all in. Our focus is on penetrating colleges, universities, hospitals, and clinics, and to do that, we’re building out a full U.S. team — sales, marketing, customer success, everything.”

“On the product side, our priority is AI integration. Cassandra is already helping practitioners summarize sessions, identify weaknesses, and assist with programming. But we want to go further — to deliver real-time decision support and eventually predictive insights. At the same time, we’re mindful that we’re a regulated medical device company, so we’re moving responsibly. AI can be powerful, but it can also go off the rails if not trained and validated properly. That’s why we’re investing heavily in data quality — clean, validated, contextual data — so our AI remains trustworthy and compliant.”

Q6. As sports performance and rehab become more data-driven, how is Kinvent leveraging trends like AI, cloud analytics, or remote monitoring to stay ahead of the curve?

“First, I’d say this: there aren’t enough of us. There are maybe four or five companies worldwide doing serious work at the intersection of sports science, technology, and rehabilitation. That’s not enough. We need more innovation, more competition — it’s the only way we move the field forward and educate the broader market.”

“Second, we believe that staying ahead means mastering the full stack: hardware, software, cloud infrastructure, data science, and AI. We control that entire value chain internally, across teams in France, Greece, and the U.S. That’s what allows us to move fast, adapt, and innovate with precision. We don’t outsource key technologies — we build them in-house.”

“With Cassandra, we’re building not just an AI that summarizes or visualizes, but one that interprets and guides. We’re developing insights that are field-relevant — that help determine when to ramp up load, when to hold back, when to return to play. But AI won’t do that alone — it needs rich, high-quality data. That’s why all our tools — the 3D Deltas, K-Power, our dynamometers — are designed to feed Cassandra with the kind of contextual, meaningful data it needs to deliver real value. We’re not just chasing buzzwords — we’re building the future of intelligent, athlete-centered rehab and performance.”

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Dear colleague,This week I sat down with David Daoud, CEO of Compliance Standards to share my thoughts on on how elite teams vet sports tech startups, on the common mistakes made by startups. We also discussed the world of elite sports which is based on relationships. We also touched on the tech budget side of teams, and the need to get internal champions to successfully do pilots with teams. We also touched on what makes a strong founder in the eyes of teams.

You can listen to the audio interview by clicking on the above button or just watch the full video interview by clicking on the Youtube video below. You can also check out the best quotes of the interview in the section below.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• On how teams usually vet startups

• On why the Sports tech market feels saturated

• On what teams actually look for

• On the reality behind the “10,000 Sports tech startups” number

• On how small the buyer side really is

• On the importance of trust, tools, and vetting

• On traction vs. innovation

• On how Startups can stand out and win

• On athlete investors and their role in startups

• On startup intent and founder mentality

Best,

You can read the full transcript of the interview located at the top of this blog post. Here are below the best quotes from the interview:

💡 On How Teams Usually Vet Startups

“It really depends on the team. Some teams have internal people — like a head of tech or innovation — who are tasked with scouting and vetting vendors. Others rely more on external support, like what we do at Upside. In general, the performance and medical staff are stretched thin. They’re in the weight room, the rehab room, traveling with players — they don’t have time to research 20 vendors. That’s why they appreciate platforms like ours that simplify comparisons — pricing, specs, scientific evidence, customer base — all in one place.”

“Some teams are excited by new technology and want to see everything. Others are cautious — they won’t even take a meeting unless there’s peer-reviewed research or published studies. I know teams that won’t touch a product unless it’s already been validated by someone they trust or a leading academic institution. It’s all about risk management.”

“Also, some teams are open to working with early-stage startups — even giving feedback, co-developing features, or doing small pilot studies. But many others just want to buy a commercialized product that’s ready to go off the shelf. They don’t want to spend months helping a company refine a prototype. That’s the reality — not all teams are willing to be a test case.”

“And finally, teams talk to each other. Word of mouth is huge. If one high-performance director had a bad experience with a vendor, that spreads quickly. So as a startup, your credibility, transparency, and how you handle relationships matters just as much as your tech.”

💡 On Why the Sports Tech Market Feels Saturated

“I think what’s really driving the boom is that people just love sports. That’s the core of it. You’ve got so many engineers, former athletes, and founders who are fans first and entrepreneurs second — and they want to work with teams. So they start something. But here’s the catch: there are now over 10,000 sports tech companies worldwide, and a large portion of them are just one or two people — with a single product, often no funding, and sometimes no customers at all. They might be bootstrapping it, building prototypes on their own dime. And when they try to get in front of elite teams? It’s tough. It’s really hard to break in. You’ve got to hit a home run right away — if you don’t show up with a solid product, a clear value proposition, and something that immediately resonates with that team’s needs, you probably won’t get a second meeting. The market might look big, but when you actually try to sell into it, it’s a tight funnel — and the bar is very high.”

🧠 On What Teams Actually Look For

“It’s not necessarily a red flag if a company only has one product — that’s not the issue. What matters is whether the product is good. Does it do what it’s supposed to do? Is it backed by peer-reviewed research? Is there solid validation? And most importantly — do you have teams using it today and seeing results? For example, I interviewed a company like Output Sports. They’ve got one sensor, but it’s connected to a software platform that’s constantly being updated, providing more insights and new algorithms over time. Teams are fine with that. They don’t need you to have ten SKUs. They want confidence that the product works and the data is trustworthy. If that’s there, you’re in the conversation.”

⚖️ On the Reality Behind the “10,000 Sports Tech Startups” Number

“Look, I’ve been in this space for over a decade. And it’s true — there are now 10,000 companies that call themselves sports tech startups. But I would argue that a huge portion of those are not truly scalable businesses. Some of them are husband-and-wife teams building something on weekends. Some are what I call lifestyle startups — the founder is using the startup to travel, attend conferences, meet cool people. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s not the same as building a company that can scale globally. What I’m looking for — and what elite teams care about — is: do you have a real business model? Are you raising capital? Do you have case studies and traction? If not, you’re just part of the noise, not part of the future.”

🏢 On How Small the Buyer Side Really Is

“People assume that because they’re selling to a famous club — the Lakers, the Patriots, FC Barcelona — that there must be these huge departments making decisions. That’s not the case. These are small teams. In the performance department, you might have five to fifteen people — that’s it. You’ve got your head of performance, a couple trainers, a physical therapist, maybe a dietitian or nutritionist, sometimes an in-house developer or data analyst, but not always. So as a vendor, you’re not selling into IBM — you’re selling into a really lean, hands-on, time-strapped unit. And they don’t have time to vet 50 companies or sit through endless demos. They’re busy working with athletes all day. That’s why they need help finding the right solutions — and why relevance, speed, and clarity matter so much more than hype.”

🧰 On the Importance of Trust, Tools, and Vetting

“Teams don’t always have the time or resources to vet every product that hits their inbox. That’s why at Upside, we’ve built a platform where they can compare vendors instantly — pricing, specs, scientific backing, customer base — in one place. It’s launching during our dinner at the NBA Summer League. The idea is simple: give performance directors and trainers the ability to cut through the noise in 60 seconds. They don’t want to dig through 20 websites. They want to know what works, how much it costs, and who else is using it. And most importantly — is there proof that it delivers results? If we don’t build tools like this, teams will keep drowning in options without clarity.”

🧬 On Traction vs. Innovation

“You can have the most innovative product in the world, but if you don’t have customers — if you don’t have traction — most teams won’t touch it. They want to know: is this real? Has someone else used it in a real environment, in competition or during rehab, and seen results? You also have the opposite: companies with huge marketing budgets and traction but no innovation. That’s not ideal either. The sweet spot is when you’ve got something new, but it’s validated — scientifically and commercially. Teams are cautious for good reason. They don’t want to be guinea pigs. And they’ve been burned before. So unless you’ve got proof and a plan, it’s hard to break through.”

🔍 On How Startups Can Stand Out and Win

“If I had to lay it out clearly for a startup founder, here’s what I’d say: First, make sure your product is commercial-ready — not just a prototype. Second, back it with science — real studies, not just internal testing. Third, get your first paid customer — not a free trial, not a test, but someone actually paying. Fourth, find athlete ambassadors who elevate your brand. And fifth, get repeatable sales. Investors care about recurring revenue, because that’s what leads to sustainable growth. And don’t just build — promote. Speak at conferences, publish case studies, get on panels, show thought leadership. Be the expert, not just the engineer. That’s how you separate yourself from the other 9,999.”

🧑‍💼 On Athlete Investors and Their Role in Startups

“It’s incredibly common now to see athletes investing in startups. They know their playing careers are short — and many of them are already planning their post-sport careers while still on the court. I interviewed Thaddeus Young — he’s invested in over 200 startups through his family office. He told me his goal is to make as much money after basketball as he did during his playing years. And that’s the mentality. But it’s not easy for startups to get access to those athletes. And even when they do, there’s negotiation. Some athletes want equity in exchange for exposure, others want to invest actual capital. It depends. But overall, yes — athletes are absolutely active in the ecosystem as advisors, investors, even co-founders in some cases.”

🧭 On Startup Intent and Founder Mentality

“There’s a huge difference between startups trying to build something big and startups that just want to have fun. I’ve seen founders who treat it like a side hustle — something that pays for their trips to Dubai or Barcelona, maybe gives them a reason to say ‘I work with Barcelona’ or ‘I met with the 49ers.’ But they have no intention of raising money, building a team, or scaling globally. That’s fine — but teams need to know that. Because if they adopt a product and the company disappears 12 months later, that’s risk. Serious founders are raising capital, building structure, hiring teams. They’re in it for the long run. And that’s who teams — and investors — want to work with.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Michael Ross, CEO of Nice Recovery systems, a leading manufacturer of performance and recovery devices with an expertise in cooling.

NICE Recovery Systems is a Boulder‑based firm founded in 2012 by Michael Ross after his own injury-driven recovery experience inspired the creation of an iceless cold‑compression therapy device. The company’s flagship NICE 1 Cold + Compression Therapy System (FDA‑approved in December 2014) delivers programmable cooling and pneumatic compression entirely without ice, making it lightweight, convenient, and trusted by orthopedic clinics, professional athletic teams, and military/military contractors.

Picture: NICE 1

In June 2025, NICE launched the NICE ROCC, a first of its kind palm cooling device based on 2 decades of research from Stanford University. The ROCC is battery operated and provides precise and powerful palm cooling without the need for ice or water. The ROCC is currently in use by professional hockey and baseball teams as well as elite strength athletes.

Picture: NICE ROCC

To learn more about Nice Recovery Systems please visit https://getnice.com

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here is a video showcasing the NICE1 device:

Customers / partners: NHL teams (Colorado Avalanche, Detroit Red Wings, Anaheim Ducks), MLB teams (NY Yankees).

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, his company and product, the benefits for teams to use their product and platform. We also talked about the state of the palm cooling market, his competitive advantage, business model, and his plans for the next 12 months.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Michael located at the top of this blog post.

Of note, Michael will be presenting at our VIP dinner at the NBA Summer league on July 15 at the Wynn hotel.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Michael:

1. Your Background

“I’m what we in the U.S. call a serial entrepreneur. NICE Recovery Systems is actually my fifth venture. But this one was very personal — it started after I had a pretty horrific ski crash in 2010 while competing as a master's ski racer. I was focused on speed events like downhill skiing, and the crash resulted in multiple surgeries. During my recovery, I used a traditional cold therapy device — the kind you have to keep filling with ice — which was incredibly inconvenient since I was on crutches. I kept thinking, ‘There has to be a better way.’ That moment sparked the idea for NICE — to build a cold therapy device that doesn’t use ice. By 2014 we filed with the FDA, and by 2015 we launched into full-scale production. Since then, we've made over 18,000 units and are expanding internationally now that we’re MDR-cleared in the EU. What started as a solution to a personal problem has become a medical device company helping thousands of people around the world.”

2. Your Company and Product

“We’ve grown from a single-product company into one with a focused portfolio around recovery and performance. Our core medical product is the NICE1 — an FDA-cleared, class II cold and compression therapy device, designed and manufactured entirely in Boulder, Colorado. It’s used primarily in orthopedic recovery post-surgery — hip replacements, knee reconstructions, rotator cuff repairs — those types of injuries. But we also recently launched the ROCC, a palm cooling device born out of listening to the Huberman Lab podcast. I heard Dr. Heller from Stanford talking about the physiological benefits of palm cooling and thought, ‘This modality clearly works — but why isn’t it widely used?’ Turns out, the issue wasn’t efficacy — it was usability. The current devices were bulky, messy, and relied on ice or water. So we thought, we’ve already got the cooling tech. Why not engineer a palm cooling product that’s portable, rechargeable, and easy to use? We built a prototype and realized this could be something big. Then we reached out to Porsche Design to help shape the industrial design. That’s how the ROCC came to life — a science-backed, precision-engineered palm cooling tool that actually looks and feels great to use.”

3. The Main Use Cases You Are Addressing

“The NICE1 and the ROCC serve two very different — but complementary — roles. The NICE1 is for injury recovery, particularly post-op. After orthopedic surgery, patients deal with pain, inflammation, and mobility issues. We designed the NICE1 to be compact, user-friendly, and ice-free, so patients recovering at home — often while on medication — don’t have to struggle with cold packs and bandages. It’s prescribed by surgeons and distributed through clinics or partners like the Hospital for Special Surgery or the Steadman Clinic. On the other hand, the ROCC was built for performance enhancement. In competitive sports, time is everything — halftime is short, rest periods are brief. By cooling the palms during these windows, we help lower athletes’ core body temperature and heart rate faster, so they’re better prepared to perform in the second half. Research shows palm cooling for 10–15 minutes during halftime can reduce core temperature by a full degree and heart rate by 15 BPM — it’s like giving them more rest in less time. In training, especially resistance workouts, palm cooling between sets reduces muscle fatigue and enables more reps. The Stanford study even compared it to steroids — and palm cooling outperformed anabolic steroids in terms of training gains. That’s a powerful, non-invasive performance tool.”

4. The Palm Cooling Market and Main Trends

“Palm cooling is still in its infancy as a market. Right now, it’s a niche modality understood primarily by strength coaches, performance scientists, and elite teams. But the science has been around for decades — it started with DARPA and the Royal Navy in the ‘90s, who wanted to cool soldiers operating in extreme heat. The modality works. What’s been missing is usability and awareness. That’s starting to change. You now see a few companies offering palm cooling at different price points — from under $100 to high-end solutions like ours. We’re seeing strong adoption from NHL teams, NFL trainers, strength athletes like Brian Shaw and Hafthor Bjornsson, and elite gym-goers. The next wave will be driven by visibility and education. When people see athletes using it courtside, or during a live game, they’ll start asking questions. Combine that with more clinical research — like what we’re seeing around hydration, lactate clearance, and DOMS — and you’ve got the early stages of what I think will become a mainstream performance technology. It’s where massage guns were 5–7 years ago.”

5. The Benefits for Teams to Use Your Product

“Teams love that the ROCC works and that it’s field-ready. It’s small, battery-powered, no ice, and designed for mobility. We saw hockey players using it during playoff games between shifts, which is a brutal time physically. They’re fully geared up, fatigued, and coming off the ice gassed — palm cooling helps them recover faster, feel fresher, and hit the next shift harder. In football or basketball, it’s great during halftime. We’ve got several NFL, MLB, and NHL teams already using it. From a training standpoint, it allows athletes to get more out of each session — more reps, more power, faster recovery. And it’s not speculative. You try it, and you see the difference. We’ve seen top athletes shatter PRs the first time they use it. There’s no guesswork — it’s measurable, immediate impact.”

6. Your Competitive Advantages

“Our engineering team is second to none when it comes to cooling technologies. We iterate fast — we turned the ROCC from idea to functional prototype in three months, and we’re constantly testing and refining. We manufacture everything in-house in Boulder, which gives us complete control over quality and innovation. A lot of our competitors outsource to China or Southeast Asia. That’s fine for cost, but not for agility. Because we started in the medical field, everything we do — even consumer products — is built with a regulatory-grade mindset. Our quality systems, documentation, and testing protocols are far more robust than what you’d typically see in consumer electronics. And that pays off in reliability. Also, we’re not trying to be everything to everyone. We specialize in cooling — and we do it better than anyone else in the market.”

7. What Teams Like About Your Product

“When we talk to teams, the number one thing they care about is effectiveness. They’re data-driven. If it doesn’t make a measurable difference, they’re not interested. The ROCC makes a difference immediately — whether it’s lowering heart rate, improving second-half output, or extending set volume in strength training. After that, they care about ease of use — it’s got to be portable, durable, quick to charge, and simple to implement. Unlike older products that used water or bulky cooling systems, the ROCC is clean, fast, and field-ready. Teams like the Avalanche told us that it integrated seamlessly into their workflow, and players responded well to the experience. That’s the gold standard: measurable impact and smooth adoption.”

8. Your Business Model

“Our business is split. NICE1 is sold via medical distributors who rent the devices to patients post-surgery. That’s a mature market with a clear prescription model — doctors prescribe it, patients rent it, insurance often covers it. With the ROCC, we’re doing a direct-to-consumer approach, but following a strategy similar to Hyperice and Theragun: start with the pros. Get the devices into the hands of elite athletes, sports scientists, and trainers — people who understand the value right away. Over time, the awareness filters down to consumers. But we’re not rushing it. The gym market will take a few years, and that’s fine. We’re in it for the long game.”

9. Your Plans for the Next 12 Months

“We’ve been profitable and cash flow positive for four years now, which gives us freedom. We don’t need outside capital — we fund new R&D from operations. Over the next 12 months, we’re focusing on three main goals: first, international expansion of NICE1, especially in the EU. Second, deeper adoption of ROCC among pro teams and early adopters. And third, launching two new products — one medical and one performance-based. We’re also working on a percussion gun with novel technology that’s currently going through the patent process. And we’re expanding our staff and facility here in Boulder. We’ve got 35 employees now and expect that to grow. We’re staying true to our values — build smart, high-quality tools here in the U.S., and let the market come to us through impact and authenticity.”

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This week we had the honor to interview again Dr. Ron Dick, associate professor of sports marketing at Duquesne University in the school of business. Ron also worked for 20 years in sports, including 15 years in the NBA with the Sixers and the Nets, and then five years in the NCAA.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ron located at the top of this blog post.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the following topics:

Q1. NCAA update Q2. MLB update - Allstar gameQ3. NFL camp’s starting the grindQ4. NHL DraftQ5. Free agent signings in NBA/NFL Q6. NBA OKC championship, Q6. French open - Sinner / Alcatraz Q7. PSG @ World Cup of soccer clubs

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Ron:

Q1. NCAA Update (NIL..)

Dr Ron Dick:

“We’ve now had four full years to see how the NCAA has handled name, image, and likeness — the NIL — and things have evolved dramatically. When this all began, the landscape was vague, uncertain, and completely unregulated. No one knew exactly who was getting what or how deals were being structured. It was, frankly, the Wild West — undocumented, except maybe by the IRS. But now, fast forward to July 1st, 2025, and we’re starting to see the emergence of a more defined structure, which I think is a step in the right direction. The next phase, which is already underway, is conference-level decisions on whether to opt in or out of television revenue sharing — and that could reshape college sports as we know it.”

“The model they’re exploring is similar to what the NFL uses — equal sharing of TV revenue. And why does that work? Because it lifts everyone. When the tide comes in, all the ships rise. That’s how a small-market team like Green Bay can compete with a juggernaut like New York. That model is coming to college football, and it’ll be up to each conference to decide if they want to participate. I believe most will.”

“What’s also fascinating is how the so-called ‘losers’ of realignment — Oregon State and Washington State — may end up being the winners. They’re aligning with football schools from the Mountain West and are pushing toward an automatic qualifier for the playoff. There’s growing momentum for a 16-team playoff structure with five major conference champions and 11 at-large bids. In hindsight, being left out might’ve been the right call.”

Q2. MLB Update – All-Star Game + Standings

Dr Ron Dick:

“The All-Star Game this year is set for July 15th in Atlanta, and fans are genuinely excited. This event hits right at the halfway point of the season and offers a rare and much-needed break for the players. These guys play nearly every day from April to September, and the All-Star break is their only true moment to rest, recharge, and showcase their talent on a national stage. The Home Run Derby is always a fan favorite, and it really brings casual viewers back into the sport midseason.”

“From a competitive standpoint, there are some really interesting developments. The Toronto Blue Jays are exceeding expectations and leading a very competitive AL East, where the Yankees, Rays, and Red Sox are still strong. That’s easily the most stacked division in baseball. In the National League West, the Dodgers are dominant again, and both the Padres and Giants are performing well. Meanwhile, teams like the Colorado Rockies are struggling to even reach 40 wins — which would be a record low. There’s a huge disparity in performance this year, but that’s baseball. It always finds a way to balance drama and unpredictability.”

Q3. NFL Camps Starting – Preseason Outlook

Dr Ron Dick:

“We’re heading into August, which means NFL training camps are getting underway. And with that, optimism returns for every fanbase. This is when ‘hope springs eternal.’ Every team believes they have a shot. It’s the start of what we call ‘the grind’ — from the first padded practices through to the Super Bowl in February. It’s long, it’s grueling, and it’s relentless.”

“You’ve got big storylines this year — the Chiefs trying to repeat, the Eagles retooling, and the Cowboys as perennial contenders in theory, if not in practice. The AFC North, in particular, should be must-watch with stacked rosters. And then there are teams like the Commanders, who’ve made major moves — acquiring a top defensive player from the 49ers, drafting a quarterback like Jayden Daniels, and hiring Dan Quinn. They’re building something strong in D.C. Everyone’s got their free agents locked in. Trading is slowing down. And fans are glued to the NFL Network around the clock. It’s the number one sport in America — no doubt about it.”

Q3. NHL Draft + Florida Teams

Dr Ron Dick:

“The NHL Draft has passed, and what’s interesting is that while you don’t see many trades in the NHL, there’s always a heavy emphasis on development — drafting young players and signing the right free agents. Look at what happened in Florida. The Panthers went from afterthoughts to back-to-back Stanley Cup champions. That doesn’t happen without vision, leadership, and buy-in from the roster.”

“Edmonton has now lost two straight finals, which is tough. They have a great young core, but psychologically, that’s hard to bounce back from. And Tampa Bay is still a powerhouse. These aren’t traditional hockey markets, but success has changed the narrative. People said you couldn’t sell ice in the sand. But now, Florida has two of the most competitive NHL teams, and the fanbases are growing — slowly, but winning always helps fill seats.”

Q4. NBA + NFL Free Agent Signings

Dr Ron Dick:

“Kevin Durant being traded to the Rockets shocked everyone — including Kevin himself. The criticism that he can’t win on his own has followed him for years, but let’s be honest: he’s still an elite shooter. Watching him dominate at the Olympics this year, hitting shot after shot in the final, just proved how sharp he still is. The Rockets are building something, and Durant might just be the right veteran presence to push them over the top.”

“LeBron is a big question mark. He’s still incredibly productive, meticulous about his body — spends $1.5 million a year maintaining it. The man is a machine. But there’s talk that his wife wants him to retire. We’ve seen this before — remember the Brady situation. But I could honestly see him going back to Cleveland for one last run. That team is young and talented — they just might need one more piece to contend. And how poetic would it be for LeBron to close his career where it began?”

“In the NFL, the Rodgers deal is low-risk — a one-year contract, $10–12 million. If it works, great. If not, no long-term damage. And looking ahead, the Steelers are hosting the 2026 Draft and are expected to pursue one of the many talented QBs projected in that class. It’s a big setup for the future.”

Q5. NBA – Oklahoma City Thunder Championship

Dr Ron Dick:

“This year’s NBA Finals were phenomenal — OKC versus Indiana. It wasn’t the ratings bonanza that a Lakers-Knicks matchup would bring, but in terms of basketball IQ, strategy, and grit, this was a classic. Seven games, full drama. And for people in Pittsburgh, it was special to see TJ McConnell — who played locally and at Duquesne — have such a standout role.”

“I’m especially happy for Scott Loft, the Thunder’s VP of Sales, who finally got a ring after 37 years in the business. And let’s not forget what this means for OKC. They’re young, hungry, and loaded with draft capital. When SGA said after the win, ‘We’re just getting started,’ it didn’t feel like hyperbole. This team is built for a decade-long run. If they manage things right, we could be looking at a new dynasty in the making.”

Q6. French Open – Sinner vs. Alcaraz

Julien Blin:

“The French Open final this year was absolutely incredible. Alcaraz versus Sinner. Five sets. Five hours. And the momentum shift — with Alcaraz coming back from two sets down — was a masterclass in endurance, focus, and athletic brilliance. People often overlook how demanding tennis is, but at that level, it’s among the most physically and mentally challenging sports on Earth.”

“What we saw wasn’t just a final — it was the beginning of a rivalry. Like Federer-Nadal. These two are young, polished, and will meet over and over again in the years to come. It’s the dawn of a new era in men’s tennis.”

Q7. PSG at World Cup of Soccer Clubs

Julien Blin:

“PSG just demolished Real Madrid 4-0 — and they were up by three in the first 20 minutes. This comes after they won the Champions League, and it cements their place as the best club team in the world right now. What’s fascinating is that they did this after letting go of Mbappé — and it turns out that may have been the best move they could’ve made.”

“Luis Enrique deserves a ton of credit. He told the players straight up: ‘If you don’t defend as a unit and attack together, you won’t play.’ That’s why Mbappé didn’t fit in. The team now plays with cohesion, balance, and hunger. That’s a real system at work — and it’s winning at the highest level.”

Dr Ron Dick:

“But the bigger picture here is the soccer calendar. These guys don’t stop. You’ve got the Club World Cup in summer, national league campaigns, Champions League, and next year — the 2026 World Cup in the U.S. It reminds me of when Jordan played three seasons and then went straight into the Olympics. The physical toll is enormous. But next summer, the world will be watching, and the U.S. is going to be the center of global football.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Dr Warren Bradley, Founder at Hytro a leading blood flow restriction company.

Hytro is the world's first wearable Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) system designed specifically for sport. Trusted by 250+ sports teams across the NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA, and The Premier League, Hytro’s patented BFR products enable coaches & athletes to integrate BFR within their existing work flows; warm-ups, training, recovery, and travel, without the need for supervision. Hytro turns cutting-edge BFR science into a simple and powerful tool for those who demand better: faster recovery, smarter training, and the edge to outperform. To book a discovery call, visit www.hytro.com

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here are some pictures of the Hytro products (Short, t-shirt):

Customers / partners: 250+ sports teams across the NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA, and The Premier League.

Here is a video testimonial from the Atlanta Falcons (NFL) using Hytro products:

Here is a video testimonial from NBA practitioner Mike G using Hytro:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, his company and product, the benefits for teams to use their product and platform. We also talked about his competitive advantage, business model, and his plans for the next 12 months.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Warren located at the top of this blog post.

Of note, Hytro will also be presenting at our VIP dinner at the NBA Summer league on July 15 at the Wynn hotel.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Warren:

1. Your Background

“I’m the founder of Hytro, but before that I spent just over a decade working in professional sports. I was fortunate to work in international rugby with England Rugby, and in the Premier League with Hull City and several other teams. During that time, I also completed a PhD in Exercise Physiology. Essentially, I was wearing two hats: I was both a practitioner, working on the ground with athletes, and an academic researcher. That meant I was constantly questioning and critiquing the practices we used in club environments. One of the techniques I used frequently was blood flow restriction (BFR), especially for rehab. I loved the effects, but I found the devices too complex and impractical for widespread use. So I decided to invent a new, more user-friendly way of applying BFR. That led to the patented wearable BFR technology that became the foundation of Hytro.”

2. Your Company and Product

“Hytro was created to break down the barriers that were limiting BFR use to rehab-only applications. Blood flow restriction is one of the most well-researched techniques in sports science, with thousands of published papers supporting its benefits. But traditional BFR devices are app-based, pneumatic, wired, and frankly, cumbersome. You needed supervision to use them. What we did with Hytro was simplify the application by integrating BFR into wearables—shorts and shirts that athletes can easily wear on their own. We removed the tech clutter but embedded all the science and safety. That changed the game because now BFR could be used not just in rehab, but throughout the performance continuum—in warmups, in recovery, on flights, in ice baths, even during meetings. We now have global patents for this approach and are working with several hundred teams worldwide, including a growing footprint in the U.S. despite being a lean, agile company with just five or six full-time staff and high-quality fractional talent from brands like Nike and Gymshark.”

3. The Main Use Cases You Are Addressing

“At Hytro, we focus on what we call the performance continuum. While BFR is already well validated for rehab—muscle regeneration, bone remodeling, etc.—we see the bigger opportunity in supporting the 95% of athletes who are healthy and competing. The most common use case among our clients is recovery. Athletes use our shorts post-competition in the locker room, while taking in nutrition or attending a meeting. Many teams use them on game day plus one during recovery sessions—bike flushes, mobility work, ice baths. The beauty of our product is the user can choose when to strap in and apply pressure, making it extremely adaptable. Increasingly, we’re also seeing athletes use Hytro in ice baths, which is showing promising effects on recovery metrics. We’ve already completed one study with a UK pro soccer team and are conducting lab research to validate the physiological mechanisms, including muscle protein synthesis and inflammation markers. So in summary, teams are using Hytro for recovery, performance enhancement, and travel, not just rehab.”

4. The BFR Market and Main Trends

“The BFR market has been around for decades. And to be perfectly honest, until Hytro, everyone was doing the same thing just slightly better—refining cuffs, improving apps—but the basic delivery method stayed the same. The problem with that? It's not scalable. These systems still required supervision and could be risky if misapplied. What we did with Hytro was rethink the category. We built BFR directly into wearables, ensuring correct placement, safety, and ease of use. That’s what enabled mass adoption across full squads. Traditional BFR devices mainly served rehab and return to play. We’ve opened up applications across training, recovery, and travel. Our innovation wasn’t just in the science—it was in the deployment and accessibility.”

5. The Benefits for Teams to Use Your Product

“The core benefit is that BFR, when applied properly, magnifies the physiological stress of whatever you're doing. For example, walking with BFR feels like sprinting to your muscles. A bodyweight squat feels like a weighted squat. This means you can get a greater training stimulus in less time or with lower loads. That’s massive for athletes who are already heavily loaded. In academy settings, say you have a 17-year-old who needs to build mass—BFR lets you add effective training volume without overloading joints or the nervous system. You can do a 15-minute low-load session with no muscle tearing, only cell swelling, and still get hypertrophy benefits. Similarly, if an athlete is lagging in endurance but you can’t add more intense sessions, BFR lets them do light pedaling on a bike while still driving adaptations like mitochondrial biogenesis. It’s efficient, low-impact, and doesn’t compromise recovery. That’s the real value: more output with less load and less fatigue.”

6. Your Competitive Advantages

“Our biggest competitive advantage is how simple and safe our product is. BFR traditionally required precise placement, tech devices, and supervision. With Hytro, it’s just a pair of shorts or a shirt. You strap in and go. It takes seconds. That means teams can scale use across full squads. You don’t need staff hovering over every athlete to get the dose right. And because we’ve validated our pressure settings through lab testing, we’ve built in fail-safes that prevent athletes from over-pressurizing. Even the most inexperienced user can use Hytro safely. That’s something other systems simply don’t offer. Also, we focus heavily on integration and education. We don’t just ship a product—we help teams figure out how it fits into their existing workflow. That’s critical. No matter how good the tech is, if it doesn’t fit the team’s daily rhythm, it won’t get used.”

7. What Teams Like About Your Product

“Teams love the ease of implementation. Take the Atlanta Falcons as an example. In their gym, they have huge screens that display the day’s Hytro protocols. Players walk in, grab the shorts that were left on their pegs by the kitman, and just follow the instructions. There’s no complicated setup, no wires, no waiting. It’s frictionless. Coaches know they’re getting a proven dose of BFR that’s safe and effective.

Beyond that, what really resonates with teams is our support and education. We sit down with them, review their schedules and training blocks, and help them figure out the best way to incorporate Hytro. We tailor our onboarding to make sure it fits seamlessly into what they’re already doing. And often what we hear is: ‘We love BFR, but with our old system we couldn’t scale it to the whole team.’ With Hytro, now they can.”

8. Your Business Model

“Our approach is highly consultative. We always start with a discovery call, where we learn about the team’s current workflow, needs, and pain points. From there, we make a recommendation that aligns with their goals. Some teams, like NFL franchises, might start with a pilot of 30 units, and once they see the value, they roll it out across the entire team with 150 units or more. Our recommended retail price is $349 for shorts and about $60 less for the shirts. But we provide volume discounts and work case by case. We also make it easy to get started—you can find booking links on our website and LinkedIn. We want to educate and support, not just sell.”

9. Your Plans for the Next 12 Months

“We’ve been fortunate to be backed by a growing group of coaches and athletes who believe in our mission—from NFL stars to Formula 1 drivers. Some of our clients have even invested in the company. As for what’s next, we’re focused on scaling across U.S. and European pro leagues and the collegiate market. We’ve hired new sales staff in the U.S., and they’re doing an amazing job already.

At the same time, we’re preparing to enter the consumer market. We’re working with Tour de France cycling teams to produce research and content that shows everyday cyclists how they can use Hytro to increase their functional threshold power or peak power output. It’s about translating elite insights to everyday performance. So, pro sports and colleges are the focus now, but we’re setting the stage for a broader direct-to-consumer offering in the very near future.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Darcy Norman, the director of performance for the Chicago Fire FC a top MLS team.

Darcy Norman is the Director of Performance at Chicago Fire FC, where he oversees medical services, physical performance, nutrition, and sports psychology across the first team, Fire II, and the academy. With nearly 30 years in sports science and elite performance, Norman has worked at the highest levels—including the U.S. Men’s National Team (2019–2024), the German National Team during their 2014 World Cup win, AS Roma, and Bayern Munich. A licensed physical therapist and strength & conditioning specialist, he brings a data-driven and evidence-based approach developed through roles at Kitman Labs, EXOS, and international athletics, consistently building performance systems rooted in clear purpose, interdisciplinary trust, and athlete-first planning.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• His journey & influences

• His goal-driven technology adoption approach

• His multi-directional training philosophy

• Innovation vs. fundamentals

• Similarities and differences between working for European Vs US teams

• The future of performance in MLS

• On the most impressive players he worked with

• His personal reflection on success

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Darcy located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Darcy:

Q1. Your Journey & Influences

"I’ve worked with two national teams—the German and the U.S.—and three clubs: Bayern Munich fc, AS Roma, and now Chicago Fire FC. What I’ve learned over 20 years is that everything starts with trust and transparency. Whether it's a coach-to-therapist, player-to-practitioner, or practitioner-to-practitioner relationship, it’s all about putting the athlete first. The athlete is there to perform—for their club or their country—and our role is to support them holistically. That means thinking about what information the other side needs when an athlete transitions between environments. It’s about being communicative, passing on testing data, wellness info, GPS metrics—everything—so the athlete doesn’t miss a beat. And critically, putting yourself in the shoes of your counterparts helps build a truly athlete-first performance model."

"There’s no one right way to do this work. There are best practices, yes, but you have to stay flexible because every team, coach, and culture is different. It’s about understanding that context and adapting while keeping your standards high."

Q2. Goal-Driven Technology Adoption

"It starts with purpose—understanding exactly what you're trying to accomplish. That clarity drives everything. Then, you map out your planning, periodization, and education strategy. Technology doesn’t come first. You first define the questions you're trying to answer or the behaviors you're trying to reinforce. Then you ask: will this tool actually help me solve this specific problem or improve our process? If it does, it’s worth considering. If not, it’s noise."

"You’ve also got to evaluate the tech practically—does it fit into your workflow, or does it disrupt it? Is it intuitive to use, or do you need extra staff just to operate it? Can it integrate with your other systems? Can you collect the data often enough to run applied research and actually improve your process over time? And perhaps most importantly: does the company have your interests in mind, or are they just chasing investment returns?"

"At the end of the day, the dream is this: I have a question, I push a button, and I get a meaningful answer. That’s when technology is really working for you."

Q3. Multi-Directional Training Philosophy

"We look at movement from a foundational level. First, can the athlete even get into the right shapes? Do they have the range of motion to access basic skill positions—whether that’s for acceleration, deceleration, or change of direction? Then we look at functional movement patterns—squats, lunges, single-leg balance—and ask: can they do these well? Then we evaluate capacity: strength, strength endurance, power, power endurance, relative strength. All of this leads up to how well they express these qualities in linear or multi-directional movement—the very things that define soccer."

"Soccer is inherently multi-directional, yet some players can’t drop their hips or create strong base positions when changing direction. That affects performance and injury risk. So we break it down and figure out what’s limiting them—then individualize their programming to fix it. You can absolutely improve how someone moves. It’s not just talent. It’s a skill you can coach and train."

"We use external cueing and constraints-based drills to help players self-organize better mechanics. When you design drills that demand a certain body shape or action—like cutting around a tilted pole—they naturally adopt better mechanics without needing constant verbal cues. That’s how you create real, lasting change in movement quality."

Q4. Innovation vs. Fundamentals

"I’ve been in this space for 30 years. When I started, all we had were a stopwatch, a tape measure, and a clipboard. So you had to rely on your planning, your programming, and your coaching ability. And those fundamentals—how you progress, how you periodize, how you educate—still matter more than anything else."

"Now we have all this data, but if you don’t have a solid framework to interpret and apply it, it’s useless. What I see sometimes is young practitioners jumping into tech first, without a foundation. You’ve got to reverse that. Start with your purpose. Then build the methods and select tools that enhance what you’re already doing. Technology should serve the plan—not the other way around."

Q5. On Similarities and Differences between working for European Vs US teams

"It’s really not that different. It comes down to coaching philosophies and club philosophies. Do they have a really clear purpose in how they’re trying to do things? What’s their standard? Are they applying best practices and science—and how well are they communicating and integrating that into their day-to-day?"

"In North America now, definitely the resources are getting better and better. At Chicago Fire, I would say we’re applying best practices across the board—from recovery to training, periodization, technology, and science."

Q6. It’s Not Europe vs. U.S.—It’s Standards vs. Gaps

"I’ve seen clubs in both North America and Europe that apply phenomenal best practices. And I’ve seen clubs in both places that don’t. It really depends on the organization’s clarity of purpose and their commitment to operating at a high level."

Q7. On the Future of Performance in MLS

"Staff development is a huge area of opportunity. Just like on the field, your performance and medical staff need to be a high-functioning team. You’ve got experts from all over—different countries, different training—so the question is: how do you get them all on the same page and working toward a common goal? That’s leadership. That’s culture."

"The other massive area is data integration. The teams that invest in building robust data systems—where everything is connected and contextualized—will be the ones who make faster, more accurate decisions. They’ll be able to refine their systems quickly and outpace the competition. You’ll see the gap grow between teams that understand this and those that don’t. Data alone isn’t the answer—but when structured properly, it becomes a powerful decision-making tool."

Q8. On the Best Coaches He has worked with

"The best coaches I’ve worked with have a really clear purpose, a really clear vision, and a really clear way. They know what they’re trying to accomplish, how they want to do it, and they’re relentless in their ability to execute that."

"It’s not just about the technical and tactical side. The best coaches are also great communicators, great planners, and great people managers”.

Q9. On the Most Impressive Players He Worked with

"The best athletes I’ve worked with are humble. They’re always trying to get better, even if they’re the best in the world. They don’t let their current state define them—they just keep pushing and pushing to understand what’s possible."

"That’s why you see records being broken. That’s why you see players performing at high levels into their late 30s. Guys like Ronaldo or Messi are still operating close to 40 because they’re consistent and focused on making the right choices day after day."

Q10. On Longevity & Support Systems

"I was just at a conference talking about centenarian athletes—guys who’ve played over 60,000 elite-level minutes. What allows them to do that? Clean schedules, consistency, good support teams around them, and removing stress so they can focus on the main thing."

Q11. On His Personal Reflection on Success

"People have complimented me on my success in my career… I don’t think I did anything extraordinary. But what I did do well was know which bus to get on. I always asked myself: do my values match the values of the people I want to work with?"

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Martin O'Reilly, CEO of Output sports, a leading performance company using one sensor including VBT and jump tracking.

Output Sports offers a portable, single-sensor system that allows teams to capture a wide range of performance data, including strength, power, speed, mobility, and balance, all with a single device. This simplicity makes Output particularly attractive for teams that want to collect actionable data quickly and efficiently without the complexity or cost of larger lab-based systems. The platform’s versatility allows practitioners to monitor multiple aspects of an athlete’s development across the full training cycle — from performance testing to return-to-play assessments — while providing immediate feedback that can be shared with both coaches and athletes in real-time.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

Here is below their mobile app along with their dashboard.

Picture: Output Sports’ dashboard and app.

Here is a video explaining its one sensor:

Picture: Output Sports’ One sensor (Left) and app (Right)

Here is a picture of the dashboard:

Customers / partners: Professional sports teams in rugby, soccer and basketball.

Here is a video testimonial from England Football using Output Sports:

Here is a video testimonial from Spellman performance using Output Sports:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, his company and product, the benefits for teams to use their product and platform. We also talked about his competitive advantage, business model, and his plans for the next 12 months.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Martin located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Martin:

Q1: Your journey into sports technology is quite unique. Can you share a bit about your background and what inspired you to start Output Sports?

“One of the main things about Output — and really what makes our founding story unique — is that we are a university spinout from University College Dublin. I have three co-founders who all come from very different disciplinary backgrounds. My background is in sports engineering, and my PhD was specifically focused on machine learning of sensor signals. My co-founder is a physiotherapist who has worked directly in elite sport and clinical settings, so he really understands what practitioners need on the ground. And our third co-founder, Julian, comes from a theoretical physics background and was working on banking APIs before we convinced him that sports technology is more fun and impactful! The real beauty was that we had years of interdisciplinary research together starting back in 2013. We were based in the university right up until early 2020, which allowed us to collect around 10 terabytes of proprietary sensor data — a huge foundation for what became our commercial product. Having access to labs, elite teams on campus, and cross-functional experts — from data analytics, engineers, UX, to practitioners — gave us an ideal sandbox to go from research to applied product development.”

Q2: For those unfamiliar, what is Output Sports and what core problem are you solving for performance practitioners and athletes?

“At Output Sports, our mission has always been to make elite-level sports science simple and scalable. Traditionally, high-end biomechanics or performance data was locked inside expensive labs, accessible only to top-tier programs with massive budgets. We wanted to democratize that — to give coaches, physios, and practitioners access to the same level of precision without the burden of expensive, complex setups. Our core product is a single wearable sensor paired with an app that allows you to assess and monitor over 300 different performance metrics — everything from velocity-based training, jump analysis, reactive strength index, mobility, balance, stability, to more niche variables like angular velocity. Initially, we solved the problem of fragmented, time-consuming athlete monitoring. But as we evolved, we also started addressing the ‘so what?’ problem — giving practitioners not just data, but meaningful, actionable insights that help inform day-to-day coaching decisions like fatigue management, exercise prescription, and readiness assessments.”

Q3: The simplicity and portability of your single-sensor system are quite disruptive. Can you walk us through how Output works and what sets it apart?

“One framework I often use to describe where we sit is the ‘value-burden matrix,’ an idea from one of our advisory board members, Jo Cook. On one axis, you have how valuable and accurate the data is; on the other, how burdensome it is to collect, analyze, and implement that data. Traditional lab systems — force plates, motion capture, etc. — are extremely valuable but come with huge costs in terms of time, setup, and money. On the flip side, you have consumer wearables — super easy to use, low burden, but often lacking the precision needed for serious performance applications. Our unique proposition is that we sit at the intersection of high-value, actionable data with minimal burden. With just one sensor and one app, you can collect highly accurate data across multiple key performance domains, implement it instantly in any environment — weight room, field, rehab setting — and get real-time feedback. Portability, scalability, and reliability together make us very distinct.”

Q4: What does your customer base look like today — are you seeing more traction in elite sports, colleges, or private training?

“Our client base today spans over 1,000 organizations, and what’s quite unique is how evenly it splits across different sectors. In Europe, a significant portion is weighted toward elite professional sport — particularly soccer — where we serve teams across multiple leagues and divisions. But in the U.S., while we do have great flagship teams in each of the major leagues, we actually see even stronger traction at the collegiate, high school, and private training facility levels. The U.S. has a very strong private performance ecosystem that doesn’t exist in quite the same way in Europe. Overall, it’s almost a perfect split — roughly 50% in Europe and 50% in North America — with an even balance across elite sport, educational institutions, and private training providers.”

Q5: How are you thinking about expansion? What's on the roadmap for the next 12–18 months?

“We’ve really only just begun to tap into the full market potential. Geographically, we’re staying focused on North America and Europe while also exploring partnerships in other regions. But from a product perspective, the next big frontier is automation and data-driven insights. Right now, we’re capturing over 10 to 12 million reps of exercise data every month, which gives us an incredibly rich dataset. We’ve recently started heavily investing in AI and data science — hiring an AI-first product manager and additional algorithm developers — with the goal of delivering more sophisticated recommendations, training adjustments, and even predictive insights that assist both coaches and athletes directly. In parallel, we’re also exploring adjacent markets like the high-end fitness space, where we believe we can provide very robust strength, power, and movement assessments that complement existing wearables like Garmin or WHOOP. Ultimately, while we started as a hardware-first company, we increasingly see ourselves evolving into a software and data company with hardware as an enabler.”

Q6: Do you see Output playing a bigger role in the integrated data ecosystem alongside AMS, GPS, force plates, etc.?

“Absolutely, we see the growing need for integration across the entire athlete data ecosystem. But we’re very clear on our role — we specialize in strength, power, movement, and speed. That’s our lane, and we aim to do it better than anyone else. Rather than trying to become an all-encompassing AMS system, our philosophy is to make it as easy as possible for our highly accurate data to integrate into broader ecosystems that include GPS, force plates, heart rate monitors, and other emerging tools. We don’t want to become a services company or an AMS vendor; we want to remain a product company focused on generating top-tier data that can slot into whatever integrated system an organization uses. Every team’s needs are different, so we want to empower them with the most reliable strength and movement data possible.”

Q7. Does your software adapt to the specificity of each sports?

“Right now, we allow coaches to customize the system to fit the specific needs of their sport. So within a multi-sport organization — let’s say a university with basketball, Olympic sports, and American football — each sport can build its own dashboards, determine what metrics matter most to track, and set up corresponding workouts or protocols based on those measurements. We give teams the flexibility to structure Output in a way that’s meaningful for their environment.

Beyond that, because we have a growing user base across different sports, we’re starting to see broader trends emerge in the data. For example, we can analyze which strength and power characteristics are associated with faster baseball pitchers or more powerful golf swings. That opens the door for us to eventually provide more automated, sport-specific recommendations — not just at the sport level, but also for specific positions, age groups, and even developmental stages.

As our dataset continues to grow, we’ll be able to stratify those insights and deliver even more tailored recommendations that reflect the unique demands of each sport and position. That’s one of the most exciting parts about having Output deployed at scale — the ability to move from general performance tracking to highly specific, data-driven personalization across different athletic populations.”

Q8: What are your plans for the next 12 months?

“Although we now have over a thousand clients, we’re really just scratching the surface of how big the sports performance market can be. Geographically, our main focus will continue to be North America and Europe. We feel like we’re over the initial product-market fit hump, but there’s still a long way to go to scale significantly within these markets.

From a product development standpoint, we’re investing heavily in building data-driven insights and recommendations. We’ve started hiring specifically for this — we recently brought on an AI-first product manager and two new data science hires for our algorithms team. The goal is to move from just capturing and visualizing data to actually generating intelligent, automated insights for coaches and athletes.

On top of that, while we continue to focus on elite sport, universities, and private training, we’re also starting to explore adjacent markets. For example, we see strong potential in the high-end fitness space — working with gym chains and fitness communities — where people may already be using wearables like Garmin or WHOOP but don’t yet have access to robust strength, power, and movement data like we can provide.

So overall, over the next 12 to 18 months, it’s about expanding geographically, building out the software insights layer, and exploring how we can serve adjacent markets beyond traditional elite sports.”

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Today we have the honor to interview a interviewing a group of sports performance experts (MLS, Ligue 1, NHL, NFL).

• Rick Cost, the High Performance Director at l’Olympique Lyonnais (Ligue 1 team).

• Alexi Pianosi, the head of S&C conditioning coach for the Colorado Avalanche (NHL team).

• Karam Al Hamdani , the director of sports medicine at CF Montreal (MLS team).

• Adam Quigley, an experienced athletic trainer in the MLS (LA Galaxy), NFL (Saints) & US Soccer national teams.

Through the interview we touched on the following questions:

• Mental preparation: How are MLS and Ligue 1 clubs, NHL approaching the mental and cognitive aspects of performance in 2025—especially given the high-pressure environments and the younger player profiles coming through?

• Injury reduction: What are the biggest lessons or surprises your clubs have learned over the past year when it comes to injury reduction—anything that challenged traditional beliefs or changed internal protocols?

• Change of Direction (CoD): Change of direction ability is critical in soccer, yet many clubs still struggle to accurately assess and train it. What are the biggest challenges you've faced in capturing CoD metrics in the field—and why is improving this capacity so essential to injury prevention and performance?

• Pain management: Pain management is evolving fast, with everything from red light therapy to neuromodulation gaining traction. What are the most effective modalities you've personally seen make a difference in your athletes’ recovery and performance—and how do you decide which tool to use and when?

• FIFA Club World Cup: With the FIFA Club World Cup kicking off this month and featuring top clubs from every continent, which team do you see standing out—and what performance trends or tactical evolutions are you most curious to observe during the tournament?

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

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You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Rick, Alexi, Karam, and Adam located at the top of this blog post.Here are the quotes from the interview with them:

Q1: Mental and Cognitive Aspects of Performance

Rick Cost:

“We’re really at the beginning stages of integrating cognitive and mental performance more deeply into our player evaluation and development. It starts on the scouting end — we’re now looking beyond just technical skills and physical abilities and evaluating players' mindsets. We use specific questionnaires where players rate themselves on items like mental resilience, leadership, growth mindset, and adaptability. Then we cross-check their answers with feedback from coaches or people who know them well to look for discrepancies or alignment. Once the players are in, we create individualized goals based on their scores and reassess every three months. This helps us guide them in areas like leadership development or mental toughness. What’s fascinating is seeing how eager some players are to engage with this process — many really want to grow in this area. It’s still very new, especially compared to my previous experiences in the U.S. or the Netherlands, but there’s a clear appetite for it.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“At the NHL level, I think we’re seeing more and more players privately seeking out their own mental performance coaches or psychologists, often through personal networks. The challenge at the team level is trust — players might be hesitant to open up to someone affiliated directly with the organization. My approach is to normalize these conversations about growth mindset, process orientation, and resilience, much like we do with strength training or nutrition. Instead of mandating sessions, I try to create an environment where mental skills are valued and discussed openly — sharing articles, anecdotes, or research to spark interest. That way, when a player feels ready, they know these resources exist and can engage in a way that feels safe and voluntary.”

Adam Quigley:

“It’s interesting to reflect on how these roles have evolved. Historically, staff like us were often the de facto mental therapists — players would bring their personal issues to us because we were trusted support figures. Now, as clubs bring in dedicated mental performance coaches or sports psychologists, there’s a transition happening. We’re figuring out how to integrate both roles and create standardized assessments while still respecting individual privacy and needs. Beyond cognitive performance, there’s the emotional health side — a player whose partner is pregnant and struggling to sleep, for example, may have very different needs than someone working on reaction time or decision-making. It’s a complex space where trust, timing, and individualization are absolutely critical.”

Karam Al Hamdani:

“The trust element is huge. Players may perceive working with a mental coach employed by the club as a vulnerability, worrying about how information might be shared with upper management. From my perspective, it’s always about the player's wellbeing — I’m here to help them perform at their best, whether physically or mentally. Seeking mental support shouldn’t be seen as weakness; if anything, it takes great strength to acknowledge where you need help and be proactive about it.”

Q2: Injury Reduction Lessons

Karam Al Hamdani:

“One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is how multifactorial injury risk truly is. We often fixate on GPS data — how much they run, sprint distance, high-speed efforts — but that’s just one part of the picture. Sleep quality, hydration, emotional stress, contract negotiations, HRV, mental state — all these factors matter. Sometimes everything looks perfect on paper — all the data says they should be ready — and yet they still get injured. We had a player last year who suffered a minor adductor strain, went through flawless rehab, passed all our objective measures, yet reinjured the same muscle minutes into his first game back. It’s a reminder that despite all our technology, there are still elements of randomness and unpredictability we cannot fully control.”

Rick Cost:

“The only thing that’s truly challenged my understanding isn’t a new technology — it’s the concept of entropy in movement. Stable systems create predictable patterns, but when things become disorganized — due to poorly timed training loads, poorly sequenced strength sessions, or even subtle fatigue — we see players start to drop with soft tissue injuries like hamstring strains. We still don’t have reliable ways to measure this movement variability in real time, but I believe if we can eventually quantify ‘system entropy’ — the underlying stability of the neuromuscular system — it might unlock an entirely new way to understand injury risk.”

Adam Quigley:

“The biggest unknown right now is how to synthesize all the available data into something actionable in real time. There are vendors working on predictive models that claim they’ll soon be able to say, ‘This player is entering a danger zone — pull them now.’ But even if we develop that capability, ultimately the coach and medical team will still need to make tough decisions: Is it worth pulling a star player in the 4th quarter? Human judgment will always play a role.”

Q3: Challenges in Measuring and Training Change of Direction (CoD)

Alexi Pianosi:

“In hockey, change of direction is very different than most sports because you’re not on solid ground — you’re on skates with less friction, different biomechanics, and wearing significant gear. You also rarely change direction repeatedly without a puck or without reacting to a defender. So, isolated drills don’t always translate well. What we do is study high-performing players — how they pivot, accelerate, and stop under pressure — then we try to replicate and strengthen the qualities that enable those movement patterns in off-ice training. For players who are already world-class, it's often about refining very specific elements of their game based on their role.”

Rick Cost:

“When I was growing up, kids played endless games of tag, capture the flag, dodgeball — all requiring constant change of direction. That spontaneous, unstructured agility has been lost with today’s youth spending more time behind screens. We became obsessed with high-speed running metrics and linear conditioning, often neglecting the type of multi-directional agility that once came naturally. Now we’re realizing how much we’ve lost. Fortunately, there’s renewed focus on re-integrating these drills — curvilinear runs, T-drills, quick reactive drills — back into warm-ups and training. It’s almost like rediscovering what we already knew decades ago.”

Q4: Pain Management Modalities

Karam Al Hamdani:

“One of the biggest things I’ve learned recently is how much of pain management comes down to coaching the brain to remove the threat response. We had a player who took a bad bruise to the calf — couldn’t walk initially — but through guided movement, dorsiflexion, and progressive load coaching, combined with compression and constant flushing, we convinced his brain it was safe to move again. He played the next day. Neuromodulation isn’t always about fancy machines — sometimes it’s about reframing the perception of danger.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“You have to distinguish between discomfort and pain rooted in pathology. A stiff back may just need some soft tissue work and mobility, but a tibial plateau bruise that hurts with every plant could increase injury risk dramatically. That’s where pain becomes a movement quality issue, not just a symptom. Modalities like red light, cryo, or compression sleeves are tools to support recovery and comfort, but they don’t resolve the underlying injury.”

Adam Quigley:

“I’ve started looking at pain management more holistically — not just what happens in the treatment room, but how athletes spend the rest of their day. Can they stay active with safe alternatives? Can they stay engaged with their team socially and mentally? The more we keep athletes mentally stimulated and involved, the less consumed they become by the pain itself.”

Rick Cost:

“Players often request treatments based on what worked for them previously. One might swear by infrared therapy, another by compression sleeves. Whether or not these modalities have strong scientific backing, the psychological trust factor is huge. If the athlete believes it helps, sometimes that’s just as important as the intervention itself.”

Q5: FIFA Club World Cup Performance Trends

Adam Quigley:

“What makes this tournament so fascinating is how these completely different tactical styles will clash. MLS clubs rarely face the same level of high-pressing, technically dominant teams like PSG or Manchester City. It’ll be a real test of adaptability — how quickly coaches can adjust mid-match when their initial game plan isn’t working. The MLS sides will take this extremely seriously — it’s a rare chance to prove themselves on a global stage.”

Rick Cost:

“In Europe, the high press has evolved into more of a mid-block, with strikers sitting a bit deeper to conserve energy for decisive moments. MLS teams often press much higher and with more energy, which could be risky against teams who excel at playing through pressure. Add in the variables of heat, humidity, altitude, and heavy travel — especially for European clubs unaccustomed to this — and you’ve got a very unpredictable environment. I’m especially curious to see which young players break through in this setting.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Neil Craig, involved in high performance sports both as a sports scientists and coach and now coaching the coaches.

Neil Craig is an Australian Australian rules football coach and former player. He is best known as being coach of the Adelaide Football Club from 2004 to 2011. He also notably served as caretaker coach of the Melbourne Football Club in 2013. He played for the Norwood Football Club, Sturt Football Club and the North Adelaide Football Club in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL).

Picture: Neil Craig

He has worked as a fitness adviser, coach of the Adelaide Football Club, a caretaker coach of the Melbourne Football Club, head of performance at the Essendon Football Club, as well as director of coaching at the Carlton Football Club. From 2017 to 2022 he was high performance manager for the England rugby union team, working with head coach Eddie Jones.

Picture: Neil Craig (Left), Eddie Jones (Right)

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• His background.

• His most consistent 'North Star' or guiding principle in building high-performance environments.

• The role and science behind being a 'critical friend' to head coaches.

• Balancing data/sports science with the “human element”.

• The evolution of leadership in elite sport—significant shifts and emerging trends.

• One actionable piece of advice for aspiring coaches or leaders.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Neil located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Neil:

Q1. Tell me about your background:

"My background is pretty insular—I’ve only ever really known high-performance sport. I played Australian football for about 17 or 18 years, back when the game wasn’t fully professional. While I was playing, I trained as a sports scientist and eventually got a job as a physiologist with the South Australian Sports Institute, working mainly with track cycling. That took me to world championships, World Cups, and Olympic Games for nearly 15 to 20 years. When I finished playing, I was invited to be a head coach at one of my old clubs, which was a steep learning curve—I made plenty of mistakes early on. From there, I became an assistant coach and then a head coach in the AFL as the league was turning fully professional. Since 2011, I’ve been involved in director of coaching roles at various AFL clubs, but in the last few years, I’ve focused more on working directly with head and assistant coaches—essentially coaching the coaches. The idea is that just as we expect athletes to continually improve, we should expect the same from our coaches, and that’s a concept that’s gaining momentum both in Australia and overseas."

Q2. Most consistent 'North Star' or guiding principle in building high-performance environments:

"I have a strong feeling that the best player or athlete development comes from strong coach development. I genuinely believe coaches have the biggest influence on performance, so we need to make sure we know what we’re doing. It’s not just about the athletes getting better every day—coaches need to be on that same journey of continual improvement. If we support and develop our coaches, that flows directly into the environment and the athletes’ performance. That’s really been my North Star throughout my career, no matter the sport or team."

Q3. The role and science behind being a 'critical friend' to head coaches:

"The role of a trusted, critical friend is essential. It’s someone who will tell you the truth, but for that to work, the head coach has to genuinely want that support—you can’t force it. The relationship has to be built on trust. I spent a long time working with Eddie Jones, and he trusted me to come into his environment and tell him what I saw and heard, even if he didn’t always agree. The job of head coach is massive now, with so much pressure—internal, external, media, supporters, and personal life. If I had my time again as a head coach, I’d definitely have a critical friend—someone to check the temperature of the environment and my own behavior, especially under stress. That’s when you really need honest feedback, because it’s easy to lose perspective. It’s not just about challenging feedback; sometimes it’s just listening or being a sounding board. Having someone to share the load can be incredibly therapeutic and helps you make better decisions."

Q4. Balancing data/sports science with the 'human element':

"As the head coach, you set the tone for the environment because of the power of your position, so you need to be clear about the environment you want to create. Ideally, it’s one where people thrive under pressure—not just the athletes, but also the support staff. That means people feel valued, feel like they’re improving, their opinions matter, they have some autonomy, and they’re learning life skills. The job is huge, and coaches are making so many decisions every day—about selection, training, managing up, travel, and more. With all the data and science available, it’s easy to get caught up in the numbers, but you can’t lose sight of the human side. The best environments are those where people feel safe to contribute, where there’s healthy conflict and debate, and where the leader values other people’s opinions. That’s how you get the best answers and create a culture where everyone is striving for improvement."

Q5. Evolution of leadership in elite sport—significant shifts and emerging trends:

"The best environments are those where the leader values other people's opinions and is only interested in getting the best answer, regardless of where it comes from. That requires leaders to put their ego in their back pocket. Too often, leaders feel they need to have all the answers, but nobody does. The healthiest environments are where there’s debate, discussion, and rigor—everyone feels comfortable putting their opinion on the table, knowing that at the end of the day, someone will make the final call. If I walk into a meeting and everyone just agrees, my antenna goes up—that’s not a safe environment. The best leaders have a clear philosophy and value system that guides their decisions, and they’re willing to confront issues early and encourage others to speak up. That’s what drives sustained success and resilience in teams."

Q6. One actionable piece of advice for aspiring coaches or leaders:

"Leadership is a skill, and as soon as you influence someone, you’re leading—hopefully in a positive way. If everything was black and white, we wouldn’t need leaders, but it rarely is. Another quote that resonates with me is, 'You haven’t really led until you wake up two or three mornings in a row and, as soon as you open your eyes, you say, "Oh, f**k."' That’s the reality of leadership—sometimes you’re faced with tough decisions and uncertainty. The more you can practice leadership, the better you get. My advice is to really think about what you would do in a range of different situations and why. That process will help you develop your values and philosophy, which you’ll need as a leader. Otherwise, you’ll just be all over the place. Think about your philosophy on recruitment, learning environments, empowerment, alignment, and wellbeing. The more you think these things through, the better prepared you’ll be to lead."

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Steven Lund, the head of sales at Cerbrec, a leading AI agent development platform.

Cerbrec is an AI agent development platform designed to make powerful, enterprise-grade AI accessible to everyone—from high school students to professional sports teams—without requiring coding skills. The platform, developed over three years, enables users to build customizable AI agents for tasks like player evaluation, NIL value analysis, roster optimization, draft tracking, sponsorship management, and more. With a strong focus on personalization and data privacy, Cerbrec integrates proprietary tools (like its Graph Book platform) with cloud and on-premise deployments, allowing teams to use their own private data securely.

Picture: Cerbrec’s dashboard

The company is also one of 20 selected for AWS’s generative AI program, and is rapidly expanding into college and professional sports, offering flexible, responsive, and highly tailored solutions to meet the unique needs of each team.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, his company and product, the benefits of the AI agent platform and approach to sports organizations and teams. We also talked about his competitive advantage, business model, and his plans for the next 12 months.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Steve located at the top of this blog post.

Of note, Steven will also be presenting at our VIP dinner at the NBA Summer league on July 15 at the Wynn hotel.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Steven:

1. Your Background

“I’ve got about three decades of experience in high tech. I’ve worked for some of the biggest names in the industry—Apple Computer, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard—where I led and scaled teams focused on cutting-edge innovation. Over the last 15 years, I’ve shifted my focus almost exclusively to artificial intelligence, machine learning, and more recently, generative AI and intelligent agents. I’ve founded and successfully exited five companies across different industries. Currently, I’m building Cerbrec, which we started about three to four years ago, with a vision to democratize AI and apply it across verticals, including financial services, biotech, manufacturing, and now, sports.”

2. Your Company and Product

“Cerbrec is an AI agent development platform that’s been in the works for over three years. From day one, our vision has been to make AI accessible to everyone—not just developers or engineers. So we built CRE, our proprietary end-to-end platform, to allow even high school students to create and deploy their own AI agents. It supports deployment both in the cloud and on-premise, which is critical for data-sensitive industries like sports. We’re also one of only 20 companies selected for AWS’s elite generative AI partner program, which gives us access to the latest in infrastructure and security. What really makes us different is the ability to build highly personalized agents that are tailored to each customer’s private data, workflows, and business needs.”

3. The Main Use Cases Your Solution Addresses

“Our use cases in sports are growing rapidly, but they generally fall into a few core buckets. First, we have what we call player agents—these are used for things like contract evaluation, NIL valuation, and performance analysis. Then there are development agents, which help coaches and staff create personalized training and development programs. We also work with brands on sponsorship agents that manage inventory and partnership data. For an MLB team, we built a draft optimization agent that tracks players, alerts staff when key prospects enter the draft, and even evaluates potential picks across pro and college levels. We’re also building event agents, which can create personalized fan experiences for attending games—booking travel, hotels, restaurants, and more. The beauty is, these agents can be mixed and matched to address whatever operational or performance need a team may have.”

4. Benefits for Teams and Athletes to Use Your AI Solution

“The biggest benefit for teams and athletes is flexibility and scale without complexity. With traditional apps, you’re often stuck with rigid functionality, but our agents evolve as your needs evolve. They never go out of date—they update automatically as your data updates. We’ve designed our system to accept any kind of data format, from spreadsheets to video, and we use that to generate deeper insights, predictions, and performance trends. It’s also fully customizable—teams can have their own look, feel, templates, and queries. Most importantly, you don’t need to write a single line of code. Coaches, analysts, or even athletes themselves can talk to the agent in plain language and get intelligent, actionable responses on anything from player load management to contract ROI.”

5. Your Competitive Advantage

“What sets us apart is not just our technology—it’s the simplicity and customization we offer. There are a lot of platforms that say they’re low-code or no-code, but the reality is, many of them still require technical people to implement and maintain. We’ve built Reck so that even someone with zero engineering background can use it, customize it, and extract real value from it. We also do deep-dive workshops with teams to understand their exact problems—whether it’s operational inefficiencies, roster issues, or player health—and we build solutions that solve those problems specifically. On top of that, we’re developing dashboards that allow different users—coaches, front office, medical staff—to fine-tune what they see, how they weigh different factors, and how they generate reports. That level of user control is rare in this space.”

6. What Teams and Customers Like the Most

“One of the things we hear over and over again is how fast and responsive we are. A team will reach out in the morning asking for a new feature or tweak, and by that afternoon, we’ve already delivered it. They love the level of personal attention and customization we provide. No two agents are the same because no two teams are the same. Our clients also appreciate how easy it is to integrate their own data and workflows into our platform. Whether it’s Excel sheets, scouting videos, or internal databases, we make it seamless. And because we’re still relatively small, we treat every client like a top priority—we act more like an embedded tech partner than a vendor.”

7. Your Business Model

“Our business model is built on flexibility and long-term partnership. We license our Graph Book platform on an annual per-user basis, and then layer on custom development and support based on the specific agents a team wants. For example, if a team wants a Roster Optimization Agent, we’ll charge a development fee for that, bundle it into a managed service agreement (MSA), and provide daily support and updates for a 12-month term. That support isn’t static—we’re constantly iterating, improving, and responding to client requests throughout the year. We also support both cloud-based and on-prem deployments, depending on the client’s security needs.”

8. Your Plans for the Next 12 Months

“The next 12 months are all about growth, focus, and expansion. We’re actively raising capital to scale our operations, double down on sports, and continue to enhance the platform. Sports—especially college and pro teams—are still relatively underserved when it comes to sophisticated AI. So we see a big opportunity to bring enterprise-grade tech into this space. We’re currently working with teams in college football, MLB, and have projects in development with NBA franchises. We're also exploring opportunities in European soccer. Our product roadmap includes new agent types, more intelligent dashboards, and expansion into new geographies. We’re committed to building a platform that becomes the AI backbone for sports organizations across disciplines.”

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This week we have the honor to interview a group of experts in the science of movements in elite sports.

• Abdul Sillah, experienced performance coach. Abdul has worked with Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka.

• Brijesh Patel, Associate Athletic Director, Director of Athletic Performance at Quinnipiac University (NCAA).

• Dr Ryan Ting, founder of RNA Sports. He is also an MD, MPH, and Medical Director at Arthur Ting Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine.

• Marc Drobenko, ATC, and DNSP, Former Assistant Athletic Trainer in college and professional sports.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the following questions:

• How has the science of movement evolved in the last 5–10 years across elite sports like the NBA, NHL, and tennis — and what’s driving that evolution?

• What are the most important biomechanical or neuromuscular factors practitioners should assess to optimize movement quality and reduce injury risk?

• How do you approach movement retraining or re-patterning with elite athletes who already perform at a high level but have asymmetries or inefficiencies?

• Which tools, technologies, or methodologies are you most excited about right now for evaluating or enhancing movement in elite settings?

• How do you effectively communicate complex movement data to coaches and athletes — and ensure it drives meaningful change in training or performance?

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Abdul, Ryan, Brijesh and Marc:

Q1. How has the science of movement evolved in the last 5–10 years across elite sports like the NBA, NHL, and tennis — and what’s driving that evolution?

Brijesh Patel:

“Over the last five to ten years, we've seen a massive shift in how we approach keeping players healthy. That’s really what's driving the evolution in movement science — job security. Sports is big business, and athletes are the assets. If they're not on the field, the team suffers — and so does the organization. Practitioners are constantly looking for ways to protect those assets. We’ve gone from using movement screens like FMS and Y-Balance to more advanced tools like force plates, high-speed cameras, and GPS monitors that quantify external loads and the cost of movement. But what we often forget is the art of coaching — the feel, the eye test, the relationships with athletes. Sometimes, the obsession with numbers can blind us to what we’re actually seeing. Athletes start to game the system — cheating a jump test or adjusting their sprint to hit a better number, even if it’s not the most efficient or safe way to move. That’s why it has to be a blend of technology and coaching artistry.”

Dr Ryan Ting:

“In Silicon Valley, everything is data-driven. So the demand from youth athletes and parents has grown — they want to know how to jump higher, run faster, and prove it objectively. But while we’ve collected more data and developed more technologies over the last decade, I still think we’re missing the mark in how well we translate that data. We talk a lot about performance numbers, but we don’t focus enough on quality — on biomechanics and body control. That’s where the real injury prevention happens. We need to stop treating data like the final answer. It’s just a piece of the puzzle.”

“At the youth level, the stakes might not be job security like it is in the pros — it’s roster security. Parents are desperate to get their kids on varsity or in front of scouts. But when you prioritize explosive performance metrics without checking movement mechanics and body control, you're setting kids up for chronic injuries. I've always said — the body mechanics and proprioception have to come first. Otherwise, no matter how fast or high they go, it’s just a matter of time before the wheels come off.”

Abdul Sillah:

“We’re becoming too dependent on lab data and not enough on our own eyes. The eye doesn’t lie. We spend the most time with these athletes — we know their bodies, their fatigue levels, and their limits better than anyone sitting in a lab. The last five to ten years, I’ve seen too many practitioners lean on tech and lose that personal connection. But that’s where the real insights come from. I trust myself more than any device — and so do my athletes. That trust is earned over time on the field, not in front of a screen.”

Marc Drobenko:

“Just to add a little bit on top of what Coach B and Dr. Ryan said, in regards to data — it helps decision-making to a point, but that’s where the artistry of coaching comes in. One coach might take the same data and go one way, while another coach uses it in a completely different way that’s more effective for that athlete or team. I always go back to something I heard from Dr. Craig Liebenson in L.A.: ‘You have to move well, then move often.’ If you do both, and then load those patterns correctly, you’re going to build a robust system”.

“What I’ve been focusing on at the higher levels is: how do athletes move under extreme stress? Do their patterns change? Does their breathing change? Where do their eyes go? I’ve seen it in huddles — elite players have calm breathing and focused eyes. Players who aren’t performing at that same level? Their eyes are all over the place. They’re distracted. There’s a clear connection between how athletes move and how they manage stress. The best movers are often the most composed — and vice versa”.

Q2. What are the most important biomechanical or neuromuscular factors practitioners should assess to optimize movement quality and reduce injury risk?

Marc Drobenko:

“When I assess an athlete, I’m looking at their firing patterns — especially in the posterior chain. It might sound simple, but you’d be surprised how many elite performers have dysfunctional firing sequences. For example, when a person lies face-down and lifts a leg, the first muscles that should fire are the glute max and the hamstring. Instead, I’ll often see the lumbar spine fire first, then the wrong muscles in the wrong order. These imbalances tell me how unstable their pelvis might be and how well — or poorly — they can coordinate complex movements. If they can’t stabilize the pelvis, how can they control the hips in rotation, acceleration, or deceleration? So before they even hit the field or the gym, I start on the table and try to get their sequencing right — so we can hand them off to a performance coach like Brijesh in a much better place.”

Brijesh Patel:

“My first question with any movement assessment is: can the athlete even get into the position we’re asking for? If they can’t achieve the position — unilaterally or bilaterally — that tells you everything. Then I’ll ask: can you feel it? Can you feel your glute? Your big toe? Your scapula? If they can’t sense it, they can’t control it. And if they can’t control it, they can’t change it. So many athletes come in and don’t even understand how to feel their own body. But with consistent cueing and education, we help them open up that sensory feedback loop. That’s how you build better movers — not just stronger ones.”

Dr Ryan Ting:

“We talk about load management, acceleration, and deceleration — but we need to look at the mechanics under the hood. Are they overstriding? Where is their center of mass when they plant? Do they land like a gymnast or like a wrecking ball? Athletes often get injured not because of how they move forward, but because of how they absorb and control force. If you can’t handle eccentric loads properly, you’re just setting up for chronic injuries. We’ve got to stop just chasing force production and start focusing on force absorption.”

Abdul Sillah:

“There’s not much to say because they covered all grounds actually. I mean, Dr. Ryan Ting came in and basically covered the other end of it. That was really interesting, especially about changing your stride length instead of opening it up like everyone typically teaches. I had chronic hamstring issues back in my track days, especially when we went to state. It was because of that — overstriding. And that’s when I learned how to adjust my stride length. Not doing the typical long stride, but actually shortening it and learning how to maintain speed without constantly accelerating. So when Ryan mentioned that, I was like — that’s perfect. That’s exactly what I went through. It connected immediately.

Q3. How do you approach movement retraining or re-patterning with elite athletes who already perform at a high level but have asymmetries or inefficiencies?

Marc Drobenko:

“There’s a fine line between helping and over-coaching. Elite athletes often have asymmetries that actually make them great. A punter in the NFL who only kicks with one leg is naturally going to be asymmetric — and that’s okay. A swimmer who breathes only to the right? Same thing. What I care about is whether that asymmetry is causing a problem. If it’s not, leave it alone. But if it’s creating a risk or a recurring issue, then we educate. We explain the why and the how — and then we reassess. Ultimately, we’re not here to make everyone symmetrical — we’re here to make them efficient and sustainable.”

Dr Ryan Ting:

“You’re not going to walk up to a guy like Odell Beckham Jr. and say, ‘You’ve got to change how you run.’ That’s not realistic. But what we can do is refine the movement to make it more efficient — without changing the signature that makes them special. It’s like writing — everyone has a different handwriting. You don’t ask someone to change their signature, but you can help them write more clearly. That’s how we approach movement retraining.”

Brijesh Patel:

“For me, it’s about giving athletes variability — the ability to move side-to-side, to decelerate, to rotate both ways. You’re not trying to fix everything. You’re just trying to make sure they have the movement options they need to stay healthy and perform. We use isometrics, eccentrics, and sequencing to help clean up the inefficiencies — but we never take away the individuality of their movement. That’s sacred.”

Abdul Sillah:

“If you don’t catch these patterns early, by the time the athlete’s making millions, they’re locked in. You can’t walk in and start over. At that point, it’s all about education and awareness. If you’ve built trust with them, they’ll listen. But you’ve got to meet them where they are and work with their movement style, not against it.”

Q4. Which tools, technologies, or methodologies are you most excited about right now for evaluating or enhancing movement in elite settings?

Brijesh Patel:

“Honestly, my most powerful tools are my eyes and my ears. Those are the things I train every day. No device can replace what I see when an athlete walks, cuts, or jumps. That visual feedback, combined with what the athlete tells me, helps me make better coaching decisions than any tech. That said, I’d love to have access to force plates — they can confirm what I’m already seeing and make it easier to explain the ‘why’ to the athlete. But I always start with what I can see and feel.”

Abdul Sillah:

“I’ve used the gadgets — force plates, wearables, motion capture. They’re great, but what makes us special is our instinct, our creativity. You can’t automate experience. The moment the athlete starts moving, I know if something is off. That’s not something a screen can tell me before I do. And that instinct is what helps me keep athletes like Serena or Naomi healthy — because I’m watching them 24/7. I’m not sitting in a lab. I’m on the court with them. That’s what matters.”

Dr Ryan Ting:

“If we can use motion capture and joint tracking in real-time to enhance what we already know — that’s powerful. The key is: don’t let the tech replace coaching. Let it enhance it. A coach with a sharp eye doesn’t need confirmation, but the data helps communicate with others — whether it’s other staff, parents, or the athletes themselves.”

Marc Drobenko:

“Piggybacking off of what Coach Abdul said — the body tells a story. You show up to the court, and you can see it. There are times where you look at an athlete and just know something’s off. Depending on what I’m seeing — how they’re moving, their posture, their rhythm — I can predict things like, ‘That backhand might be a problem today.’ The movement speaks before the athlete does”.

“So the real tool? It’s not a force plate or a wearable. It’s your eyes. The best practitioners are the ones who’ve trained their eye over years and years. Without any words, the body language tells you what you need to know. That’s how I evaluate movement first — I watch. I listen. Then I make decisions. Technology is great, but if you can’t see what’s happening in real time with your own eyes, you’re going to miss the story that the athlete’s body is telling you.”

Q5. How do you effectively communicate complex movement data to coaches and athletes — and ensure it drives meaningful change in training or performance?

Abdul Sillah:

“My background is in psychology, not kinesiology. So for me, it’s all about communication. Every athlete — no matter how elite — has a way to reach them. You just have to listen and learn how they think. It’s not about barking orders. It’s about showing them their goal, then helping them understand what it takes to get there. I remember when Serena first started training with me, I told her: no headphones when we’re working. I needed her full attention. Fifteen years later, after winning dozens of titles, she still remembered that rule. That’s respect. That’s trust. And that’s how you get through to a champion.”

Marc Drobenko:

“With elite athletes, it’s about education, not correction. I once worked with a martial artist who had kicked thousands of times in his career. But when I pointed out that his support foot’s big toe was lifting off the ground, and asked him to keep it down, his next kick sent the bag flying — farther than ever before. He said, ‘How did you know that?’ That’s how you earn trust. You show them, not tell them. When they feel the difference, that’s when change happens.”

Dr Ryan Ting:

“If we can explain the ‘why’ behind the movement and connect it to their goals — and if we can back that up with data or immediate results — then we get buy-in. Elite athletes have egos, and they should. They’ve earned it. So we meet them with respect, and then show them how to keep what they’ve built and extend their careers. That’s how you move mountains.”

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Today as part of our continued effort on AI and the impact on elite sports, we have the honor to interview a interviewing a group of experts in AI and elite sports:

• Dr Bill Burgos, the CEO of LONU a next generation AI based nutrition platform. Bill is also a highly accomplished strength and conditioning expert with extensive experience in the NBA, having served as the Head of Strength and Conditioning for the Minnesota Timberwolves, Orlando Magic, and New York Knicks.

• Adam Cheyer, a renowned computer scientist and entrepreneur best known as the co-founder and original developer of Siri, the intelligent voice assistant later acquired by Apple in 2010. He was also a founding member of Change.org and has held key roles at companies like Viv Labs (acquired by Samsung) and SRI International. Cheyer is recognized for pioneering work in artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and human-computer interaction.

• Jordan Stewart-Mackie, a performance scientist currently affiliated with the NBA Academy Africa, where he focuses on optimizing athlete development through tailored training and nutrition programs. Jordan has also served as an Applied Performance Scientist at Playermaker and has held roles in professional football clubs across Europe and Asia, including Buriram United FC and Leicester City FC.

• Adam Douglas, the head S&C coach for the Pittsburgh penguins, an NHL team.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Bill, Adam C, Adam D and Jordan located at the top of this blog post.Here are the quotes from the interview with them:

Q1. How do you see Generative AI evolving over the next 2–5 years in elite sports and beyond?

Adam Cheyer (Co-founder of Siri):

“Today, most generative AI tools rely on pre-trained models and a simple chat interface. But over the next three to five years, I expect three major shifts. First, the interface will evolve. Just like the early web was static and eventually became interactive and commerce-driven, AI interfaces will become richer—blending graphical systems with natural language to better serve human users.Second, AI needs to move beyond cached knowledge. Right now, these models don’t access live APIs or current data, which makes them outdated. Future AI systems need to know and do—interact with real-time data, execute actions, and learn dynamically. Third, we need to build an AI ecosystem—like the app ecosystems for mobile and web—so that brands, partners, and capabilities can plug in directly. It’s not just about crawling or scraping anymore. AI must enable direct collaboration with those who own the data and know the domain. That’s where the transformation lies.”

Adam Douglas (Pittsburgh Penguins):

“In elite sport, I want AI to be the eyes I don’t have. As a practitioner, I’m flooded with data—GPS from practices, biometric data from training, scouting reports from coaches—and I can’t possibly process everything. AI should be there to flag what I’m missing, filter the noise, and highlight trends I wouldn’t see on my own. But it’s not just about knowing—it’s about doing. When AI reaches the point where it can know and act in the same breath, while still allowing me to apply the sporting context, that’s when it becomes a true performance enhancer.”

Jordan Stewart-Mackie (EPL/NBA Performance Expert):

“We're not trying to replicate humans with AI—we’re trying to enhance our ability to represent human cognition in high-performance environments. AI’s role is to help us iterate, adapt, and innovate. It’s about bridging the gap between the instinctive and the analytical, helping us make smarter decisions while respecting the complexity of elite sport. The danger is when people think AI is about replacing the human side—what we’re really trying to do is augment it in the right ways.”

Q2. What are the most impactful AI use cases in elite sports?

Adam Cheyer:

“I think one of the most powerful applications is collaborative decision-making. I saw this firsthand when I was a guest coach for the Nigerian Olympic basketball team. Watching the coaches debate who to bring to the Olympics was fascinating—it’s all about trade-offs: youth vs. experience, speed vs. leadership, chemistry vs. individual skill. Imagine having AI tools that don’t just give you data, but help you understand where disagreements lie within your staff and pinpoint what decisions need deeper analysis. Decision-making in sport is rarely individual—it’s collective. AI can support that collaboration in ways we’ve never seen before.”

Jordan Stewart-Mackie:

“There are two big areas: First, real-time decision-making under pressure. In elite sport, everything is fast, complex, and constantly changing. AI can help us cut through uncertainty in the heat of the moment—during a game, during recovery, during return-to-play scenarios. Second, talent identification. With the rise of pattern recognition and large datasets, AI can spot potential in ways human scouts can’t. But it’s not just about identifying talent—it’s about customizing development pathways, saving time, and making better long-term bets on athletes. That could transform recruiting and player development.”

Adam Douglas:

“For me, the key benefit is time and cost efficiency. A few years ago, we were deciding whether to build out our analytics internally or work with an AI vendor. Hiring new staff and building models in-house would’ve taken years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. With a vendor, we could access a mature platform immediately. And in elite sports, where every hour counts, being able to turn around actionable insights in real time is worth its weight in gold. AI doesn’t just replace time-consuming tasks—it frees us up to focus on the human aspects of coaching and decision-making.”

Bill Burgos:

“People often overlook the human element in all this. AI is only as good as the people feeding it. Who’s labeling your datasets? Who’s interpreting the information? That matters. If you don’t have qualified strength coaches, dietitians, or PTs involved, you’re not getting the best out of the technology. So for me, AI is a support tool—but the real differentiator is the practitioner. The more we invest in the people who understand both performance and AI, the more useful those tools become.”

Q3: What specific use cases do you believe will have the biggest performance or competitive impact in elite sports?

Adam Cheyer:

“One of the most powerful applications of AI in elite sport is collaborative decision-making. I had the chance to be a guest coach for the Nigerian Olympic team and sit in on roster decisions. It was fascinating — trade-offs between veteran leadership and athletic youth, positional balance, role diversity. It’s all incredibly nuanced. What struck me was how valuable it would be to have tools that surface fine-grained disagreement and trade-off zones among coaching staff — tools that don't just show data, but help experts deliberate and make collective, optimal choices. Every organization makes hundreds of decisions like these — from lineup selections to rehab timing — and AI can become a real-time facilitator of smarter, more aligned decisions.”

Jordan Stewart-Mackie:

“There are two big domains where I think AI will have a transformative effect.First, in decision-making under uncertainty — not just in training or planning, but in the moment. The game is chaotic, time-pressured, emotionally charged. AI could help filter and prioritize the right information so coaches make better live calls without being overwhelmed. Second is talent identification. The ability of AI to analyze large datasets, recognize subtle performance patterns, and project long-term growth is huge. But it’s not just about discovery — it’s about building individualized development pathways with more efficiency and precision. That will reshape the way teams recruit and groom talent.”

Adam Douglas:

“For me, it’s about time, efficiency, and money. I remember our analytics director saying, ‘We can either pay this vendor $50,000 or spend 10x that amount hiring someone, training them, and waiting two to four years to build the infrastructure ourselves.’ That was eye-opening. Teams are under pressure to make fast, high-quality decisions. And AI can massively reduce the turnaround time between collecting data and making use of it. Whether it’s training loads, rehab monitoring, or player profiling, having that speed gives you a real competitive edge.”

Bill Burgos:

“The big one for me is the human layer around AI. AI might process tons of data, but it doesn’t understand the culture of a locker room or how to connect with a player. When wearables first came to the NBA, players thought we were using the data against them. There was no trust. Now, the CBA requires us to explain exactly what metrics we’re using, why, and how it benefits the player — in layman’s terms. The future of AI in sport depends on educating athletes and earning their buy-in. If you get that right, AI becomes a powerful tool. If not, it becomes a distraction.”

Q4: What are the biggest limitations or risks of applying AI in high-performance settings like pro sports?

Adam Cheyer:

“There are three critical limitations:Accuracy — these models are trained on massive amounts of data, but when they don’t know something, they tend to guess. They hallucinate. That’s dangerous in high-stakes decisions.Transparency — these systems are black boxes. Even when you ask why they gave a certain output, they’ll invent a reason. Press refresh and you’ll get a different explanation. That undermines trust.And third, they lack true human context and experience. They don’t understand what it means to compete, to be injured, or to feel pressure. That’s why human judgment will always matter. You should treat AI like a smart intern — useful, but not yet fully reliable.”

Adam Douglas:

“The biggest issue is data quality and standardization. Take hockey, for example. Wearables weren’t even formalized in the CBA until two years ago, and now we have a league-mandated system that teams are required to use — but we don’t really know how valid or reliable it is. If I don’t trust the input, I can’t trust the output. Worse, if my data and another team’s data are processed differently, how do we train models that work across organizations? Even within one club, if we’ve only got three years of clean, trustworthy data, we’re building AI on a small foundation. Garbage in, garbage out. That applies even more in elite sports, where margins are razor-thin.”

Bill Burgos:

“AI is only as good as the practitioners who use it. When I was finishing my doctorate, I studied electronic medical records — and the biggest cause of system failure was user error. Same thing with AI: if the data going in is mislabeled, incomplete, or interpreted wrong, your entire model is flawed. And then there’s the player interaction piece. In the NBA, I had athletes who responded totally differently to the same feedback. AI doesn’t know your players — you do. So if you’re not tailoring your communication and engagement around those human factors, you’ll lose buy-in. AI can’t replace the coach–player relationship — it can only support it.”

Jordan Stewart-Mackie:

“One of the biggest risks is when players self-interpret AI insights without context. I’ve seen athletes change their training plans because a wearable said something — even when it wasn’t the right move. With money and private trainers, they go off-script and potentially harm themselves. We need to train athletes to own their data responsibly and understand what it means in context. AI might give us the data, but we need to shape the behavior. And that only happens with education, clarity, and trust in the system.”

Q5: How should professional teams and federations structure their AI strategies? Should they build in-house, partner with startups, or use off-the-shelf platforms?

Adam Douglas:

“We were seriously weighing whether to build AI capabilities in-house or partner with an external company. Internally, building out analytics from scratch meant hiring full-time staff, training them, designing models, and waiting years to see results. It was going to cost 10 times more than what a vendor was offering.But we also had to factor in data privacy and league regulations. In hockey, the CBA is still playing catch-up, and there are limitations on what data can be shared. So while external vendors offer speed and cost efficiency, they also bring concerns around ownership and control.The best approach right now is a hybrid model: teams partner with proven vendors who already have the infrastructure but stay vigilant about how the data is used and who has access.”

Adam Cheyer:

“AI will be used across every function in an organization — not just performance. From marketing to HR to scouting, it’s going to touch everything.Some departments can absolutely use off-the-shelf tools like ChatGPT or Copilot. But when it comes to sport-specific performance use cases, like injury forecasting or lineup optimization, you’ll need vendors who understand the sport deeply. That’s where startup partnerships shine — they’re agile, they iterate quickly, and they solve niche problems.The key is for teams to develop a clear AI vendor qualification framework. Who are the best partners? What’s their track record? How do they handle sensitive data? The answers to those questions will shape your long-term AI strategy.”

Bill Burgos:

“Startups are great in theory — but they can add to your workload instead of reducing it. I’ve been in situations where a company made big promises, got us excited, and then a year later, we were still waiting for something usable. Meanwhile, I was doing twice as much work trying to support them.So my checklist now is:

• What have you already built?

• How fast can you deliver?

• Will this simplify my day-to-day or make it more complicated?Time and simplicity matter in sports. We don’t have the luxury to wait.”

Jordan Stewart-Mackie:

“For me, the most important piece is contextual alignment. If you’re going to use AI models, they must reflect the specific characteristics of your environment — your athletes, your processes, your coaching philosophy.That’s why in-house models can be powerful — they include the errors, anomalies, and learnings that are unique to your team. But not every team has the capability to build those. So it’s about striking the right balance: partner with vendors when it makes sense, but don’t become totally dependent on them. Otherwise, you lose your ability to adapt, and you’re at the mercy of someone else’s roadmap.”

Q6: What skills or roles will become essential as AI becomes more embedded in elite sports and business?

Adam Cheyer:

“The number one shift is that every job will evolve. Whether you’re in scouting, fan engagement, or coaching — AI will become part of how you work.The key skill is learning to use AI as a co-pilot. That means knowing how to prompt it, how to interpret results, how to validate outputs, and how to integrate its suggestions without blindly following them.And yes, kids are already learning this. In China, they’re starting AI education at age six. That’s why I always say: AI won’t take your job, but someone using AI will. You want to be that someone.”

Adam Douglas:

“It’s like the early internet days. At first, some people resisted it — now no one can do their job without it. AI will follow that same curve. It’s already showing up in emails, calendars, scouting systems, and player management software. The difference is, practitioners who embrace it now will be the ones who lead later. And those who resist it will fall behind. It’s coming — it’s not optional anymore.”

Bill Burgos:

“I’ve worked with both the oldest and the youngest teams in the NBA, and the difference is stark. The older players didn’t grow up with tech, so there was skepticism. The younger guys? They’re digital natives. They’re already asking deep questions about AI, training loads, recovery data — at age 15. That’s the future. In five years, the NBA, NFL, and NHL will be filled with athletes who expect tech integration. So if you’re a practitioner and you’re not learning how AI works, you’re going to be disconnected from your athletes.”

Jordan Stewart-Mackie:

“The biggest long-term value of AI isn’t in stats — it’s in how it enhances human growth. If used properly, AI helps us learn faster, think deeper, and become more creative. That’s where the edge is — not in automation, but in evolution.We need to train ourselves and our athletes not just to use AI, but to understand it, question it, and apply it wisely. That’s how we unlock its full potential.”

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This week we have the honor to interview again a group of sports performance executives to talk about the latest trends in the world of sports performance and rehabilitation.

• Jason Han, the former head of rehabilitation at LAFC (MLS). Jason is also the head of business development in North America at OneBase health.

• Michael Messer, the head of rehabilitation, Nashville SC (MLS).

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• Biohacking: We're seeing more interest in biohacking across elite sports — from cold exposure to red light therapy. What biohacking tools or methods are actually making an impact in MLS environments?

• Biohacking - evaluation: How do you evaluate whether a new biohacking trend is worth integrating into your protocols — and how do you balance innovation with scientific rigor?

• Shiny objects: With so many technologies and “shiny objects” in the performance and recovery space, how do you ensure that your team stays focused on core performance goals rather than chasing trends?

• MLS Teams’ evolution: Where do you think MLS teams need to innovate next to stay globally competitive — whether in staff structure, tech, or player development?

• PSG’s win in the CL finals: What did you think about PSG winning the Champions league this weekend? Were you surprised?

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Michael and Jason:

Q1. Biohacking Tools Making an Impact in MLS

Jason Han:

“What got me hooked on the Oura Ring was my time at LAFC. We wanted to improve athlete sleep, but to do that, we needed to understand what their sleep actually looked like. So we went heavy into Oura in season two or three. I’ve been using it ever since. You can ask an athlete, ‘How did you sleep?’ and they’ll say ‘Good,’ but when you actually see the data, you realize they were in bed for seven hours but only got five hours of real sleep. Then you look at metrics like resting heart rate, deep sleep versus REM — now you have real insights to work with. That gave us the tools to educate players and shift habits. In my last two years at LAFC, we even started posting team sleep scores to create awareness and accountability. Some players didn’t care, but others became more invested. It wasn’t just data — it sparked real behavior change.”

Mike Messer:

“We’ve dabbled in a variety of biohacking tools — Whoop bands, red light therapy, infrared saunas, hyperbaric and cryo chambers. But one of the most impactful things has been sweat testing. We wanted to optimize hydration for each athlete, so we used patch-based tools and even saliva testing to build individualized hydration profiles. It’s easy to overlook, but hydration directly affects performance. We've also seen personal devices like Oura Rings grow in popularity. Some players wear them independently, and the cool part is it opens up conversations. Personally, my Oura Ring has been dead-on predicting when I or others are about to get sick. It gives a warning — and sometimes you can’t avoid it, but it allows us to take proactive steps. That level of early insight has been surprisingly valuable.”

Q2. Evaluating Biohacking Trends with Scientific Rigor

Jason Han:

“Whenever we consider something new, we ideally try to roll it out one thing at a time. If you bring in too many things at once, you lose clarity on what’s actually making an impact. My go-to example is hyperbaric chambers. If we only use it once a week, we might wrongly conclude it doesn’t work. But used properly and frequently, we’ve seen solid results. That’s why education is critical — how to use it, when to use it, and what to track. Scientific evidence helps, but I also like to try things personally before pushing them on players. A lot of the published hyperbaric studies are on 2.0 ATA chambers, but I’ve seen great results using 1.3 or 1.5 ATA mild chambers when protocols are followed. Sometimes the science hasn’t caught up to real-world use cases.”

Mike Messer:

“Budget is often the first filter. There are great tools out there, but we can’t chase them all. After that, we look at whether there’s a logical mechanism of action and, importantly, whether our athletes are requesting it. Sometimes they’ve used something elsewhere or heard about it from a teammate. That opens the door. If we can try it via a demo or trial period, that’s a huge plus. That hands-on experience — for staff and players — goes a long way. We’ve seen some formal evaluation frameworks, but honestly, our process is case-by-case. It’s less about ticking boxes and more about: does it solve a real problem we’re facing with our guys right now?”

Q3. Avoiding Shiny Object Syndrome

Jason Han:

“At LAFC, we had performance and rehab meetings every morning and after training. That structure was critical. It kept us grounded in the ‘why’ — why are we using this tool? What’s the actual player availability? How many are training? Who’s missing games? Once you see the patterns — maybe it’s a sleep issue, maybe it’s recovery, maybe it’s behavioral — then you can look at what tool can actually help. Tech for tech’s sake doesn’t make sense. We also made sure that for each new piece of technology, one person on staff owned it. They’d become the go-to expert so we weren’t just scratching the surface across four different staff. It kept our protocols efficient and impactful.”

Mike Messer:

“A lot of our technology adoption has started with a specific question. I remember early on, we had a player recovering from a quad injury. I wanted a way to track kicking mechanics during rehab. That led us to PlayerMaker, and we’ve slowly expanded our use since. It wasn’t about chasing trends — it was about solving a real rehab need. That mindset — start with the question, not the tool — helps prevent tech clutter and keeps us aligned with performance goals.”

Q4. Where MLS Needs to Innovate Next

Mike Messer:

“One major gap we still see is in the youth development system. Overseas, soccer is everything — it’s part of daily culture. In the U.S., we’re still fragmented. Programs like MLS NEXT and MLS NEXT Pro are good steps, but we haven’t reached that all-in cultural integration. Then on the staffing side, we’re still lean compared to top clubs abroad. They have more people in the building, and when that staff is well-aligned and resourced, it makes a huge difference. I’m a Manchester United fan, but you compare them to City — City made structural changes behind the scenes, and the results speak for themselves. It’s not just the players — it’s the system supporting them.”

Jason Han:

“I agree with Mike. It's not just about hiring more people — it's about hiring the right people and giving them tools. At LAFC, there were times I’d go months without sitting and watching a full training session. Why? Because we always had players in rehab. There’s never downtime. If you’re managing eight to twelve athletes with one or two rehab staff, it’s hard to give each player the individualized attention they need. Now imagine what’s possible if teams invested in more depth and specialization — physios, nutritionists, mental coaches — especially for long seasons. More staff doesn’t guarantee better outcomes, but it enables them when you have the right culture.”

Q5. PSG Winning the Champions League

Mike Messer:

“Honestly, I was a bit surprised — not because they aren’t capable, but because I haven’t followed the Champions League as closely this year with new parenthood in the mix. But from what I’ve gathered, PSG made deliberate changes. It wasn’t just about stars anymore — it was about system and culture. From what I’ve heard, they restructured their philosophy and staff approach over the last few years, and this win seems like the payoff for that. A 5–0 result in a final? That’s more than talent — that’s cohesion and alignment.”

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Dear colleague,This week I sat down with David Daoud, CEO of Compliance Standards to share my thoughts on on how elite teams vet sports tech startups, on the common mistakes made by startups. We also discussed the world of elite sports which is based on relationships. We also touched on the tech budget side of teams, and the need to get internal champions to successfully do pilots with teams. We also touched on what makes a strong founder in the eyes of teams.

You can listen to the audio interview by clicking on the above button or just watch the full video interview by clicking on the “Watch the video interview” below. You can also check out the best quotes of my interview in the section below.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, I touched on:

• On how elite teams vet sports tech startups

• On common startup mistakes

• On relationships and breaking in

• On scientific validation

• On budget and internal champions

• On pilots and workflow fit

• On what makes a strong founder

Best,

You can read the full transcript of the interview located at the top of this blog post. Here are below the best quotes from my interview:

🔍 On How Elite Teams Vet Sports Tech Startups

“There are really two types of teams when it comes to adopting sports tech. The first group—usually the more experienced teams—start with clearly defined goals, like reducing soft tissue injuries, improving sleep quality, or speeding up recovery. Once they identify the outcome they want, they go out and actively search for technologies that can support that specific goal. They’re methodical and selective. On the other hand, you have younger or less experienced practitioners who tend to jump on the latest shiny object just because it looks cool or because someone else recommended it—without a clear idea of how it actually fits into their workflow or objectives. And that often leads to poor integration and wasted time.”

“The process most teams follow is not random. First, there’s an intro meeting or demo. If they’re interested, they set up a pilot—usually lasting one to three months. That’s when both sides test how well the product fits into the team’s ecosystem. But one thing many startups overlook is that even if the product works, teams will always reach out to their peers and ask, ‘What do you think about this company? Is it legit?’ Peer validation is huge. That’s why we built a peer-review section into the Upside platform—so teams can share real feedback, not just rely on vendor claims.”

💡 On Common Startup Mistakes

“One of the biggest mistakes I see from startups is overpromising. They say their product will reduce injuries, improve load management, predict fatigue, and do everything else under the sun. But when they show up for the demo, either the product doesn’t work or it does far less than what was promised. And at this level, you only get one shot. If your demo fails—or even just confuses the staff—you’re done. These teams are incredibly busy. They won’t circle back six months later.”

“Another issue is that some founders just aren’t coachable. They don’t listen to feedback from teams or advisors. Sometimes they come from top schools or strong engineering backgrounds and think that makes them ready for elite sports—but they don’t understand the culture, the demands, or the daily grind that staff go through. I’ve seen founders alienate teams by being too aggressive or by not respecting their time. And when I hear that from a team, I won’t recommend that vendor again. Because if they’re difficult with me, they’ll definitely be difficult for the team.”

🤝 On Relationships and Breaking In

“This industry is one of the hardest to break into. People think that just sending LinkedIn messages or emails will get them a meeting, but these practitioners are inundated with pitches every week and don’t have time for unproven vendors. If you don’t have a warm intro, or you haven’t built a relationship through an advisor, mentor, or a conference meeting, your chances of getting in are slim.”

“The key is relationships. One of my former colleagues at Samsung used to say, ‘People will work with you if they like you.’ It might sound simple, but it’s true. If you’re likable, respectful, and helpful, teams will remember you. It’s not just about closing the deal—it’s about showing that you’re in it for the long haul, that you care about solving their problems, not just pushing your product.”

🧪 On Scientific Validation

“Scientific validation is one of the most underrated assets for a startup. Right now, less than 30% of performance-focused sports tech companies have published peer-reviewed studies. But those that do are far more likely to raise capital and land major clients. Especially in the performance and medical categories—if you’re making big claims about reducing injury risk or improving recovery—you need to back that up with real research. Teams are getting more sophisticated, and they want proof before they invest time or money.”

📊 On Budget and Internal Champions

“Budgets vary by league, but for context, most NBA teams allocate between $200K and $300K a year for performance tech. MLS teams are usually in the $75K to $100K range. But budget alone doesn’t mean a deal will close. You need an internal champion—someone who believes in your product and will advocate for it internally—and you also need to win over the budget gatekeeper, which is often the GM. Sometimes the person who writes the check isn’t the same as the person using the product every day. You need to win both.”

🔁 On Pilots and Workflow Fit

“A good pilot is short—usually 1 to 3 months—and focused. The best ones start small, integrate lightly, and avoid disrupting the team's workflow. If your solution requires a massive process change, you're likely to lose the team. The smartest vendors offer simple data exports, sample dashboards, or light API integrations so they can show value fast. The goal isn’t to overhaul the system—it’s to fit into it with minimal friction.”

🧠 On What Makes a Strong Founder

“I can’t emphasize this enough: the strength of the founding team is everything. I’ve seen startups with incredible tech fall apart because the CEO didn’t listen, didn’t know the market, or wasn’t responsive to teams’ needs. Great founders know how to raise money, how to build a team, how to take feedback, and most importantly—how to support their customers. In elite sports, customer success is everything. If a team emails and you don’t respond in 24 hours, you’re out. Full stop.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Ralph Pethica , the CEO of Genetrainer, a data & personalization platform for professional sports teams.

Genetrainer builds bespoke performance software systems for professional sports teams with feature rich platforms that extend from administrative and planning functionalities, to load management and medical.

• Communication: The Genetrainer platform facilitates the acquisition, processing, and correlation of performance data to improve communication and decision making.

• Automation: Automating time consuming and repetitive processes, so that staff spend more time with athletes and less time behind a computer.

Getting the details right wins games. Genetrainer’s mission is to ensure that the right information is available to the right person, at the right time, in order to make the right decision.

No two platforms are the same, and all Genetrainer contracts include dedicated engineering time to customise the platform to your priorities and maximise impact.

Picture: Genetrainer’s dashboard

Customers / partners: Professional sports teams in rugby, soccer and basketball.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, his company and product, the benefits of the platform and approach to sports organizations and teams. We also talked about his competitive advantage, business model, and his plans for the next 12 months.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ralph located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Ralph:

Q1. Tell me about your background.

“My background is originally in biology, computer science, and then I did a PhD in what I guess would be considered computational biology and machine learning. And really our focus was on evolution of proteins—understanding evolution on a global scale. I had already been involved with other companies that I'd set up on the way, and I ended up getting involved with Google. So I actually went to work for Google as a product manager during and after my PhD for a while. And then in 2012, I left my job at Google to start the company that I run today—Genetrainer”.

Q2. Tell me about your company and product.

“When we first started this whole project, we were looking at it maybe a bit naively from the outside and thinking, well, the problem today is that we can’t personalize very well to the individual. Coming from the background of being a geneticist and also a Google product manager, you realize the power of personalization when you understand how different people respond—how they recover, how they adapt, even what they eat. Initially, we wanted to use genetics to personalize training and recovery for athletes. But we quickly realized that genetics alone is often only 10% of the story. We are a mix of our genes and our environment. So we began incorporating connected device data, subjective inputs, and other contextual data. That’s when we realized: if personalization is the cherry on the cake, then we needed to build the cake first—which is a system to collect and process data from all relevant sources in order to make better decisions. Fast forward to today, that’s what Genetrainer does.”

Q3. What are the main use cases your solution addresses?

“The goal is always to have the right information with the right person at the right time to make the right decision. There are no silver bullets anymore in high-end sport—it’s not about getting one thing right, it’s about getting all the little details right. Each staff member needs a specific piece of information to improve their decisions. But if you measure everything and show everything to everyone, you get over-interpretation and confusion. So our job is to filter, contextualize, and deliver actionable insights. Another big theme in what we do is automation. Especially for smaller staffs or lower-budget teams, there are repetitive processes—generating reports, processing data—that consume time. We help teams identify and automate those, so practitioners can spend less time behind a screen and more time with their players. That human interaction is often more important than the data itself.”

Q4. What is the state of the AMS market? What are the main challenges?

“We’re seeing a very diverse ecosystem in the AMS space today. When we started in 2012, it was technically difficult to build these platforms. Now it’s easier, so teams can build their own, or they use generic systems, or they just stay in Excel. The problem with generic systems is that they often don’t solve the specific problems teams face. And when teams try to build something in-house, they face recruiting and retention issues, plus lack of breadth to test ideas beyond their own data. We offer something in between—we include custom development with every contract. We’ve also started supporting teams who already have internal devs but need help scaling. Some teams want to host the platform on their own servers. Others have completely white-labeled our product so it becomes part of their own brand. We’re open to sharing codebases and long-term licenses because we believe that’s where the market is going: toward greater control and ownership by teams.”

Q5. What are the benefits for teams and athletes using your AMS solution?

“Every single team has different challenges—some are technical, some are cultural, some are related to the specific demands of the sport. Our whole philosophy is built around adapting to the particular needs of each team. If you try to apply a generic system, it’s really hard to get buy-in from the staff. You lose traction because it doesn’t solve their day-to-day problems. We start every project by asking: What are the specific communication or data challenges here? Then we build around that. It doesn’t mean every team needs a fully bespoke system, but even small adaptations to meet teams where they are can make a massive difference in adoption and impact.”

Q6. What is your competitive advantage?

“One of the things we decided early on is that we would never have tech support people. Everyone talking to teams is either a founder or someone who has been with the project a long time and really understands the system. That’s because the closer you are to your users, the better your product will be. It also means when a team needs something or has a question, they’re speaking to someone who can make a decision and fix it—no bureaucracy. Of course, from a scalability perspective that makes no sense—but we chose that path on purpose. It means we’re closer to the problem, we build better solutions, and we keep improving. Also, we use our own product. I’m doing a triathlon tomorrow morning and all my training data is tracked through the same system. So when we change something, we feel it ourselves immediately.”

Q7. What do teams and customers like most about your solution?

“One of the things teams really value is that we build with them, not just for them. Every contract includes custom development time. Teams can literally say, ‘We need this feature built,’ and we’ll scope it, agree on the delivery date, and make it happen. We even bake specific features into contracts with deadlines—if we don’t deliver, there’s no contract. That level of partnership is rare. On top of that, because they’re working directly with founders and engineers, things get done quickly and they feel heard. They also know we understand the domain deeply—we know what it’s like to be on a high-performance team, to need something now, to have stakes attached to data.”

Q8. Tell me about your business model.

“It’s a classic software-as-a-service model—teams sign annual contracts. The price depends on the size of the deployment, the number of athletes, and the complexity of custom work. It usually starts around $10K for very small implementations and goes up depending on scope. What makes us different is that every contract includes development hours, which means you’re not just buying software—you’re buying access to an engineering team that will build what you need. On top of that, teams can negotiate larger feature builds into the contract with hard deadlines. So if they say, ‘We want this performance review system integrated by the start of the season,’ we’ll include that in writing and deliver. It’s collaborative, flexible, and outcome-focused.”

Q9. What are your plans for the next 12 months?

“We’re expanding internationally—working with more national teams, which is really exciting. One major priority is using AI in more impactful, rather than superficial, ways. We’re not just trying to tick the AI buzzword box. We’re exploring real use cases—like enabling staff to query their data in natural language and get precise answers: ‘Which players are trending in a certain metric?’ ‘How much training load did we accumulate this week?’ That kind of real utility is where AI can shine. We’re also revamping the athlete-facing mobile app. It’s not just about showing players their data. It’s about showing them meaningful context. For example, they log an RPE, and we show them how it compares to their last 10 sessions, what it correlates with, and what that might imply. Lastly, we’re using passive phone data—like motion sensors—to gather useful insights on sleep, background activity, even circadian rhythms. These invisible data streams can be powerful over time.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing a group of MLB practitioners that are experts in mental performance and preparation.

• Lindsay Shaw, Director of Sport psychology for the Guardians, an MLB team.

• Zach Brandon, Head of Mental Performance and Coach Development, for the Arizona Diamondbacks, an MLB team.

• Josh Kozuch, Mental Performance Coach for the Baltimore Orioles, an MLB team.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

You can also read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Lindsay, Zach, and Josh located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Lindsay, Josh and Zach:

1. How has the approach to mental performance evolved in MLB over the past 5–10 years?

Lindsay Shaw:

“MLB has a very long history of incorporating mental performance. The Guardians, for instance, had someone in my role for over 30 years. There’s this foundational recognition in baseball that hitting is extremely hard, pitching is extremely hard, and the season is incredibly long. That’s why having mental performance support has made sense for decades. It’s about helping players and coaches get through those challenges with expert guidance. And while I’ve only been in baseball for about five years—after working with the Olympic Committee for a decade—what’s been really encouraging to see is how much the sport values mental skills as part of holistic performance.”

Josh Kozuch:

“This is now my third MLB organization in the last 10 years, and the growth has been significant. What I’ve seen is that players are coming in with more exposure—they’ve either worked with someone in high school or college, so we’re not starting from scratch. And what’s really interesting is that now coaches are engaging in mental work too—they’re reading the books, listening to the podcasts, doing the work. It’s no longer just us as specialists holding that space. Coaches are bringing their own high-level playing experience and integrating mental skills into their communication and development approach. Lastly, there’s just more infrastructure—departments like ours didn’t exist in most clubs 10 years ago. Now, nearly every team has at least one dedicated mental performance practitioner, if not an entire department.”

Zach Brandon:

“One of the biggest changes I’ve seen, especially being involved in our draft process over the last several years, is that incoming players already have some experience with mental skills. They’re coming in with their own routines and perspectives—sometimes shaped by college, high school, or even private coaches. So our role has shifted. I often think of us as quality control—we’re helping ensure that what they’re doing is evidence-based, effective, and personalized. We're not just handing out one-size-fits-all tools anymore. There’s more emphasis on individualization, and the circle around players is larger than ever. They’re working with private coaches, mental skills consultants, and we try to understand those relationships and act as an extension of their support system, rather than replacing it. That shift has made the work more collaborative and nuanced.”

2. How important is mental preparation in the MLB?

Lindsay Shaw:

“When you’re playing 162 games, mental fatigue is inevitable. These athletes face unique psychological challenges: the constant travel, relentless schedule, the repetitive pressure to perform—it wears on people. So yes, mental preparation is critical. And when players are competing in an environment where hitting .300—meaning failing 70% of the time—makes you elite, the mental skill of managing failure becomes just as important as any physical skill. Our job is to help them build the emotional agility to recover, reset, and stay in the game mentally over a very long season.”

Josh Kozuch:

“Baseball is data-rich. Players are exposed to scouting reports filled with percentages—what pitch someone might swing at in a certain count, tendencies, zones—it can be overwhelming. Our role is to help them prepare mentally so they can simplify all that information into a plan and go out and compete without paralysis. That collaboration isn’t just with players—it includes hitting coaches, pitching coaches, and managers. It’s a team-wide effort to keep minds clear so bodies can perform.”

Zach Brandon:

“Baseball is unique in that it’s a competition-based sport. Guys train and compete on the same day, often with very little time in between. So our job is not just about long-term development—it’s about ensuring players are confident, focused, and mentally present when the game starts at 6:40 or 7:10. The mental demands are high, and the cognitive load is real. With so much variability—travel, back-to-back games, failures—it’s our job to help them stay mentally adaptable and grounded, night after night.”

3. What are the most effective mental preparation techniques used today?

Zach Brandon:

“We cover the core tools—breath work, meditation, visualization, routines—but to me, the key isn't about adding more techniques. It’s about helping players filter through the noise so they can consistently execute what works best for them. Especially in today’s data-heavy environment, players can get overwhelmed. Sometimes our role isn’t to teach something new, but to remove clutter. Mental performance is a lot like strength training—everyone knows the basics, but few consistently apply them under pressure. We also focus heavily on what we call ‘mental practice.’ Knowing isn’t doing. You can know how to breathe or visualize, but if you haven’t trained it under game-like stress, it won’t hold up. Just like a swing or pitch, these skills require reps. And increasingly, we’re trying to build environments—not just sessions—that reinforce these skills. That means working with coaches and strength staff to embed mental skills into the rhythm of the day.”

Josh Kozuch:

“I’ve seen success by building a mental skills curriculum across the minor league system, where players get foundational training depending on where they are in their development journey. But here’s the catch—it can’t be rigid. Players don’t all progress at the same speed. One guy may get called up before he’s completed the curriculum, and that’s okay. We speed things up or individualize. At the big league level, it’s often less about teaching something new and more about refining what's already there. Many athletes have mental routines—they just don’t label them. Maybe they’re visualizing or setting intentions without knowing it. Our job is to help them identify, strengthen, and own those routines. We’re not force-feeding techniques—we’re pulling things out of them, based on who they are and how they naturally operate under pressure.”

Lindsay Shaw:

“There’s a lot of research validating certain techniques—breath control to regulate the nervous system, cognitive reframing, mindfulness, mental imagery—but what matters most is context. These tools don’t exist in a vacuum. It’s like physical rehab: you can’t give everyone the same protocol. You have to understand the athlete’s mental makeup, experiences, background, and the specific demands of their position or role. At the highest levels, we’re working with players to develop their own philosophy of preparation. How do they prepare mentally for a tough opponent? How do they rebound from a slump? How do they stay connected to their identity when pressure mounts? My job is to help them tune into their own nervous system and develop personalized strategies that support performance, especially in unpredictable, high-stakes moments.”

4. How do you train cognitive skills during injury rehab?

Josh Kozuch:

“Injury rehab isn’t just about fixing the body—it’s about keeping the mind in the game. For long rehabs like Tommy John, we break things down into phases. In the early stages, we focus on building awareness, acceptance, and goal-setting. As recovery progresses, we start working on routines, visualization, and helping them reconnect to their competitive identity. One thing that’s critical is collaboration. I sit down with athletic trainers and strength coaches to build a holistic plan. We talk about what the player will face mentally at each stage—loneliness, fear of re-injury, frustration—and we try to get ahead of those challenges. If we don’t engage the cognitive side, we’re sending a physically-ready but mentally-unprepared player back into a high-pressure environment.”

Lindsay Shaw:

“There’s a real risk in separating mental and physical rehab. We’ve had athletes who were physically cleared but weren’t mentally ready—and the performance breakdowns were immediate. That’s why simulation is so important. We can’t always replicate live game environments, but we can get close. I’ve used video analysis, pitch recognition systems, even VR or elevated heart rate situations to help players stay cognitively connected. Watching video while riding a stationary bike—approximating game stress—is a good example. We’re not just treating anxiety or fear; we’re actively training decision-making, timing, and focus. And sometimes, we’re helping athletes stay emotionally tethered to the game, especially during long, isolating recoveries.”

Zach Brandon:

“One of the most valuable things we’ve done is integrate mental reps into game situations. We had a minor league group rehabbing at our major league facility, and we brought them into a live game to sit behind scouts, read scouting reports, and evaluate in real time. They debriefed afterward. That kind of mental engagement helps bridge the gap between rehab and performance. The other key piece? Conversation. I had a player who came in to do breath work, but ended up spending 30 minutes just talking. He left saying, ‘Hey, we don’t need to do the breathing now—I feel better.’ And I told him, ‘That was the work.’ Sometimes, letting players unload mental tension is more powerful than any technique we planned.”

5. How do you individualize strategies across different player types and cultural backgrounds?

Josh Kozuch:

“You have to be a detective. No two players are the same, so you approach each one with humility and curiosity. I ask questions like: ‘What’s your best performance memory? What helps you reset after a bad game? Who have you worked with in the past?’ Then I observe. I watch how they act in the cage, during meetings, in downtime. You gather information, then build from there. For rookies, it’s about education and exploration. For veterans, it’s more about refinement and support. They often know what works, but maybe they need a reminder or a fresh perspective. Cultural background plays a role too—some guys aren’t comfortable with the word ‘psychologist.’ So sometimes you support them indirectly—through coaches or other staff—by embedding mental work into the overall routine without calling it out.”

Lindsay Shaw:

“We have a large Latin American population, especially in the lower levels, and cultural sensitivity is critical. Some players associate psychology with weakness or trauma, not performance. That’s where relationship-building and nuance come in. Maybe they won’t talk to me directly, but I can support them through our performance team. It’s not about me needing to be the one helping—it’s about ensuring they’re getting what they need. We also need to recognize that players aren’t just athletes—they’re sons, fathers, partners. A veteran balancing career pressure with family life will have different mental needs than a 20-year-old prospect. So it’s less about creating custom programs for everyone and more about listening deeply, understanding context, and tailoring your approach accordingly.”

Zach Brandon:

“Over the years, I’ve learned that even where you have the conversation matters. I once asked a player a question in front of others—nothing sensitive—and he completely shut down. Same guy would open up one-on-one. You have to read the room and meet players where they are. For us, individualization also includes continuity. We emphasize development from rookie ball to the big leagues, and part of that is keeping relationships intact. So even as players advance, they might still check in with a coach from A-ball or spring training. We support that. Familiarity breeds trust, and trust is the currency of mental performance.”

6. Can you share a success story from working with a player?

Josh Kozuch:

“There was a AAA player I worked with who kept bouncing between the big leagues and AAA. Every time he got called up, he put immense pressure on himself to stay. I shared a story from a 15-year vet who told me, ‘I stopped thinking about surviving and started thinking about thriving—I focused on what I needed to do to have a 10-year career.’ That clicked. The AAA guy reframed his mindset. Instead of obsessing over every at-bat, he started thinking long-term. That change freed him from the paralyzing pressure of ‘I have to perform right now or I’m going back down.’ It didn’t guarantee success, but it gave him space to compete—and that’s everything.”

Lindsay Shaw:

“We had a player who believed that if he missed his first pitch or swing, the rest of the game was ruined. It was a rigid, fear-based belief—and it was sabotaging him. So I asked him to log his games over two seasons: how often did he fail on the first pitch but still have a good game? When we reviewed the data, the belief collapsed. It wasn’t about that first pitch—it was about how he responded to it. By confronting that false narrative and replacing it with evidence, we gave him back control. That shift in mindset became a turning point.”

7. How are mental coaches integrated with other departments?

Zach Brandon:

“True integration isn’t just being around—it’s having a voice in decisions. I sit in daily pitching meetings and postgame reviews. Sometimes I’m the person who notices a pattern in how a guy reacts to failure. Other times, a coach notices and asks me to follow up. We work like a basketball team—sometimes I dish the assist, other times I score. The point is, mental performance isn’t an isolated service. It should be woven into the entire development process—strength, analytics, medical, nutrition. When we align language and approach, players feel that support is consistent across the board.”

Josh Kozuch:

“It depends on the org. In Baltimore, I’m housed with the performance team, which helps a lot. But my locker is next to our coaching staff, so I’m also constantly interacting with field staff. That blend gives me eyes and ears in different spaces. Still, I have to be mindful—I can’t just hang out with pitchers and forget about position players. Or focus on rehab and skip the clubhouse. So I do self-audits. Where am I spending my time? Who haven’t I checked in with lately? Integration takes intentionality and coordination.”

Lindsay Shaw:

“In Cleveland, we’re all about marginal gains. We don’t have the biggest payroll, so we obsess over maximizing every player. That means tight collaboration. We have large interdisciplinary meetings where mental performance, strength, coaching, and analytics all sit together to create development plans. The guiding question is: how do we move the needle for this player? And when the mental side is part of that conversation from day one, it becomes just as essential as any other domain.”

8. What does the future of mental skills training in MLB look like?

Josh Kozuch:

“I could see teams experimenting with AI bots for mental performance—automated journaling prompts, chat-based coaching—but it’ll never replace people. Players don’t want to vent to a script. They want empathy, humor, connection. Tech will help us be more efficient—maybe scan game logs or identify mental fatigue trends—but it won’t replace the human relationship. That’s what makes the work stick.”

Lindsay Shaw:

“Trust doesn’t live in a server. You build it through presence, consistency, and care. I can see AI helping with research, analytics, maybe even nudging players with reminders. But in pressure moments—after a slump, before a big game—players need people. Someone who understands nuance, body language, mood, history. No chatbot can do that. So yes, we’ll evolve with tech, but the core of our work will remain human.”

Zach Brandon:

“Every year, I see our role shift. I used to think we were here to coach players directly. Now I see us as multipliers. We embed mental skills into the culture, train coaches to reinforce concepts, and shape environments that support performance. In the future, I think mental performance will be less about 1:1 sessions and more about creating systems—how do you build a dugout, a meeting, a game plan, where mental strength is a natural part of the DNA?”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing David Dunne, the CEO of Hexis, an intelligence nutrition platform to enhance performance.

Hexis is an AI-driven personalized nutrition platform designed to optimize athletic performance through its proprietary "Carb Coding™" system. Developed by experts in sports nutrition, exercise physiology, and data science, Hexis creates individualized fueling plans that adapt in real-time to an athlete's workouts, lifestyle, and goals.

By analyzing billions of variables, the platform provides minute-by-minute carbohydrate and energy recommendations, enhancing training efficiency, recovery, and body composition management. Hexis integrates with fitness tools like TrainingPeaks and Apple Health, offering features such as live energy tracking, flexible meal planning, and simplified food logging. Trusted by elite athletes and teams—including Olympic medalists, professional cycling teams, and clubs like Southampton FC—Hexis aims to make advanced, science-backed nutrition accessible to athletes at all levels

Picture: Hexis’ mobile app

Picture: Hexis’ team dashboard

Here is a video introducing Hexis’ The Coach Hub:

Here is a video about the Hexis' partnership with Q36.5 Pro Cycling team:

Customers / partners: Olympic teams, pro rugby teams, Premier League clubs, pro cycling teams, etc.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, his company and product, the benefits for sports organizations and teams to use his nutritional platform. We also talked about his competitive advantage, business model, and his plans for the next 12 months.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with David located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with David:

Q1. Can you share the personal or professional journey that led you to launch Hexis, and what problem in sports nutrition you were most driven to solve?

“My background is as a sports nutrition practitioner. I was fortunate to get hands-on experience during my undergraduate years, working with elite teams like the Irish rugby team and Harlequins. From about 2012, I was immersed in elite sport—Premier League, Olympic teams—and I realized a huge problem. I was one person working with dozens of athletes, and I couldn’t provide truly personalized and periodized support at scale. There was only so much time and capacity I had. Around that same time, I noticed a shift—athletes were increasingly looking to their phones and social media for real-time answers instead of institutional guidance. That signaled a major opportunity to do things differently. I didn’t plan to build a platform right away. I just wanted to understand the gap better. So I self-funded a PhD to explore behavior change, design thinking, and tech integration. What we discovered through that research was eye-opening: a clear mismatch between what practitioners could deliver and what athletes truly needed—something scalable, continuous, and personalized in real-time. That’s the problem Hexis set out to solve—not just for athletes, but for practitioners like me who needed a better way to deliver care.”

Q2. For those unfamiliar with Hexis, what exactly does the platform do, and how does it translate the latest nutritional science into personalized, actionable guidance for athletes?

“At the core of Hexis is the principle that no two athletes—and no two training days—are the same. You can’t make a precise nutritional recommendation unless you know the type, intensity, and duration of the athlete’s training, combined with their goals, recent sessions, recovery needs, and available time to recover. We gather all that data—biometric, lifestyle, and performance—and we translate it into real-time, meal-by-meal nutrition guidance. For example, our platform adjusts carbohydrate and energy intake before, during, and after training, based on exact outputs from wearables, GPS, and training plans. It integrates with platforms like TrainingPeaks, Catapult, and more. When an athlete opens the app, they see what type of meal they need—low, medium, or high-carb—and what specific food options fit. If plans change (which they often do), the platform adapts immediately. Our goal is to give each athlete the exact guidance they need, when they need it—and to give practitioners the power to do that at scale, across full squads.”

Q3. What kinds of benefits have pro or collegiate teams seen from using Hexis, both from a performance and operational standpoint?

“The benefit of getting nutrition right is that it amplifies everything—training intensity, recovery, adaptation, long-term performance. What we’ve consistently seen is that when athletes fuel correctly before, during, and after training, they perform better and recover faster. But one of the most impactful outcomes has actually been psychological: athletes telling us they feel confident and in control for the first time. In our initial study with 963 elite athletes—54% of whom were women—we had some athletes report regaining their menstrual cycle after years without it, simply by following our fueling recommendations. That’s not just performance; that’s core physiological health. And operationally, for teams, it means less guesswork, more standardization, and far better scalability of care. Nutritionists can now deliver individualized support to dozens of athletes daily without needing hours of one-on-one planning.”

Q4. With other nutrition tracking or planning tools on the market, what’s Hexis’ biggest differentiator — and how do you think about staying ahead of the curve?

“Hexis is built on our proprietary Carb Coding™ system, which is totally unique. This system automatically analyzes training loads and maps them to real-time nutritional needs. What would typically take a nutritionist hours of planning per athlete, we can do in seconds for an entire team. It’s not just about tracking food or providing general advice—we deliver deeply personalized, periodized nutrition support that adapts with the athlete. That’s what makes us different. And we stay ahead by constantly listening. I’m a practitioner, and so are many on our team—we’re building for our peers, not just for ‘users.’ Our product roadmap is shaped by feedback from Olympic medalists, Premier League nutritionists, and collegiate sports scientists. That closeness to our community keeps us honest and innovative.”

Q5. Who are your customers?

“We serve both athletes and practitioners. On the athlete side, we have a mobile app where they receive daily, personalized, periodized fueling plans. It’s their day-to-day performance tool. On the practitioner side—nutritionists, heads of performance, sports scientists—we have a desktop platform that gives them visibility, control, and the ability to scale high-touch care across large squads. Our typical users range from Olympic teams to Premier League clubs to elite cycling squads. Whether it's a single athlete managing their own nutrition or a team staff member overseeing 30 players, our system is built to deliver impact across those use cases.”

Q6. What is your business model?

“Hexis is a subscription-based platform sold on a per-seat basis. We offer two tiers: our Essential version uses our algorithms to drive most of the recommendations, but also allows customization. Our Premium tier offers deeper controls for practitioners—more flexibility, more insight, and more ways to personalize the experience. But really, our process always starts with a conversation. We take time to understand the organization’s goals, needs, and constraints, and then we propose the best fit. I still see myself as a qualitative researcher—I want to understand the ‘why’ before we prescribe a solution.”

Q7. Looking ahead to the next 12 months, what are your key priorities — whether that’s new features, partnerships, markets, or scientific advancements?

“We’re deeply focused on product-led growth. In June, we’re launching new integrations with Catapult and STATSports—this allows teams to bring in detailed load data automatically. We’re also releasing our new Trends feature, which gives teams actionable insights on athlete behavior, nutrition adherence, and body composition over time. Between now and the end of the year, a big priority is expanding our use of AI—both to enhance the insights athletes and practitioners receive and to automate more of the manual, time-consuming work that staff currently face. On the commercial side, we’re looking to deepen our presence in UK football, expand across Europe and the MLS, and increase our footprint in pro cycling. Hexis is already in some Tour de France teams, but we want to serve the entire pro peloton.”

Q8. What is the best way to contact you?

“Anyone interested can reach out directly to us at info@hexis.live. We’re always happy to set up a call to understand what you're working on, what problems you’re facing, and how we can help. Whether you're a team looking to upgrade your nutrition workflows or an athlete looking for clarity and control, we’re here to support.”

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This week we have the honor to interview a group of NFL Top practitioners to talk about the latest trends in the world of sports performance in the NFL.

• Ryan Juarez, Director of rehabilitation, Washington Commanders (NFL team).

• Roderick Moore Jr, coordinator of sports science, Pittsburgh Steelers (NFL team).

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the following topics:

• What major shifts they have seen in how NFL teams approach in-season recovery and load management, especially with the extended regular season and increased game speed.

• How NFL teams are using data and wearables not just for performance metrics, but to make real-time decisions during adversity — like mid-season slumps, key injuries, or losing streaks.

• What the best coaching or cultural practices they have seen that actually help players stay mentally sharp and connected through the grind of a long NFL season.

• On what is often misunderstood about what it really takes to last in the NFL in terms of recovery habits, mindset, and adaptability, for young players entering the league.

• On a specific moment — either with a team or an athlete — where a setback or injury led to a breakthrough in how you approach training or recovery.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Ryan and Roderick:

Q1. Major shifts in in-season recovery and load management

Roderick Moore Jr.:

“With the regular season now extended and the new international games, the challenge has shifted. For example, when I was in Atlanta, we went to London in 2021 and 2023, and now in 2025, they’re going to Germany. This year with the Steelers, we’re headed to Ireland — our first international trip in a while. So it’s no longer just about recovery from weekly games, but dealing with global travel logistics. Do you leave Monday? Thursday? Most teams leave Thursday, but then you have to manage sleep on the plane, acclimation to time zones, food logistics, and even what kind of pillows or sleep kits you use. You have to prepare months in advance — sometimes starting in June — just to get nutrition and gear shipped in time. All of that impacts load management and performance. It’s not just ‘one more game’ — it’s a cascade of adjustments that can make or break a season.”

Ryan Juarez:

“We’ve really leaned into the recovery side by building infrastructure — we now have a dedicated recovery room staffed by athletic trainers. We’ve added a cryo chamber, infrared sauna, and soon we’re getting a four-person hyperbaric chamber. But what’s most interesting is how we replicate that when traveling. Last year we had a week-long road trip — from Cincinnati to Phoenix — and we worked with mobile companies to deliver hot tubs and cold tubs in each location. That kind of logistics work wasn’t even on the radar a few years ago. Now, everything’s about maximizing that 1% edge — and fitting all these moving pieces into a cohesive workflow.”

Q2. Data and wearables for real-time decision-making during adversity

Roderick Moore Jr.:

“In tough stretches — say during a losing streak or coming out of a rough game — we use GPS and internal load data to reevaluate everything. You track live data in practice and compare it to camp, Week 1, or the bye week. It might tell you, 'Hey, we’re not working hard enough,' or conversely, 'We’re overreaching.' You need that insight to decide whether to back off or push harder. But the data only helps if you’ve built a culture of transparency and trust with both players and coaches. Because even the best data means nothing if you don’t have coach buy-in — or the athletes don’t feel heard. That balance of instinct and evidence is where progress happens.”

Ryan Juarez:

“Wearables and GPS tech have opened up important conversations. If a guy comes in and says, ‘Hey, my hamstring’s a little tight,’ and the GPS shows he’s a step slower in practice — that’s your trigger. You don’t just treat symptoms anymore — you now have the data to validate or even preempt injuries. We had a couple instances last season where a dip in player metrics helped us catch things before they escalated. That ability to intervene early — that’s a game changer.”

Q3. Best coaching or cultural practices for staying mentally sharp

Ryan Juarez:

“By the time we hit the bye week last year — which was really late — everyone was just exhausted. It was like hitting a wall. That week gave us a chance to reset, and we came out stronger. That experience really emphasized the need for communication. Our staff, our performance team — we all talked with the players, adapted based on their feedback. You can have all the tools in the world, but if your players aren’t bought in mentally, the grind will wear them down. Keeping everyone aligned — physically and emotionally — makes the difference late in the season.”

Roderick Moore Jr.:

“In the NFL, especially with the Steelers, we rely on tools like Teamworks for communication, but the culture starts with leadership. Coach Tomlin always says, ‘I don’t care where an idea comes from as long as it helps the team.’ That creates room for input — from interns to veterans. If players need more sleep, we start the day later. If a week’s been brutal, we modify the schedule. Flexibility isn’t weakness — it’s survival. Especially this year — with our early bye after Ireland — we’re already planning ‘mini-byes’ to keep guys mentally and physically sharp.”

Q4. Misunderstandings young players have about lasting in the NFL

Roderick Moore Jr.:

“The biggest misconception I see in rookies is around routines. They think they have one — but they don’t. A real routine is intentional, consistent, and adaptable. Veterans will tell you — it’s not just what you do on game day. It’s how you recover, how you use your off-day, how you prepare your mind. Some guys spend Tuesdays with family for sanity. Others use it for film, lifts, or recovery work. The guys who last? They find a system and stick to it. And for rookies without big contracts yet, that means taking full advantage of in-house resources — cryo, massage, recovery tech — before they can afford anything outside.”

Ryan Juarez:

“When rookies come in, they look nervous — they don’t know where to go or what to do. Our job is to make them feel supported, but also help them build that recovery mindset. A lot of what we do is just guidance — like saying, ‘Watch how this vet does it.’ And that’s true in any profession, right? Learn from the people who’ve been there, who’ve made it. If they model good habits, those habits become part of the rookie’s DNA.”

Q5. Setback or injury that led to a breakthrough

Ryan Juarez:

“One that sticks out is hamstrings. Early in my career, I didn’t emphasize eccentric loading or full-speed sprinting enough before return-to-play. There was one case where a GPS showed an athlete at 88% — I let it slide. Then boom — game time injury. That taught me that 90%+ speed exposure in practice isn’t just a number — it’s insurance. Now I’m way more aggressive about hitting that threshold before clearing a guy.”

Roderick Moore Jr.:

“In Atlanta, I had an athlete who hadn’t hit his 90% speed in over a month. We kept encouraging him, but he kept saying he was fine. Then he pulls up with a soft tissue injury. After that, it clicked for him. Now — and I see this here too — we have guys who ask to hit their sprint thresholds. They’ll say, ‘Coach, don’t let me slide — keep me honest.’ Some even hit new top speeds in-season. That shift in accountability — from us to them — that’s when you know the culture’s working.”

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Today as part of our continued effort to bring more awareness on female athletes, teams and associated trends related to female athletes, we have the honor to interview a group of female sports performance experts:

• Megan Rottler Hattori, Associate Director of Sports Performance for Olympic Sports at Duke University. She is also the primary sports performance coach for the women’s soccer and volleyball teams.

• Andrea Hudy, PhD, Director of performance at UCONN (University of Connecticut)’s women basketball team.

• Shavini Fernando, CEO of OxiWear, Maker of the World's First Wearable Device for Continuous Real Time Monitoring of Oxygen During Motion.

• Dr Christy Fernandez-Cull, PhD, CEO, DaVinci Wearables, an AI wearable device for women athletes and teams.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Megan, Andrea, Shavini and Christy located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with them:

Q1. Where do you see the biggest gap in how women’s teams are supported compared to men’s?

Andrea Hudy (UConn Women’s Basketball):

“The infrastructure within women’s athletics doesn’t exist as much as it maybe does in men’s sports. That was one of the main reasons I came back to UConn—to offer and create some of the infrastructures I saw in men’s sports. I’m hoping we’re doing that now. It's not just about equipment or data; it's about integrated systems—return-to-play, athletic management, communication between departments. That type of infrastructure can be lacking even on the men’s side sometimes, but it’s even more pronounced in women’s sports, especially when budgets are tight.”

Shavini Fernando (CEO, OxiWear):

“There’s a huge gap in data-driven research and tech access for female athletes compared to male athletes. Most of the decisions about training and recovery are based on data collected from male subjects. Hormonal cycles, physiological responses, and nutritional needs in women are different, yet most protocols are just repurposed from male-focused research. Even when companies like ours try to run studies to address this, it’s hard to get buy-in from teams—especially when male coaches don’t see the value or aren’t open to change.”

Megan Rottler Hattori (Duke Olympic Sports):

“I think one of the big barriers is lifestyle and pay. Being a mom and a coach is incredibly difficult. It’s not a nine-to-five, and when you're juggling practice, training times, and home life with young kids, something has to give. The disparity in pay makes you wonder, ‘Do I work to afford daycare or stay home and be with my kids?’ It’s not just about salaries—it’s about how our industry supports women holistically.”

Christy Fernandez-Cull (CEO, DaVinci Wearables):

“Access to resources is not equitable across divisions or genders. Division I schools aren’t the same as D2 or D3, and within each division, men’s teams tend to get more support. On top of that, only about 8–9% of performance research is focused on female athletes. When you talk about true support—research, funding, training environments—women are still playing catch-up. We’re just beginning to see investment in women’s performance facilities that include family-friendly spaces, mental wellness support, and women-specific health programming, but it’s only a start.”

Q2. If you had unlimited influence, what’s one thing you’d change today about how women’s teams are trained, funded, or supported?

Christy Fernandez-Cull:

“We need to reframe how we talk about female physiology. A lot of girls drop out of sports post-puberty because they feel isolated or confused about what’s happening in their bodies. There’s been a culture of ‘no pain, no gain,’ where you're supposed to push through cramps or hormone-related fatigue. We need to stop treating these things as weaknesses and start educating girls, coaches, and staff on how to harness female physiology as a strength. Education is the first domino—once people understand, they begin to invest.”

Shavini Fernando:

“We need to drastically reduce the pay gap for female coaches and create more flexible systems that account for the realities of being a woman—like raising children or balancing other responsibilities. That means rethinking job structures, travel, scheduling, and having dual-coach models so women don’t burn out trying to do the job the same way it’s been done for men. We also need more women in coaching and leadership, because female athletes are often more comfortable discussing things like mental health or menstrual cycles with someone who understands.”

Megan Rottler Hattori:

“Exposure matters. I didn’t grow up watching women’s sports because they weren’t on TV. I watched baseball—not softball—because that’s what was available. Today, girls can go on social media and see elite female athletes and coaches doing amazing things. That kind of visibility is powerful. If you see it, you can believe it. That’s how you build the next generation—not just of athletes, but of leaders, scientists, and innovators in sport.”

Q3. What are the root causes of salary disparities among women coaches, and how do we close the gap?

Andrea Hudy:

“At the end of the day, it’s about return on investment. Until organizations start seeing—or valuing—the ROI of women’s sports, salaries won’t rise. Are we generating the same revenue? Maybe not yet. But we haven’t had the same level of support or time to build that system. If this wave of investment and visibility keeps going, then yes—things will improve. But if momentum stalls, the gap will persist.”

Shavini Fernando:

“The problem starts at the top. The decision-makers are still predominantly men. That means budgets, tech allocation, staffing—they’re often biased toward the men’s teams, intentionally or not. Until we see more women in executive roles—more female athletic directors, GMs, CEOs—we won’t see real change. The system needs female voices at the table who understand and prioritize the unique needs of women’s sports.”

Christy Fernandez-Cull:

“It takes a community—both men and women—to change the narrative. You look at someone like Steph Curry, who’s been very vocal in supporting women’s sports and even wears gear from women-led companies. Or athletes like Caitlin Clark, who bring both performance and visibility. We need more allies like that—men who amplify our stories, help elevate the platform, and build economic momentum so that closing the gap becomes an imperative, not a nice-to-have.”

Q4. Why are there fewer sports tech solutions for women, and what can be done to accelerate innovation?

Shavini Fernando:

“It’s not that companies don’t want to build for women—it’s that we can’t do it in isolation. We reach out to teams wanting to co-create, run studies, test wearables—but we often get no response. Or the players don’t want to wear the devices. And if players don’t use the product, coaches can’t act on the data. Without participation, we can’t personalize or validate the product for women. That’s the reality.”

Andrea Hudy:

“We make technology part of the culture. In our learning lab, we don’t force athletes to wear anything. We invite them in, show them what insights the device can give them—how it helps their performance. When they understand the value and feel empowered, they buy in. That’s when compliance goes up. The education piece is critical—if they don’t see how it benefits them, they won’t use it.”

Christy Fernandez-Cull:

“There’s been a historic belief in venture capital that focusing on women—a ‘mere’ 50% of the population—wasn’t worth the investment. That mindset is finally changing. But it’s not just about building women-specific products—it’s about creating personalized, evidence-based solutions that reflect real-world variation. Two female athletes might have completely different physiological needs, so tech must evolve beyond the ‘average’ user and get smarter about gender, biology, and specificity. That’s how you build tools that actually move the needle.”

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This week we had the honor to interview a group of ATP/WTA sports performance experts in pro tennis.

• Al Murphy, senior S&C coach at Tennis Australia. Al works with tennis players such as Rinky Hijikata, Emerson Jones and Aleks Vukic. He is also the head of sports science at Tennis Australia.

• Abdul Sillah, an experienced performance coach. Abdul has worked with top players such as Serena Williams, and Naomi Osaka.

• Mark Kovacs, CEO of Kovacs Institute, and Executive Director, International Tennis Performance Association.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the following topics:

• With the ATP and WTA calendars more packed than ever, how top players and their teams adapting training and recovery protocols to handle the relentless travel and match load.

• In such a physically demanding and competitive era, what specific innovations in strength, conditioning, and on-court movement training are giving players an edge.

• How teams are balancing the need for recovery—sleep, nutrition, soft tissue work—with the pressures of back-to-back matches, media obligations, and constant travel.

• Given how tight the margins are in the top 100, how practitioners are helping players gain psychological and physiological resilience—especially after tough losses or during long tours.

• As the game continues to evolve—with more power, speed, and longer rallies—how training methods are adapting to meet the demands of modern tennis.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Abdul, Al and Mark located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with them:

1. Adapting Training and Recovery to a Packed Calendar

Al Murphy (Tennis Australia):

“For players who aren't cemented at the very top — not the seeded players at Slams — they’re often playing week in, week out to chase ranking points. For them, we’re always balancing short bursts of training with recovery between matches, especially when they only win one or two rounds. They don’t have the luxury of time. For the top players, it's a different story — they can afford to skip some 250s or even 500s to manage their load and preserve performance. But across the board, what’s really tough is the mental toll: the monotony of weekly losses, the pressure to perform, and the constant travel. That’s what adds up. That’s where you see burnout."

Mark Kovacs (Kovacs Institute):

“Unlike team sports, tennis players don’t know their schedule more than a few weeks out. It’s chaos compared to the NFL or NBA, where you get your calendar a year in advance. Here, a player might enter three tournaments hoping to qualify for just one — that unpredictability changes everything. As a coach or performance specialist, you have to be flexible and ready with different workouts based on whether your athlete wins, loses, travels last-minute, or picks up an extra match. It’s a constant adaptation game. And if you're someone who likes predictability, this environment probably isn’t for you.”

Abdul Sillah (Performance Coach):

“For me, it’s all about preparation — but not just physical. It’s about getting the mind ready for uncomfortable situations. That’s where most players fall apart — not because of physical fatigue, but because they’re mentally unprepared for the grind. When I worked with Naomi (Osaka), I knew I had to build her resilience before we built her strength. It’s exciting because you’re forced to get creative — adapting schedules, being a psychologist, sometimes just being there to calm them down and help them make sense of what’s happening.”

2. Innovations in Strength, Conditioning, and On-Court Movement Training

Abdul Sillah:

“I’ve always been a bit old school — foundational movement comes first. But one tool that’s really changed how I work is the Quick Board. It allows me to be hands-off, so I can observe. It measures cognitive response and movement quality in real time. It helps train the brain-body connection — essential in a sport like tennis where decision-making, anticipation, and precision all happen in milliseconds. That’s my go-to for building efficient movement under pressure.”

Al Murphy:

“We use Blaze Pods during travel — simple but effective for reaction and cognitive drills. On the court and in the gym, we've leaned into contraction-specific technologies like flywheels and the 1080 Quantum, which we use both for traditional resistance and for tennis-specific overload. But a real game-changer has been wearable resistance like Lila — it’s light, versatile, and allows players to train with resistance during actual tennis movement. You can place the weight to assist or resist movement patterns. It becomes a feedback tool — helping athletes feel changes and self-correct, without sacrificing speed or technique.”

Mark Kovacs:

“I still swear by heart rate. We’ve got decades of trusted data — it’s still incredibly valuable for conditioning and workload monitoring. Velocity-based training is another one — it teaches players that strength without speed is useless in tennis. The goal isn’t to deadlift more; it’s to move explosively off the mark. But here’s the issue: a lot of products out there have error rates of 20 to 30 percent. Athletes are making performance decisions off unreliable data. Sometimes I tell people — you’re better off using nothing than using something that gives you false confidence.”

3. Balancing Recovery with Travel and Obligations

Abdul Sillah:

“For me, this part — sleep, recovery, nutrition — this is the easiest to control because it’s non-negotiable. I tell every athlete: the best athlete is the one who’s available. If you’re injured or constantly rundown, you’re no use to your team or your sponsors. A lot of tennis players don't prioritize nutrition until it’s too late. They think they can out-train a poor routine. We set strict discipline early: how you eat, when you rest, how you recover — these are all foundational. Without it, you’re building on sand.”

Al Murphy:

“It really is a team game behind the scenes. The player might be the CEO, but they need to trust the advice of coaches, physios, nutritionists. At the top level, these routines are well-established. You’ll see ice baths, compression, soft tissue, meal prep — but it’s tailored to the player, the surface, match finish time, and next match day. We also focus a lot on tendon health and load management — not just what’s sexy, but what keeps athletes durable for the long haul.”

Mark Kovacs:

“Recovery is where the industry’s exploding — there are 10 new gadgets every month. The problem? Athletes start trying everything. It becomes a recovery circus — infrared this, cryo that. The best athletes keep it simple. They don’t chase fads. They find what works — low risk, high trust — and they do it religiously.In tennis especially, the issue is there’s no regulation on who can call themselves a coach or trainer. So you’ve got people giving recovery advice without the experience or science to back it up. That’s a huge risk.”

4. Helping Players Build Resilience During Long Tours or After Losses

Mark Kovacs:

“One of the most powerful traits in elite players is their short-term memory. They can lose a match and bounce back like it never happened. That’s not just genetics — that’s training. They’ve got a structure, a support team that knows what to say and when to say it. When a player starts spiraling after losses, that team can redirect their focus — emotionally, tactically, physically. The problem is, many players change coaches because that connection isn’t there. But when it is, that bond becomes a competitive advantage.”

Al Murphy:

“Our Aussie players often leave home in February and don’t return until November. That kind of travel can really wear you down. We try to create small ‘home bases’ — former colleges, family stops in Europe, apartments in the UK. Little anchors of normalcy. These stops let players reset — mentally and emotionally — so that the next tournament doesn’t feel like another brick in the wall. That’s where resilience really starts — off the court.”

Abdul Sillah:

“It’s about knowing the player — their psychological makeup, their triggers. You start by watching how they react in training. When they lose, we help them zoom out. One match doesn’t define them. We build protocols for tough stretches — that might mean bringing in family, taking a break from the team, or just getting off the grid for a few days. And from the start, we teach them that failure is part of the process. If you learn from it, it’s not a loss.”

5. Adapting Training to the Power and Speed of Modern Tennis

Abdul Sillah:

“When I started working with Naomi, people laughed when I said my goal was to create the perfect athlete — not just a tennis player, but a hybrid. I wanted the mindset of a boxer, the conditioning of a soccer player, the agility of a basketball player, the explosiveness of an NFL athlete. People said it couldn’t be done. But when she came on the scene and dominated, suddenly they understood. That’s the future of tennis — real athletes, not just skilled players. You have to go where others aren’t willing to go.”

Mark Kovacs:

“The game is evolving at breakneck speed — players are taller, faster, hitting harder. Court surfaces are grittier, rallies are longer. But here’s the problem: the faster the game, the more strain on the body. And unlike other sports, tennis has no real off-season. If you go weeks without proper training, you drop off. So you need to condition during competition, which is a nightmare puzzle for practitioners. The ones who succeed are the ones who can endure — who do the boring stuff right, every single day.”

Al Murphy:

“Taller players used to just rely on their serve. Now they’re moving like the smaller guys. So we’re solving a new set of problems: how do we prepare a 6’6” guy to slide, pivot, and change direction without blowing out his knees? The answer starts early. We need to train movement efficiency and joint resilience in the development phase — when they’re 14, not 24. By the time they hit the tour, we don’t have time to teach fundamentals anymore. That’s why we use tech like motion tracking, wearables — to build a predictive, long-term roadmap for each athlete’s body and playing style.”

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Dear colleague,This week I sat down with David Daoud, CEO of Compliance Standards to share my thoughts on the impact of trade tariffs on sports tech companies and products, on companies’ innovation and R&D. We also discussed the main hubs for sports tech startups are located, what the most innovative sports tech startups are coming from. We also touched on what the revenue and profitability profile of some of the most successful sports tech startups looks like today.

You can listen to the audio interview by clicking on the above button or just watch the full video interview by clicking on the “Watch the video interview below”. You can also check out the best quotes of my interview in the section below.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, I touched on:

• If trade tariffs are impacting sports tech products.

• If pro teams are reporting to you an impact on pricing due to the tariffs.

• If we are seeing companies diversifying or near-shoring near the US due to the Tariffs.

• If the tariffs are impacting innovation and R&D budget of the sports tech startups yet.

• What the distribution by regions of where most of the sports tech products are coming from.

• Where we see innovation coming form in the world of sports and tech today.

• What the revenue and profitability profile of some of the most successful sports tech startups looks like today.

Best,

You can read the full transcript of the interview located at the top of this blog post. Here are below the best quotes from my interview:

Q1. Are trade tariffs impacting sports tech products?

“I think we're starting to see the early effects. The other day, I came across an ad from a performance tech vendor—it's a hardware device—and they explicitly stated in the ad, ‘Because of the tariffs, we're going to have to increase the price.’ That was the first time I saw a company so directly connect their pricing decisions to tariff policy. What’s happening is that tariffs—particularly those raised by the Trump administration on imports from China and other countries—are increasing the cost of manufacturing for a lot of these performance tech companies, especially ones producing in places like Shenzhen. Margins are tightening, and the simplest way for vendors to deal with that is to pass the increased cost on to customers. While we’re not seeing a mass shift yet, I do expect that more and more vendors will follow suit over the coming months.”

Q2. Are teams reporting to you an impact on pricing due to the tariffs?

“Interestingly, no teams have told me directly that tariffs are raising their costs, but I am seeing indirect budget pressure—especially in college sports. One major factor is NIL—Name, Image, and Likeness. I recently spoke with a vendor who sells a $35,000 machine. Historically, schools would find donors to fund this kind of tech. But in this case, the coaching staff decided to use the donor's $35K pledge to help make a $1.5 million NIL offer to a recruit instead. That tells you a lot. Athletic departments are being forced to choose between investing in tech and spending big on player recruitment. So while tariffs haven’t yet visibly impacted team spending, the overall budget environment is tightening, and sports tech investments are sometimes the first to get squeezed.”

Q3. Are you seeing companies diversifying or near-shoring due to the tariffs?

“It’s still early days for that. Most of these vendors have long-standing manufacturing relationships in China, where labor costs are still very competitive—even with the tariffs. That said, I’ve heard some companies are exploring alternatives like Mexico or even Costa Rica. The key is doing the math—if relocating production ends up costing more due to higher wages or logistics, it might not be worth it. However, there are other benefits driving these conversations too. Quality control is a big one. Some vendors complain about specs or colors being wrong when working with Chinese factories. Also, proximity matters—being able to visit a factory quickly is a huge plus. Flying to Costa Rica is easier and faster than flying halfway across the world to China. So while tariffs alone aren’t driving mass shifts yet, factors like QA and geographic access are encouraging some vendors to investigate nearshoring.”

Q4. Are the tariffs impacting innovation and R&D budgets of sports tech startups yet?

“From what I’ve seen, no. Most sports tech startups keep their R&D teams close to their headquarters—whether that’s in the U.S., Europe, or Canada. That’s because R&D is critical, and quality can’t be compromised. These companies want tight control over product design, testing, and iteration. While a few exceptions exist—some have engineering teams in Vietnam or other lower-cost countries—by and large, engineering stays local. So tariffs on components or manufacturing don’t really impact the innovation side directly. If anything, I’d say companies are trying to keep R&D shielded from cost pressures because that’s where their competitive edge lives.”

Q5. What is the distribution by regions of where most sports tech products are coming from?

“The majority of high-performance sports tech products are coming from Western Europe and North America, particularly the U.S. and Canada. There’s also significant innovation happening in Australia, and we’re seeing some solid products from Japan, South Korea, and parts of South America. But the core of the market—especially for elite teams—is dominated by vendors from the U.S. and Europe. These are the regions with strong R&D, deep ties to professional sports leagues, and the infrastructure to support product scaling. We track 450+ top performance tech products and companies from all over the world.”

Q6. Where do you see innovation coming from in the world of sports tech today?

“The U.S. continues to lead, thanks largely to its venture capital ecosystem and the influence of Silicon Valley. But Europe is very strong, too. Countries like England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Israel are producing truly innovative companies. Israel, for example, punches way above its weight. Despite its small size, it’s launched several startups that have gained traction in U.S. pro sports. France, while it has some good companies, hasn’t stood out as a top innovator. I’ve heard French teams themselves say they’re frustrated with the lack of variety—they see the same French vendors bidding on every RFP and want more international options. So the most innovative hubs right now are probably the U.S., the U.K., Israel, and Australia.”

Q7. What is the revenue and profitability profile of some of the most successful sports tech startups today?

“It really depends. Some companies are doing $10 million in annual revenue; others are north of $100 million. A lot are still break-even—$1 million in revenue, $1 million in costs. But the ones that scale successfully all tend to have a few things in common: strong R&D processes, top-tier engineering and product teams, and strong sales. Having a great product isn’t enough—you need to know how to sell it and how to support your customers well. Software companies, especially AMS platforms, tend to be more profitable than hardware-focused ones. That’s because hardware is capital intensive—manufacturing, inventory, QA all eat into your margin. The most successful companies in our space—like Teamworks and Catapult—have thousands of team customers and have built powerful ecosystems. Meanwhile, many startups start in sports for credibility but eventually pivot to other verticals—like construction, healthcare, or military—where the deals are bigger and more scalable. That’s often the real play, especially from an investor’s perspective.”

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This week we have the honor to interview again Dr. Ron Dick, associate professor of sports marketing at Duquesne University in the school of business. Ron also worked for 20 years in sports, including 15 years in the NBA with the Sixers and the Nets, and then five years in the NCAA. You can watch the full video interview by clicking on the link above or by listen to the audio podcast link above.

You can also read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ron located at the top of this blog post.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the following topics:

• The NFL, OTA’s official team activities

• The passing of Jim Irsay

• Netflix documentary “The Fall of Favre”

• The MLB standings

• The NBA playoffs, NBA draft,

• The NHL playoffs

• The MLB’s plan to invest in a pro softball league.

• Rafael Nadal gets a grand slam tribute at the French Open

• The NIL.

• TNT’s last show with Charles Barkley, Shaq. Kenny & Ernie.

Here are the best quotes from our interview with Ron:

Q1. The NFL’s OTA (Organized Team Activities)

“Right now in the NFL off-season, all the teams are in the midst of OTAs—Organized Team Activities. These sessions are voluntary, but many players show up, even if they’re not in pads or going full contact. It's a chance for new draft picks and free agents to integrate, and for coaching staff to lay foundational work. Here in Pittsburgh, for example, there’s a lot of talk on local sports radio about Aaron Rodgers. There’s this ongoing discussion—if he’s going to be part of the team, why hasn’t he signed yet? So there’s anticipation, but also excitement, especially because Pittsburgh is set to host the 2026 NFL Draft. The city is gearing up to break the attendance record set by Detroit in 2024, where over 775,000 people attended and the city brought in more than $213 million in revenue. These events bring real economic value—hotels are full, restaurants are packed—it’s fresh money into the local economy. If we can top that, it’s going to be a major win for the city.”

Q2. The Passing of Jim Irsay

“The passing of Jim Irsay really resonated throughout the NFL community. He was only 65, which is young by today’s standards. A lot of people remember his father, Robert Irsay, who infamously moved the Colts from Baltimore to Indianapolis in the middle of the night back in 1984—literally packing up in Mayflower trucks. That move earned him nicknames like ‘The Mayflower Guy’ or ‘Midnight Cowboy.’ Jim inherited the team and built his own legacy, but he also carried that history. His passing is not just a loss for Indianapolis, it’s a loss for the league. The Irsay name has been tied to one of the most memorable franchise moves in NFL history, and Jim played a central role in continuing that story.”

Q3. Netflix Documentary “The Fall of Favre”

“The new Netflix documentary ‘The Fall of Favre’ is shedding light on a really unfortunate but important story. Brett Favre, who many once idolized as a blue-collar icon and legendary quarterback, has been tied to multiple controversies—including allegations of sexual harassment during his stint with the Jets and now this welfare fraud case in Mississippi. The documentary goes deep, showing texts, financial records, and public silence from Favre. It’s especially troubling considering that this involved money being siphoned away from low-income residents in one of the poorest states in the country. It’s a reminder that fame and legacy don’t give you immunity, and in today’s climate, accountability is finally catching up with stories that might’ve been brushed aside a generation ago.”

Q4. The MLB Standings

“The MLB season is shaping up to be one of the most competitive in recent years. Here in Philadelphia, the Phillies are red hot in the NL East, while the Mets are also playing solid ball. The Cubs look great in the Central, and St. Louis is overperforming expectations. Out west, the Dodgers, Padres, and Giants are all stacked—it’s a three-way race. Over in the American League, the Yankees are leading the AL East, Detroit is unexpectedly strong, and Cleveland is holding steady. In the AL West, Seattle and Houston are neck and neck, and while the Rangers are a bit behind, they’ve got the roster to turn it around. It’s a deep field with a lot of parity, which makes for great baseball.”

Q5. The NBA Playoffs and NBA Draft

“This year’s NBA playoffs have been incredibly exciting because, for the first time in a while, it feels like nearly any of the remaining teams could win the title. OKC is making a deep run and showing that their rebuild strategy—trading away stars like Harden, Westbrook, and Durant for draft picks—has paid off. They hit on those picks and developed the talent. Look at SGA, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Originally drafted 11th overall by the Charlotte Hornets, he was traded to the Clippers and then to OKC. Now he’s the league MVP and considered one of the most efficient and selfless leaders in the NBA. That says a lot about their development system and team culture. On the Eastern side, the Knicks and Pacers are in a gritty series. The Knicks have nothing to lose, while all the pressure is on Indiana. As for the draft, it looks strong—deep with real contributors. Cooper Flagg is expected to go number one to the Mavericks, who miraculously landed that pick. He’s a generational player, and this draft could have long-term impact for several franchises.”

Q6. The NHL Playoffs

“We’ve got a thrilling rematch in this year’s Stanley Cup Final—Florida Panthers vs. Edmonton Oilers. The Panthers have made it to the Finals for the third consecutive year, which is a testament to their consistency in the Eastern Conference. But I think this time around, Edmonton has the upper hand. They learned a lot from last year’s loss, and they have the firepower and depth to take it. If they can stay disciplined and get solid goaltending, I believe they’ll finally hoist the Cup. It’s going to be a hard-fought series either way, but I’d put my money on the Oilers.”

Q7. MLB’s Plan to Invest in a Pro Softball League

“The MLB’s investment in professional women’s softball, through the new A-USL league, is a really exciting development. It reminds me of how the WNBA got off the ground in 1997. The NBA’s backing made all the difference—shared facilities, access to marketing and ticketing infrastructure, experienced coaches. That foundation helped the WNBA survive those tough early years and grow into what it is today. The A-USL could follow the same path, especially since there’s already a strong fanbase for NCAA women’s softball. MLB is planning to put real money behind this—investing in facilities, helping with television deals, leveraging their own sales and marketing staff. That kind of ecosystem can make this league sustainable. And with stars like Caitlin Clark proving the commercial viability of women’s sports, this is a smart move. If done right, A-USL could be the next big success story in women’s pro sports.”

Q8. TNT’s last show with Charles Barkley, Shaq. Kenny & Ernie.

“It is the end of an era for Inside the NBA on TNT. The chemistry of Charles, Shaq, Kenny, & Ernie is undeniable. After 35 years the NBA is making a change. The interaction between Shaq and Charles is sport TV at its best”.

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This week we have the honor to interview a group of rehab and performance experts across the NFL and NHL. We discussed concussion assessment and management, their approach to this topic, the various modalities, best practices and trends that they are seeing in the market.

• Alexi Pianosi, Head S&C coach at the Colorado Avalanche, an NHL team.

• Kim Brouzes, an experienced Canadian sports therapist and CEO of Kinmetrix which built an advanced neck strengthening device collecting data.

• Ryan Juarez, the director of rehabilitation at the Commanders, an NFL team.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on concussion assessment and management related topics especially:

• How concussion assessment protocols have evolved in their sports over the past few years, and which new tools or technologies (e.g., SCAT6, eye-tracking, neurocognitive platforms, and in-race or in-game monitoring) are being integrated today.

• What roles wearable technologies, video analysis, saliva analysis, connected mouth guards, sensor based helmets, or AI are playing in real-time concussion detection and post-impact evaluation across their sports (NFL, NHL).

• How sports organizations handle education and awareness for players, coaches, and staff around concussion risk, symptoms, and reporting culture.

• Looking forward, what they see as the next frontier in concussion prevention or management—whether it’s data, equipment, policy, and so on.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Alexi, Kim and Ryan:

1. How have concussion assessment protocols evolved, and what new tools are being integrated?

Kim Brouzes:

“In Ontario, we have something called Rowan’s Law. It came about after Rowan Stringer, a young athlete, tragically passed away from Second Impact Syndrome. This law brought in strict rules for diagnosing and managing concussions. If a concussion is suspected, the athlete must be referred to a doctor or nurse practitioner for diagnosis, and then they're put into what we call a protocol. We mandate 24 hours of brain rest, then begin aerobic activity, neck treatments, and from there we figure out what type of concussion they’re dealing with—whether it's visual, vestibular, cervicogenic, or another type. There are about six different systems we consider. This informs the specific treatment plan and helps us guide them through recovery in a structured, safe manner. It’s a highly legislated and systematic approach designed to prioritize athlete health.”

Ryan Juarez:

“When I started in the NFL as an intern in 2005, concussion protocols were pretty limited. By 2012, when I came back full time, awareness had improved, but we were still figuring a lot out. Now, things have evolved tremendously in a positive way. In the NFL, we use tools like C3 Logic as part of baseline and return-to-play screening, and we still use Impact testing. At the college level, I’ve also worked with Sway, which assesses balance. There are now spotters in the booth looking for visible signs during games, and we’ve got league- and conference-driven assessment protocols we have to follow. All of this is a far cry from when I started. We’re more structured, more evidence-driven, and far better equipped to identify and manage concussions.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“Over the last 10 years, concussion management has improved significantly, especially in pro sports. But what's also become clear is how little we still know. We’ve moved away from a one-size-fits-all approach, and now recognize that different teams, organizations, and even individual practitioners can approach concussion management differently. Some are more risk-averse, some are quicker to return players based on symptoms and initial tests. That variability isn’t necessarily bad—it allows for creativity and innovation—but it also means there’s no standardized protocol across the board. Laws like Rowan’s Law are a step toward consistency, but we’re still in the early stages of understanding how to best manage and treat concussions comprehensively.”

2. What role are wearable technologies, video analysis, saliva analysis, connected mouthguards, or AI playing? Differences across sports?

Ryan Juarez:

“I’ve had experience using sensor-based helmets and connected mouthguards, particularly at the college level. We used them to identify the type and location of impacts, which helped inform practice planning—like what drills might be causing more head contact. We also had a donor-funded saliva biomarker study with our women’s lacrosse team, which was fascinating. I’m still learning about a lot of this newer tech—AI, surface EMG, etc.—but I’m excited by it. One example Kim told me about was a Canadian researcher using EMG sensors on the knees to track the delay in brain-to-muscle signal transmission post-concussion. That’s pretty wild and really promising. But even with all the tech, I keep reminding myself and others: sometimes, good clinical judgment and knowing your athlete can be the most valuable tools.”

Kim Brouzes:

“There’s a ton of innovation right now—saliva testing for biomarkers post-concussion, surface EMG sensors showing delayed muscle responses linked to the autonomic nervous system, eye tracking, AI... But no matter how many tools you have, we can’t overlook the importance of the human element. When you know your athlete, you see mood changes, eye movement differences, or how they carry themselves. That’s something tech can’t fully replicate. It’s exciting to have all these new ways to gather data, but you’ve got to use your instincts and experience too. Impact and symptom should still equal removal from play, full stop.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“There’s a ton of promise in wearable devices, saliva testing, and other tech, but we’re not at the point where we can definitively say, ‘This metric means a concussion.’ It’s not like speeding on a highway where 65 mph is a clear threshold. You might see one guy take a massive hit and bounce back totally fine, while another barely gets touched and can’t remember who you are. The variability is massive. So we need to gather data on mouthguards, biomarkers, reaction time—all of it—but we also need to understand what those measurements mean in context. Eventually, I hope we’ll get to a point where we can say, ‘This sensor measures the vestibular response really well, this one the visual system,’ and build an integrated view of what a concussion really looks like on multiple levels.”

3. How does your organization handle education and awareness around concussions?

Alexi Pianosi:

“In the NHL, every training camp starts with a mandatory concussion education video. It features former players sharing their stories and symptoms. It’s definitely valuable, though for veterans it can get repetitive over time. That said, the cultural shift is the most important part. The old ‘play through it’ mentality is mostly gone now. Players take it seriously. If they’ve got symptoms, they speak up. And that’s a huge step forward for long-term brain health and player safety.”

Ryan Juarez:

“In both the NFL and at the college level, there’s required education at the start of every season. The biggest change I’ve seen, though, is how players look out for each other. Ten years ago, guys would hide symptoms to stay on the field. Now, you’ll hear teammates saying, ‘Go get checked out.’ That shift in peer culture is powerful. The more that happens, the more likely we are to catch injuries early and keep guys safe.”

Kim Brouzes:

“Here in Ontario, the education component is taken seriously. Athletes and coaches must complete online training at the start of the season. Anyone—coaches, trainers, even media—can pull a player out if a concussion is suspected. The messaging is improving, too. It’s less fear-based now and more about empowerment and awareness. When you tell athletes they may not feel like themselves for a while, and that’s normal, it helps. We educate all the way from preseason to post-return to play.”

4. What is the next frontier in concussion prevention or management?

Alexi Pianosi:

“Total prevention seems unlikely in collision sports like football or hockey. You’ve got big athletes moving fast—it’s part of the game. But the next big steps are better detection and better rehab. On the sideline, real-time diagnostics like mouthguards or saliva testing will be game-changers once the science catches up. And for the tougher cases—those 5 to 10% that don’t follow the normal recovery path—we’ll need better ways to address specific systems, like vestibular or visual issues. It’s going to take both technological innovation and clinical expertise.”

Ryan Juarez:

“If I could dream big, I’d love to see sideline tech that gives you an accurate, immediate read on whether a player has a concussion. That would be huge. I also believe in equipment upgrades—we’ve used Guardian Caps and saw our concussion numbers drop by half. That’s a real impact. And the more data we have—whether it’s load tracking, EMG, or reaction metrics—the more confident we can be about when a player is really ready to come back.”

Kim Brouzes:

“We might not be able to fully prevent concussions, but we can reduce their severity and improve how we manage them. That means fewer hits in practice, strengthening the neck, delaying contact sports until kids are older, and understanding things like sleep and nervous system balance. If we can build a profile on each athlete—their physiology, their normal responses—we can be more precise when something’s off. But I agree, knowing exactly when a concussion happens and acting quickly is the biggest leap we can make.”

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This week we had the honor to interview a group of NCAA sports performance experts.

• Dr. John DeWitt, director of applied sports science in the athletic department and a faculty member, Rice University (NCAA team).

• Eric Renaghan, Executive Director of Sport Performance, University of Miami (NCAA team).

• Drew Lukes, Senior PT at Duke University and the head of sports science, Duke university’s women soccer team (NCAA team).

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Eric, Drew, and John located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with them:

Q1. How has the transfer portal reshaped team culture, leadership development, and continuity?

Eric Renaghan (University of Miami):

“The transfer portal has fundamentally changed college sports. It’s essentially turned the NCAA into a professional environment where you’re not just recruiting new talent, but you’re now also recruiting your own players to stay. That’s never really been the case before. What makes it especially tough is we don’t just have one transfer window like pro leagues. We’ve got multiple across the year. So, it’s constant—trying to build cohesion while guys are coming and going. From a physical performance standpoint, that part of our work doesn’t really change—we’re still focused on keeping everyone healthy and progressing—but now we have players coming in from different systems, different training histories, and we have to quickly assess and integrate them. It’s like mid-season trades in the pros, and that can really stress your culture if you’re not deliberate about it.”

Drew Lukes (Duke University):

“We’re in a transitional era where some athletes have been with their program for four or five years—before NIL, before the portal exploded—and they’re now seeing newcomers arrive with massive NIL deals. That dynamic creates tension. You might have a senior who’s contributed for years sitting next to a freshman transfer making more in NIL than they’ve ever seen. That forces some difficult conversations. From a support staff perspective, we’re having to adapt by accelerating onboarding. So, it’s all about tightening your processes while staying aligned with the coaches who are making those culture decisions.”

John DeWitt (Rice University):

“For me, it’s less about who’s transferring and more about where they are in their developmental arc. These players are still in their final stages of physical growth. From a sports science lens, I’m thinking: are we inheriting someone whose ceiling is still high, or someone who’s plateaued? And how do we integrate that understanding into our planning? You need to analyze their trajectory the same way a pro team would look at an investment. And because NIL has accelerated the frequency of transfers, you’re not just doing this a few times a year—you’re doing it constantly.”

Q2. How are NIL, tech budgets, and donations used to attract athletes—and are there concerns about sustainability or equity?

Drew Lukes:

“There’s no question that tech is being used as a recruiting tool, but we try not to lead with the gear. We lead with the people behind the technology. The question isn’t just ‘do you have a force plate?’ It’s ‘do you have staff who know how to analyze that data, give it context, and help the athlete apply it?’ Because it doesn’t matter how many gadgets you have if you don’t know what to do with them. On top of that, we’re in a strange spot financially. Coaches are now being asked to raise more money to fund NIL packages, while at the same time athletic departments are pulling back funding in other areas. So there’s a squeeze. You feel it across every role.”

John DeWitt:

“Athletes today are much more informed. They’re going to ask: What’s your tech setup? What are your testing protocols? How will this program make me better? The schools that can answer that clearly—and back it up with examples—will have an advantage. That’s where technology can play a recruiting role. It’s not about impressing them with flashing lights. It’s about showing them a roadmap to improve and reach their goals, whether that’s pro-level aspirations or personal development.”

Eric Renaghan:

“We emphasize the level of care we provide. That’s the differentiator. Yes, athletes want to know what tools and systems you use, but more than that, they want to know how those tools are being used to help them succeed. We make it clear: here’s how we’ll monitor you, here’s how we’ll individualize your programming, and here’s who you’ll be working with every day. The relationships are just as important—maybe more—than the hardware.”

Q3. Resistance and Strength Training Tech – Measuring Impact

John DeWitt:

“Force plates have been a total game-changer. They’re non-invasive, fast, and immediately useful. We track metrics like peak power, force at zero velocity, and eccentric duration. The athletes understand the numbers, the coaches do too. And here’s the impact: over the last year, we’ve seen consistent gains across all teams. It’s like a stock chart—everyone’s trending upward. That tells me that the training is working. We’re not mandating specific programs. We're just giving staff data they can use, and they’re making smarter choices. That’s ROI for us—not just injury reduction, but visible, measurable improvements in physical capacity.”

Eric Renaghan:

“The best technology is the one that answers the right questions. If we’re seeing performance plateaus or subtle signs of fatigue, we want tools that help us detect those issues early and adapt before injuries or performance drops occur. Force plates, velocity tracking—those are great, but we focus on how they fit together. ROI isn’t always a dollar figure—it’s the number of healthy athletes on the field, the absence of overuse injuries, and the ability to sustain peak output over a season.”

Q4. AMS: Centralizing Data for Smarter Decisions

Drew Lukes:

“We couldn’t afford a full AMS, so I built one using Power BI. It lets me integrate everything—subjective wellness scores, VO2 max, force plate outputs, injury records—in one place. It's free, flexible, and it works. It's not about flashy dashboards; it's about having a system that supports better decisions.”

Eric Renaghan:

“Most AMS platforms have gaps. One system might do monitoring well but fail on communication or visualization. That’s why we built our own. We use it not just to track performance and health but also to upskill our staff—learning analytics, data cleaning, communication. It’s become a developmental tool for our practitioners, not just a data warehouse. And yes, the pricing structure of many AMS vendors is frustrating. They charge big-name schools more for the same product, and when you find out, it damages trust. We’d rather invest in our own system that we control and customize.”

John DeWitt:

“We created a custom AMS that pulls data from Vald, MX3, and Catapult. I wanted to look at hydration, jump force, and movement speed in one place without flipping between dashboards. It’s about actionable insight, not just storage. Plus, we protect our proprietary models. I’m not giving a vendor our algorithms so they can resell it as a feature to other schools. If it’s core to our program’s success, I want to own and control it.”

Q5. Tech-Enabled Nutrition and Recovery

John DeWitt:

“Nutrition is just as important as force or GPS data. We use MX3 for hydration, BOD POD and InBody for body comp, and DEXA when needed. It’s about gathering simple, actionable data. We work closely with our dietitian—when she sees a player, she can also look at their performance trends, hydration status, or body comp. That cross-talk between departments is where the value comes in.”

Eric Renaghan:

“Nutrition is the fuel, the oil, the maintenance plan. We use thermal imaging, HRV, blood biomarkers—like vitamin D, ferritin, testosterone—to tailor interventions. We’re not throwing 5,000 IUs of vitamin D at everyone—we’re dosing based on labs. And it’s not just testing—it’s follow-through. We find out what players will actually eat consistently and build their plans around that. You miss a lift? No big deal. But skip nutrition? It shows up fast in performance and recovery.”

Drew Lukes:

“In women’s sports, RED-S and menstrual health are real concerns. We track cycles and watch for missed periods—because that’s a huge flag for energy deficiency. It’s not just about collecting data. We educate athletes, involve dietitians, and create support systems. One of the most powerful tools we’ve had is simply using questionnaires to trigger follow-up care. Tech is helpful, but the cultural support and education is just as critical.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Megan Rottler Hattori, the Associate Director of Sports Performance for Olympic Sports at Duke University (NCAA). She is also the primary sports performance coach for the women’s soccer and volleyball teams.

Before her tenure at Duke, Rottler Hattori was the Associate Director of Strength and Conditioning at Harvard University. There, she was responsible for the strength and conditioning programs of various sports, including men’s and women’s diving, women’s lacrosse, women’s rugby, softball, women’s volleyball and men’s rowing, and also assisted with the football and women’s basketball programs.

Her career in sports performance began at Southeast Missouri State University, where she initially worked as a graduate assistant before transitioning to a full-time role.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on her background, and her role at Duke University. She also discussed how she tailors her performance programs to the specific physical and tactical demands of both soccer and volleyball. She also touched on the key strategies she uses to monitor and manage athlete recovery during the in-season grind, especially when dealing with the academic pressures of student-athletes. She also discussed what her framework is for evaluating and integrating new technologies into her performance program. Lastly she touched on what she finds to be the most challenging part of adopting new technologies in a high-performance collegiate setting—and she overcame resistance or limitations. You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Megan located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Megan:

1. Journey into Sports Performance & Influences

“Yeah, so I was a student athlete my whole life. I played softball in high school and even into college. I found out about sports performance when I met my collegiate strength coach and thought, ‘This is a cool profession,’ so I went the exercise science route. My senior year, I transferred to Southeast Missouri State to be closer to home and decided not to play softball anymore, which gave me more time to partake in an internship with the strength and conditioning program there. I fell in love with it—this is what I want to do. I was lucky enough to do shadowing and an internship, and they liked me enough to keep me around for a GA position and then an assistant job after that.”

“At Southeast Missouri State, I worked under Ryan Johnson, who is an amazing mentor. I definitely wouldn’t be the coach I am today without him. He was the director of the strength and conditioning program—very knowledgeable, always learning, super organized. I’d like to think I took on some of those features from him. Shoutout to Coach Ryan Johnson for giving me my start.”

2. Tailoring Programs for Soccer vs. Volleyball

“Volleyball players are typically tall and lanky—we’ve got some shorter DSs and liberos too—but generally, they have a higher training age. I like to Olympic lift them to develop coordination, bar receiving, and vertical power since volleyball is a very vertical sport. Their court is small, so we don’t get too complex with conditioning. We still do speed work, but it’s more targeted.”

“Soccer players, on the other hand, often come in without much experience in the weight room. Their training is very soccer-specific before they get to college, which is great—but that means we have to focus more on foundational work. We do loaded jumps instead of Olympic lifts and stick mostly to kettlebell and dumbbell work. We’ll use barbells occasionally, but not in a complex way. Their complexity comes from the field—conditioning, speed work, agility—so I keep things simple in the weight room to keep them healthy and performing on the field.”

“At the end of the day, I meet each athlete where they’re at. Training age matters. I’ve had soccer players who are highly trained and volleyball players who aren’t. You have to be flexible and responsive to both the sport and the individual.”

3. Monitoring & Managing Recovery During In-Season Grind

“We’re lucky here to have a sports science department that we work closely with. Both my teams use Catapult for external load, and we also use daily wellness surveys to track how athletes are feeling—soreness, mood, sleep, etc. We get that information before training. If anyone is flagged, it’s an opportunity for a conversation. I’ll go talk to the athlete—‘What’s going on today?’—and that goes a long way.”

“One athlete might always run red on the wellness survey—always tired, always sore—and that becomes their normal. If anything deviates, I know it’s worth checking in. Another athlete might always say they’re fine no matter what, and you have to know them well enough to catch when that’s not true. Relationships are key. Technology is great, but you have to be able to interpret the data through the lens of real human connection.”

“You can have all the GPS and wearable data in the world, but if you don’t know your athletes—if you can’t spot when something’s off just by talking to them—then the data won’t help you much. Coaching still has to have that human element.”

4. Framework for Evaluating and Integrating New Technology

“There’s always something new coming out—it’s exciting, but I start by asking: ‘Do we need this?’ Different sports and athletes have different needs. If there’s a real need, then I start looking at what the best product out there is. And a big one for me is: ‘Do I know someone who’s already using it?’ If so, I’ll reach out to them and ask what their experience has been like before I even consider a trial.”

“I really appreciate what you guys are doing with Upside—it helps cut through some of the noise. Because honestly, a lot of times people just try to sell you something. You’ve got to look past the marketing and ask whether this tech is going to solve a specific problem we have.”

“I’ve definitely seen both sides—where something makes a real difference, and where something just doesn’t fit into our workflow or isn’t necessary. If you can’t explain the ‘why’ to your team—why we’re using this, what it’s going to help with—then you probably don’t need it.”

5. Challenges of Adopting Technology in a Collegiate Setting

“Whenever you introduce something new, there’s going to be pushback from someone—either a coach or an athlete. That’s where education comes in. I do the research, get excited about the product, and then bring that to the coaches. I explain what it is, what the science says, how it helps. Then we educate the athletes—‘This will help your recovery,’ or ‘This will improve your performance’—and most of the time, they’ll buy in if you explain it well.”

“I’ve also learned to keep it simple. I remember the first time I used ForceDecks—I was looking at everything, all the metrics. It was too much. My brain was overwhelmed. Now, I have three or four KPIs that I watch and that’s it. I don’t need to overcomplicate it. Same thing with the NordBoard and ForceFrame—we keep it simple and bucket the athletes based on their testing.”

“There’s a point where too much data becomes noise. It doesn’t help—it just slows you down. The technology should serve the program, not the other way around. So we’ve learned to streamline and only focus on what’s actionable.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing C.J. Watson, a former NBA player (Chicago Bulls, Warriors, Broolyn Nets) turned investor and author of children books.

C.J. Watson is a former professional basketball player who transitioned into a successful career as a children's book author and philanthropist. Born on April 17, 1984, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Watson played college basketball at the University of Tennessee, where he became the school's second all-time leader in assists and steals. Despite going undrafted in the 2006 NBA Draft, he embarked on a professional basketball career that spanned over a decade. Watson played for several NBA teams, including the Golden State Warriors, Chicago Bulls, Brooklyn Nets, Indiana Pacers, and Orlando Magic, and also had stints overseas in countries like Italy, Greece, and Turkey.

After retiring from basketball, Watson focused on inspiring youth through literature. He authored the "CJ's Big Dream" series, which includes titles like "CJ's Big Dream," "CJ's Big Project," "CJ's Big Moment," and "CJ and His Magic Socks." These books aim to motivate children to pursue their dreams and overcome challenges by believing in themselves and working hard.

In addition to his writing, Watson is dedicated to philanthropy. He established the Quiet Storm Foundation in his hometown of Las Vegas, focusing on providing educational opportunities and resources to underprivileged youth. Watson's journey from the basketball court to authorship and community service exemplifies his commitment to making a positive impact beyond sports.

You can check out and buy CJ’s books here on Amazon by clicking on the link below:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, his journey to become an NBA player, his transition to investor and now author of children books. We also discussed what values or traits he is usually drawn to when he looks at the companies or founders he is looking to invest in, and how his sees his role as more than just providing capital. Lastly we discussed what he wants his legacy to be, not just as an athlete, but as an investor, author, and role model for young people.You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with C.J. located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with C.J.:

1. From the Court to the Boardroom

Question: "Tell me about your background. How did your experiences in the NBA shape the way you approach investing and business today?"Quote:

“I wasn’t a superstar—I was undrafted, played overseas, grinded through the D-League, and eventually played ten years in the NBA. I’ve been the last guy on the bench and a starter, so I’ve seen every role and every type of team. That journey taught me resilience, patience, and how to assess situations from different angles. In business, especially as an investor, those same lessons apply. You have to do your homework, know when to take risks, and keep your ego in check. Being in the NBA, you learn quickly that talent only gets you so far—it's your work ethic and your mindset that carry you. I apply that same mentality to every business opportunity I look at.”

2. Purpose Behind the Pages

Question: "What inspired you to start writing children’s books, and what messages are you hoping to pass on to the next generation?"Quote:

“Honestly, writing children’s books wasn’t something I planned. I was sitting on the couch after I retired, thinking, ‘How can I keep inspiring kids if I’m not on the court anymore?’ I wanted to share my story in a way that was relatable, positive, and lasting. So I called a former coach who had written books and just dove in. My first book is about making it to the NBA through hard work. The others focus on things like the importance of doing your homework, handling bullying in a positive way, and expanding your worldview by traveling. Each one comes from my real-life experiences growing up in inner-city Las Vegas and the values my parents instilled in me. It’s about showing kids that they matter, their dreams are valid, and they can overcome anything.”

3. Transition and Identity

Question: "Many athletes struggle with life after sports. What was the hardest part of your transition, and how did you find a new sense of purpose?"Quote:

“The toughest part was finding my identity beyond basketball. For so many years, that’s who I was—CJ Watson, the basketball player. But even during my career, I was intentional about preparing for life after. Every summer I’d do internships—at Google, EA Sports, American Express, in real estate—just to see what else I liked and to build experience. I didn’t want to be one of those guys who had no plan after retirement. When I did stop playing, I focused on being present for my daughters—going to their school plays, being there for them daily. That helped center me. Writing books, investing, and running a foundation all gave me a new purpose: to inspire and uplift others, especially young people.”

4. Investing with Impact

Question: "When you look at the companies or founders you back, what values or traits are you drawn to, and how do you see your role as more than just capital?"Quote:

“I’m drawn to people who are hungry—founders who are resilient, passionate, and mission-driven. I co-invest with some of the top VCs and follow a thesis I learned from my mentor, Rashan Williams. Since 2020, I’ve invested in over 30 companies, but I don’t just write checks and disappear. I try to add value—whether that’s connecting them to people in my network, helping them think through strategies, or amplifying what they’re doing. It’s about creating real change, especially in communities like the one I grew up in. I want to back companies that are not only profitable, but purposeful.”

5. Legacy and Leadership

Question: "What do you want your legacy to be—not just as an athlete, but as an investor, author, and role model for young people?"Quote:

“I want to be remembered as more than just a basketball player. I want people to say I was someone who gave back, who cared about the next generation, and who used his platform to do good. Whether it’s through my books, my investments, or my foundation, everything I do is about helping others believe in themselves and reach their full potential. My legacy, I hope, is one of purpose, impact, and generosity. I want kids to look at me and say, ‘He made it, but he didn’t stop there—he brought others along with him.’ That’s what really matters.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing José María Oliva Lozano, the Director of Research and Innovation at the US Soccer Federation.

José María Oliva Lozano serves as the Director of Research and Innovation at the U.S. Soccer Federation, a role he has held since November 2023. In this position, he leads initiatives that integrate advanced technologies and data-driven methodologies to enhance player development, health, and fan engagement. Prior to this, he was a Senior Manager in the same department from December 2022 to November 2023. Before joining U.S. Soccer, Oliva Lozano accumulated diverse experience in sports science and coaching. He worked as a Researcher and Lecturer at the Universidad de Almería from September 2019 to December 2022, and concurrently served as the Fitness Coach for UD Almería's U19 team from June 2021 to October 2022.

His earlier roles include positions in the Sport Science Department at RealTrack Systems SL, where he was involved in developing systems for monitoring physical activity and movement in real time, and as a Basketball Attention Manager at East Tennessee State University. Oliva Lozano's multifaceted background underscores his commitment to advancing soccer's reach and impact across various dimensions in the U.S.

📝 Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, the typical process from a published research finding to real-world application on the field or in training. We also discussed the biggest barriers or friction points you encounter when trying to apply research in a high-performance soccer environment. Jose also walked us through a specific example where a research study led to a successful change in practice, whether in injury prevention, training load, or recovery. He also touched on how he evaluates whether a new research-based intervention is actually working in your environment. Lastly he gave us his opinion on what needs to change—either structurally, culturally, in how research is conducted or shared—for clubs to become more agile and effective in applying cutting-edge research.You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with José located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with José:

Q1. From Research to Real-World Application – Process and Stakeholders

The process is never exactly the same—it really depends on the specific question we’re trying to answer. Some research starts with internal curiosity, while much of it originates from coaches or performance staff who face real, practical challenges. The first step is building alignment and ensuring everyone involved understands the 'why' behind the research. Once that’s established, we develop strategies to test the idea, sometimes through pilot studies, or on less critical training days. We may even test it internally before rolling it out to a team. The stakeholders vary by project, but typically include the high performance leadership, medical staff, coaching staff, etc. Getting everyone on the same page is critical, especially when we're trying to translate something abstract—like a research paper—into something coaches can trust and act on.

Q2. Barriers or Friction Points in Applying Research

Cultural resistance may be a hurdle. In soccer, there’s a lot of tradition, and coaches naturally rely on what’s worked for them in the past. That can make them skeptical of new methods, especially if they’re coming from academic or unfamiliar sources. We’ve learned that even the best research won’t make an impact unless we can clearly communicate it in a way that resonates with practitioners. That means simplifying findings and making them actionable. Another challenge is integrating new tools or processes into existing workflows. Anything that disrupts routines, even slightly, needs to be introduced gradually and with care. Budget constraints exist, of course, but they’re not necessarily always the biggest issue.

Q3. Example of a Research-Led Change with Measurable Impact

One of our most impactful projects has been around growth and maturation at the youth level. A few years ago, we introduced an innovative tool to assess biological maturation—not just chronological age—using ultrasound to estimate skeletal age. That gave us a whole new dimension in evaluating youth players. This tool gave scouts and coaches a more objective lens, helping them understand where each player is in their developmental journey. Now, when rosters are selected, we can use that information for better distribution across maturation stages and birth quarters. While it's still early, we're already seeing improved understanding and dialogue around these concepts, which I believe will translate into better long-term talent identification and development.

Q4. Evaluating Whether an Intervention is Working

Measuring impact is essential, but it’s not always immediate. With most of our early projects, we're still in the implementation phase, which makes short-term measurement tricky. That said, we rely heavily on qualitative feedback from staff in regular check-ins and department meetings. We also define clear KPIs at the start and track those consistently. Our goal is to build a feedback loop where data and staff experience inform each other. We’re not interested in doing research for the sake of it—we want to solve real problems, and that requires being responsive and adaptive.

Q5. Structural and Cultural Shifts Needed for Better Research Application

First and foremost, I believe every organization needs someone in-house with the background and perspective to support research and innovation. Coaches and staff are consumed with the demands of day-to-day operations—they don’t have the bandwidth to look long-term or dig into academic literature. That’s where we come in. We can step back, look at the big picture, and offer grounded insights. But to do that well, collaboration across departments is key. We need to break down silos and create shared ownership of applied research. Structurally, we need more translational work: research designed with end users in mind. Culturally, we need to foster curiosity and openness to experimentation. Just because something is new doesn’t mean it’s a threat—it could be the very thing that helps us grow. And finally, communication is critical. Many people struggle to access or understand research articles. We have to get better at sharing findings clearly, consistently, and in a way that invites others in. That’s how we build a culture of learning.

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Jeff Hintz, executive director of Sports tech HQ, a sports tech ecosystem builder based in the state of Indiana.

With over two decades of experience in the sports industry, Jeff has held leadership roles with the PGA of America and major events like the Ryder Cup. He was recognized as the 2016 Sportsperson of the Year by the Star Tribune for his work with the Ryder Cup in Minnesota. Prior to leading Sports Tech HQ, Hintz served as the Executive Director for the Minnesota PGA and the Director of Event Operations for the 2022 College Football Playoff. An Indianapolis native, he holds a degree in Sports Marketing & Management from Indiana University and an Executive MBA from the Quantic School of Business & Technology

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, Sports Tech HQ’s core mission, why any sports tech startups should consider opening an office in Indiana, his plans for the next 24 months. Lastly we discussed the areas of sports tech he is the most excited about, and some of his favorite sports tech startups that he has worked with.You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Jeff located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Jeff:

Q1. Can you please tell me about your background?

"I come from a background in major sports event management. I spent nearly a decade at the PGA of America leading championships including the Ryder Cup and PGA Championships. That was an incredible opportunity to work on some of the most iconic events in global sports and understand what it takes to execute at the highest level."

"From there, I transitioned into leading the 2020 Minneapolis Final Four as the Executive Director. That role really opened my eyes to the economic development potential of sports. It wasn’t just about the game—it was about legacy, community impact, and building long-term value for a city. That experience really stuck with me and helped shape the way I think about sports as a catalyst for innovation and growth."

Q2. Can you tell me about Sports Tech HQ and what your core mission is?

"Sports Tech HQ is an Indiana-based non-profit focused on cultivating, growing, and accelerating the sports tech ecosystem here in the state. We believe that Indiana, and Indianapolis in particular, has all the right ingredients to be a hub for sports innovation."

"Our core mission is to support innovation and entrepreneurship in sports technology by creating an environment where companies can thrive. That means connecting them with capital, mentorship, access to industry partners, and a rich pipeline of talent. We serve as a connector and amplifier—helping startups find their footing and scale, while also attracting companies from outside the region who want to be part of this growing ecosystem."

Q3. Why should any sports tech startups consider opening an office in Indiana?

"Indy has a rich legacy in sports—from hosting Final Fours and Super Bowls to being the home of the NCAA and USA Track & Field. That infrastructure and institutional knowledge creates a fertile ground for sports tech companies to test, grow, and succeed."

"What sets us apart is our accessibility. You’re not fighting for air time with a thousand other companies. You can actually get in the room with the right partners, whether it’s a college athletics department, a pro team, or a governing body. There’s a strong culture of collaboration here."

"And on top of that, Indiana's affordability and quality of life make it a great place to live and run a business. You get top-tier resources and connections without the high overhead costs of New York or San Francisco. Even our international partners appreciate that in Indiana, you can scale fast, yet still tap into elite sports and facilities".

Q4. What are your plans for the next 24 months?

"Over the next 24 months, our primary focus is on attracting more startups. We’d love to bring in 10 to 15 new sports tech companies, whether they’re homegrown or coming from outside the region."

"We’re also working on a physical innovation hub—an actual space where startups can collaborate, test their products, and engage directly with teams, leagues, and researchers. That kind of environment can be a real accelerant for early-stage companies."

"Beyond that, we’re building deeper relationships with college and pro teams, not just locally but globally. We want to help startups validate their products in live environments and create a launchpad for them to scale. Everything we do is about creating frictionless pathways for innovation to move from concept to deployment."

Q5. Which areas of sports tech are you the most excited about?

"I’m really excited about the wearables and data analytics space. The ability to collect real-time, actionable data on athlete performance, recovery, and injury prevention is game-changing. We’re just scratching the surface of how that kind of data can be used to optimize training, reduce injuries, and extend careers."

"Another area I’m watching closely is fan engagement—particularly how technology is evolving to meet fans where they are. Whether it’s through mobile platforms, immersive viewing experiences, or even the metaverse, the way fans interact with sports is changing fast. That creates a huge opportunity for innovation."

"Lastly, athlete health and wellness is becoming an increasingly important space. Mental health platforms, recovery tools, and AI-driven diagnostics are all areas where we’re seeing real momentum. These innovations aren’t just nice to have—they’re becoming essential to how athletes train and perform."

Q6. What sports tech startups are you excited about right now?

"We’re seeing some really exciting startups come through Indiana, and we’ve had the chance to work closely with a few of them."

"One I’d highlight is Ganance - a wearable‑tech startup that’s built a tiny, modular health‑tracker sensor you stick onto the back of any watch—so you can turn your favorite timepiece into a full‑blown smartwatch without giving up style".

"We’re also proud of DaVinci Wearables - a women’s health tech startup that is embedding AI‑driven sensors into everyday undergarments and athletic apparel to track menstrual cycles, hormonal fluctuations, and vital signs in real time, then delivering personalized, adaptive health and performance insights through their mobile app."

"Another one that stands out is RefReps—they’re tackling the shortage of sports officials by using virtual simulation training. That’s a real-world problem that tech is helping solve in a scalable way."

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Dr. Stefan Valdes, a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT), Board-Certified Sports Specialist (SCS), and Certified Strength & Conditioning Coach (CSCS).

A Miami native, he founded Movement Lab in 2019 to bridge the gap between rehab and performance. Dr. Stefan specializes in sports and orthopedic rehab, bringing experience from the collegiate level, private sector, and the NBA, where he previously served as a hybrid Physical Therapist and Strength Coach for the Oklahoma City Thunder and Detroit Pistons.

Pictures: Dr Stefan Valdes with Ben Simmons (LA Clippers) (Left) and Josh Hart (NY Knicks) (Right).

Today, he works with NBA (e.g. Josh Hart/NY Knicks), NFL, and other pro athletes during their off-season programs and consults with athletes and teams throughout the year. Through his partnership with Total Performance, Dr. Stefan utilizes cutting-edge Ultrasound Tissue Characterization (UTC) technology to monitor tendon health, helping prevent tendinopathy and guide recovery of those already dealing with it. His approach blends evidence-based physical therapy with elite performance training to help athletes not just recover — but perform at their highest level.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, his experienced working in the NBA (OKC, Detroit Pistons), and building his own practice in Miami, and working with NBA/NFL players during the off season. We also discussed the differences between NBA and NFL players, the lessons he learned from his time in the NBA, the trends he sees in the performance tech world, and what makes Josh Hart (NY Knicks), one of the NBA players he works with, such as a special player. You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Stefan located at the top of this blog post.

Of note, Dr Stefan Valdes will be speaking at our 2025 Upside US Sports Tech Summit on October 23 at a world’s class sports stadium in Sunrise FL.

Here are the best quotes from the interview with Stefan:

Q1. His Journey into Strength and Conditioning, NBA and NFL Work

“I was always fascinated by the human body and how it adapts under stress—both physically and mentally. That curiosity led me down the path of biomechanics in school, but it was when I got into strength and conditioning that I really saw the potential for impact. I started at the collegiate level, working with athletes across different sports, but the turning point came during an internship with an NFL team. That experience showed me how tightly performance, data, and recovery can be integrated. It was high stakes, fast learning. Eventually, I moved into the NBA, where the challenge became not just performance peaks, but maintaining output over 82 games and travel. That complexity—individualizing performance strategies while keeping durability in mind—is what really pulled me deeper into this space.”

Q2. The Differences Between NBA and NFL Players

“The physical demands are night and day. NFL players train for explosive power, short bursts of contact, and mass that can withstand hits. NBA players, on the other hand, live in the world of elasticity—it's about joint resilience, reactive strength, and being able to move efficiently over a much longer season. Mentally, there’s also a big gap. NFL guys tend to have a war-ready mindset—gearing up for one game a week that’s all-out. NBA athletes need to stay sharp and adapt quickly over months of continuous play and travel. You don’t have time to ‘peak’—you have to manage energy and performance like a marathon. Recovery in the NBA isn’t a luxury—it’s a fundamental part of the training system. If you don’t plan for it, you lose guys to soft-tissue injuries and burnout fast.”

Q3. The Lessons He learned from His Time in the NBA

“One of the biggest lessons I took from my time in the league is that longevity isn’t just about strength or VO2 max—it’s about rhythm. Sleep, circadian patterns, stress regulation—if those are off, everything else starts to slide. I saw it time and time again: players who traveled poorly or didn’t adapt to time zone shifts would see their reaction time and decision-making deteriorate. We had to go beyond just lifting or running protocols. You can’t just chase outputs—you need to build a system that protects the human behind the performance. It taught me to prioritize consistency and sustainability over highlight metrics.”

Q4. His Evolving Approach After Moving Into Private Practice

“Since starting my own practice, I’ve had the freedom to train athletes without the constraints of a game schedule or organizational structure, and that’s been a game changer. I can build blocks that actually follow adaptation science instead of rushing from one peak to another. I’ve also become more holistic in my methods. I’m integrating more neurocognitive tools, breathwork, and recovery education—especially with athletes coming off injury or dealing with chronic compensation patterns. The big shift for me is coaching the person first, the athlete second. That might sound simple, but when you’re in a team setting, it’s easy to fall into routines. Now, I listen more, customize more, and aim for long-term results over short-term fixes.”

Q5. The Performance Trends In Tech That He is Excited About

“I’m really excited about technologies that provide real-time neuromuscular feedback—things that let you adjust a lift, a sprint, or a rehab session on the fly based on how the nervous system is responding. We're also learning a lot more about perception and motor control. Tools that measure how vision, balance, and foot strike patterns interact can give you a much clearer picture of readiness or fatigue. And on the equipment side, I think low-load, high-stimulus approaches like flywheel training, blood flow restriction, and isometrics are going to be essential tools—not just for performance but for managing central nervous system load and recovery in-season.”

Q6. What Makes Josh Hart (NY Knicks) Special

“Josh has one of the most elite internal engines I’ve ever seen. When you look at his workload metrics—miles covered, high-effort plays, back-to-backs—most players would break down at that output. But he thrives on it. He brings a blue-collar work ethic into a high-skill league, and that’s a rare mix. He’s the type of athlete who doesn’t just show up for the big moments; he brings the same intensity to training, walkthroughs, and recovery. It’s not just his conditioning—it’s his consistency. That’s his superpower. You can rely on him every night because he does all the little things right behind the scenes.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing André Antonelli, CEO of Machina Sports, a leading AI agent platform for sports.

Machina Sports is an AI infrastructure platform designed specifically for the sports industry, enabling teams, media companies, and sportsbooks to build and deploy intelligent AI agents that automate content creation, fan engagement, and data analysis workflows. Their platform combines structured sports data (like match statistics) with unstructured sources (such as news and fan sentiment), processes it using large language models and vector databases, and outputs personalized, multi-language content — including match previews, quizzes, and betting insights. Through a developer-friendly SDK and customizable agent templates, Machina Sports empowers organizations to scale AI-driven content generation without needing to build and maintain complex infrastructure themselves.

Here is a video that explains how Machina Sports AI platform works:

Video: Machina Sports

Here is a screenshot of Machina Sports’s developer studio to create AI agents:

Here is a screenshot of Machina Sports’s analytics tool within developer studio to track its AI agents:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, his company and product, the benefits for sports organizations and teams to use his product. We also talked about his competitive advantage, business model, and his plans for the next 12 months.

Andre will be speaking on our AI based fan engagement panel at our Upside US Sports tech summit on October 23 at a World’s class sports stadium in Sunrise FL.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Andre located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Andre:

Q1. Tell me about your background.

"I'm a computer scientist by training — I studied in Brazil and was born there. Since 2017, I've been based in the San Francisco Bay Area working for major companies like Nestlé and Gilead, primarily focusing on emerging technologies. I’ve always been interested in how tech like AI, IoT, and even satellite data can be applied in impactful ways — whether it was for agriculture at Nestlé or innovation projects across industries. I also immersed myself in the startup ecosystem here, especially in the last few years. Toward the end of 2023, I started attending a lot of AI events and hackathons in San Francisco, and that’s actually where I met Fernando, our CTO. From there, we started collaborating on what would eventually become Machina Sports. So while I come from a technical background, my focus has always been at the intersection of tech, product, and innovation — and more recently, doing a lot of hands-on development with AI myself."

Q2. Tell me about your company and product.

"Machina Sports is an AI agent platform purpose-built for sports. What we’ve developed is a foundational infrastructure that allows sports organizations to easily build and deploy intelligent agents. These agents can process and synthesize structured data — like stats from matches or leagues — but also bring in unstructured data like news articles, fan comments, and sentiment from platforms like YouTube. We then use vector databases and large language models to contextualize that data and output a range of content, from match previews to real-time quizzes and fan engagement tools. So rather than having a one-size-fits-all AI product, we provide a flexible software development kit and open-source templates that customers can customize and integrate directly into their own apps, websites, or workflows. We’re really focused on enabling teams to scale and personalize content creation while reducing the operational lift."

Q3. What are the benefits for your customers to use your product?

"The biggest benefit is speed and simplicity. Instead of having to assemble a whole AI team, figure out how to maintain vector databases, and integrate with multiple real-time data sources, our customers can use our infrastructure to go much further, much faster. We’ve already mapped out a variety of use cases with early partners and have open-source agent templates that make it easy to get started. On top of that, because we’re packaging everything — from the retrieval pipeline to the real-time semantic enrichment — customers don’t have to worry about keeping up with the latest model updates or maintaining their own AI stack. That alone saves a huge amount of time and resources. And because our platform is designed for developers, it integrates seamlessly with their existing systems through APIs, giving them full control and flexibility."

Q4. How does DAZN use Machina Sports’ AI platform today?

“DAZN is one of our early customers. They have over a thousand live events each month. They used to manually create ‘run of show’ documents with quizzes and trivia. Now, our AI agents automate that process at scale. We integrated their existing data, added news and fan sentiment, and built a semantic layer on top of each match. The AI now generates quizzes and posts in 12 languages, one to two hours before each event. They still use a human in the loop for validation, but the content is created automatically.”

Q5. How does one sportsbook client use Machina Sports’ AI platform today?

“We have one sportsbook that we are working with — still private project — but we are working with them for SEO. Today, the cost to generating these articles with their editorial team is 30 to 60 dollars per article. And with our stack it's gonna be like less than a dollar. Right? So 98% savings. They also bring more information... integrated with the odds provider from this specific sportsbook. And now it's creating articles, match previews at scale for multiple languages for all the competitions they wanna track.”

“The AI goes through the event statistics, goes through the news, to the odds, and generates an article of match preview — t’s more for new users to explain how you should bet, what type of information you should look at when you’re making a betting decision.”

Q6. What do your customers like the most about your product?

"Most of our customers tell us they’re blown away by how easy it is to get started. A lot of them have tried to build something similar internally — like RAG systems or ways to integrate LLMs with sports statistics — and they hit walls quickly. When they try our platform, they immediately see how much faster and easier it is. We’ve made the technical part accessible, even if the platform is still early and leans technical today. That said, we’re working to bring more of the backend functionality into the frontend and moving toward a low-code or even no-code experience, so eventually more people on the business side — not just devs — can build and experiment without friction."

Q7. Tell me about competitive advantage and business model.

"Our biggest competitive advantage is that we’ve curated a full AI stack specifically for sports. Unlike generic AI platforms where you have to assemble all the pieces yourself, we provide a turnkey system — real-time data integration, semantic vector search, low latency embedding, all optimized for sports workflows. It’s like what Google did for web search or Airbnb did for travel — we’re doing that for sports AI agents. And what’s exciting is that AI in sports is not disruptive in a way that replaces people or events. It’s additive. The game still happens live, but we help enhance the fan experience and business operations by unlocking richer, more personalized content around it."

"In terms of business model, it’s usage-based — very similar to OpenAI. You pay per million tokens. For enterprise clients, we offer a monthly package where we also support custom integrations and agent development. For startups and smaller teams, we have a pay-as-you-go model — currently priced at $80 per million tokens — which includes the full infrastructure, not just the token cost. So it's flexible, scalable, and lets clients build on their terms."

Q8. What are your plans for the next 12 months?

"We’re currently raising our seed round, but we’re also laser-focused on product. The backend is solid — our SDK is live and developers are already using it to build agents via API. The next step is making the front-end experience more user-friendly. We’re working on visual workflow builders and interface upgrades that will let users drag and drop their way to creating powerful agents without needing to write code. On the technical side, we’re also training a sports-specific language model — a fine-tuned open-source LLM — to make our outputs even more accurate and relevant. That also ties into our work on embedding models, so our semantic search results will be sharper. And from a market standpoint, we’re already working in soccer, and expanding into NFL and NBA use cases as well. As long as we have access to data, our platform can support any sport."

Q9. What is the best way to reach out to you?

"You can reach me directly by email at andre@machina.gg — that’s usually the fastest way. I’m also very active on LinkedIn and respond to messages there. And of course, if you want to see the product in action, just head to our website and click on ‘Request a Demo.’ That’ll let you book a time and we’ll walk you through the process of how to build and deploy your first sports AI agent."

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Dr Richard Albright, CEO of Summus Medical Laser, a leading class 4 laser therapy device company. Richard was joined by Dr Phil Harrington, the Chief Medical Officer of the company.

Summus Medical Laser develops and manufactures Class IV laser therapy devices utilized across medical, dental, and veterinary fields. These devices deliver specific red and near-infrared wavelengths of laser light to induce therapeutic effects, aiming to support the body's natural recovery processes, alleviate pain, and reduce inflammation.

Key Features Include:

• Advanced Laser Technology: Utilizes specific red and near-infrared wavelengths to induce therapeutic effects.

• Non-Invasive Treatment: Offers a non-surgical solution for clinicians to treat pain, reduce inflammation, and aid healing.

• Versatile Applications: Designed for use in medical, dental, and veterinary practices.

• Patient-Centric Design: Focused on improving patient outcomes by providing effective and comfortable treatment options.

Picture: Summus laser 4 therapy devices (H1, Horizon)

Customers/Partners: Teams’ practitioners (MLB, NFL, NHL, MLS, NCAA), Medical professionals, dental practitioners, veterinarians, and healthcare providers seeking advanced therapeutic laser solutions.

Here is a video that explains how it works:

Here is a video showcasing Summus Medical laser’s H1 laser 2 therapy device:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on their respective backgrounds, their company and product, the benefits for sports organizations and teams to use their product. We also talked about their competitive advantage, business model, and their plans for the next 12 months.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Richard and Phil located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Richard and Phil:

Q1. Tell me about your background.

Dr. Richard Albright:“My name is Dr. Richard Albright, and I’m the CEO of Summus Medical Laser. Before founding the company, I was a practicing chiropractor. What really got me into the world of laser therapy was the realization that many of my chronic patients were returning again and again with the same complaints. I would adjust them, they’d leave feeling great, but the next day they were knocking on my door again. I felt like something was missing in the treatment protocol—I needed something that could provide deeper healing. That led me on a search to find a technology that could offer real tissue-level change, not just temporary relief. That search brought me to Class IV laser therapy, which at the time wasn’t even available in the United States. I ended up importing devices from abroad under a research exemption, opened a laser-only clinic, and was absolutely blown away by the results. It was a moment that completely changed the trajectory of my career.”

Dr. Phil Harrington:“I started my career by earning a degree in physics from Iowa State University, and then I spent several years as a high school math and physics teacher. Eventually, I decided to go into healthcare and attended Palmer College of Chiropractic. I ran a private practice for about a decade. Then, through a mutual friend, I met Dr. Albright, and we really hit it off. That was nearly 20 years ago, and since then I’ve been the Chief Medical Officer at Summus Medical Laser. One thing I’ve always emphasized is the importance of using the right parameters in laser therapy—wavelengths, dosage, power, treatment time—all of that matters tremendously for clinical results. And what’s exciting is that today, unlike 20 years ago, we now have solid scientific research that explains exactly how and why laser therapy works. That knowledge has helped us design better equipment and achieve better outcomes for patients and athletes.”

Q2. Tell me about your company and product.

Dr. Richard Albright:“Summus Medical Laser was officially launched in 2004, but the journey started years before that. Back in 2001 or so, I began researching laser therapy because I was frustrated with the limited tools available to me as a chiropractor. There were no Class IV lasers in the U.S. at the time, so I looked internationally and connected with a company in Italy. They couldn’t sell to me in the U.S., but I managed to find a technical loophole and brought the devices in under an IRB, or Investigational Review Board, exemption. I opened a second clinic—laser-only—and honestly, the results were nothing short of shocking. Patients responded so well that it made me reevaluate everything I thought I knew about treatment and healing.Over the years, we were distributors for a major European manufacturer, but in 2018 we decided it was time to control the entire process. We rebranded as Summus Medical Laser and transitioned into manufacturing our own devices. Since then, we’ve launched five new products and have a sixth on the way. We build every product through the lens of a healthcare practitioner. We know what doctors and trainers need, because we were in those roles ourselves.”

Q3. Tell me about the main use cases on how teams use your product.

Dr. Phil Harrington:“Our lasers are used across a wide range of sports medicine and rehabilitation scenarios. The protocols are built directly into the system, based on both clinical research and depth-of-penetration studies we’ve conducted. So whether you’re treating a large muscle group like the back or a smaller joint like the elbow, the device automatically calibrates the right dosage and wavelength settings.In professional sports, time is critical. For example, in Major League Baseball, if a player is hit by a pitch, the medical staff can take him straight to the dugout and begin treatment immediately with our portable units. That rapid response can significantly reduce swelling and pain, and allow the player to return to the game faster. We’ve also seen teams use the lasers on injuries like hamstring pulls, rotator cuff strains, and even blisters on pitchers’ fingers—which, as you can imagine, can be a game-changing issue.”

Q3. What are the benefits for the teams to use your product?

Dr. Phil Harrington:“The benefits for teams are tremendous. Let’s be honest—teams are investing tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars into their athletes. They can’t afford to have those players sitting out games or seasons. Laser therapy helps athletes recover faster and more effectively, which translates into more time on the field, better performance, and ultimately, more wins.One of the most memorable moments for me was when I ran into the head trainer for an Olympic soccer team the year after they won the gold medal. He walked up to me at a conference, shook my hand, and said, ‘Phil, your laser therapy system got our players back on the field faster than anything else we’ve ever used.’ That’s the kind of impact we’re having.And it’s important to note—this isn’t just about temporary pain relief. We’re actually promoting tissue healing, improving cellular function, and helping the body progress through the inflammatory process faster. That leads to higher-quality healing and more durable recoveries.”

Q4. What are the things that teams like about your product?

Dr. Richard Albright:“One of the biggest things teams love is the portability of our devices. We designed them to be incredibly compact and durable. They fit right into a Pelican case, so trainers can take them on the road, on the bus, even on the team plane. I know one pro team that told us they regularly treat players mid-flight. That kind of flexibility is a big deal in pro sports.We also offer LED light beds for full-body treatment, which are fantastic for recovery days when multiple athletes need attention. And this year we’re rolling out a fully robotic laser system for training rooms. It’ll allow athletic trainers to treat multiple players at once without having to manually operate the device. That’s a huge help when you’re dealing with a packed recovery room.”

Q5. What are your competitive advantages?

Dr. Richard Albright:“We are extremely differentiated from our competitors. One of the standout features is our use of four therapeutic wavelengths that can be delivered simultaneously or individually, depending on the clinical need. That gives trainers and doctors a high degree of control and precision.Our software interface is also incredibly intuitive. We always say, ‘It’s so easy, even a doctor can use it.’ On top of that, we designed our units to be truly portable, which isn’t the case with most competing systems.And then there’s our support—we have a world-class medical officer in Dr. Phil Harrington who’s always available to assist with questions and clinical guidance. And because we’re based here in the U.S., service and support are fast and efficient.”

Q5. What is your business model?

Dr. Richard Albright:“We offer several flexible models depending on what the team needs. They can purchase the unit outright as a capital expenditure, or they can go through a lease model with one of our financing partners. We also have a usage-based rental program—think of it as a ‘pay-as-you-go’ system—where teams pay a monthly fee based on the number of treatments. That’s especially helpful for teams that want to avoid pulling from their capital budget or who are testing the technology before a full rollout.”

Q6. Which teams are using your product today?

Dr. Richard Albright:“We’re proud to be used across all major professional sports leagues in the U.S.—MLB, NFL, NHL, MLS—and by many top-tier NCAA programs. Auburn University, for example, has been a strong partner. They’ve purchased multiple lasers and have them in nearly every training room across all their sports. JoJo Petone, their head athletic trainer before retiring, told us that part of his legacy was making sure every sport had access to our laser systems.”

Dr. Phil Harrington:“Yes, and we’re also working with teams in the NBA and several major European soccer teams. I was just in Europe visiting with top-tier Premier League organizations. I can’t disclose names due to confidentiality, but these are some of the most successful and recognizable clubs in the world—and they’re extremely excited about the results they’re seeing.”

Q7. What are your plans for the next 12 months?

Dr. Richard Albright:“We’ve got a major product launch coming up this summer—our fully robotic laser system. It’s been nearly four years in development. The system automates treatment with extreme precision, so teams and clinics can deliver consistent, high-quality care while freeing up their staff for other tasks.More broadly, our focus is on continuing to innovate and educate. There’s still a lot of awareness-building to do around laser therapy—not just our company, but the technology itself. We’re also actively expanding our presence in international markets and new sports leagues. The future is incredibly exciting.”

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This week we have the honor to interview a group of rehab and performance experts across the NFL and F1. We discussed neck training, their approach to neck training, the various modalities, best practices and trends that they are seeing in the market.

• Pieter Bulsink, the CEO of Maverick Training, a sports performance company focused on elite athletes in F1 and other sports. Pieter has worked with F1 drivers such as Max Verstappen at Red bull (F1).

• Kim Brouzes, an experienced Canadian sports therapist and CEO of Kinmetrix which built an advanced neck strengthening device collecting data.

• Ryan Juarez, the director of rehabilitation at the Commanders, an NFL team.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on neck training related topics especially:

• Why neck training has become a priority in your sport, and how their approach evolved over the past 5–10 years.

• How they assess neck strength and function in their athletes and if there are specific tools or protocols they rely on.

• What a typical neck training program looks like during the offseason vs. in-season for your athletes.

• If they have seen correlations between neck strength and reduced concussion or whiplash incidents.

• What innovative technologies or techniques are making an impact in neck training right now.

• What advice they would give to programs with limited resources who still want to prioritize neck health and performance.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Pieter, Kim and Ryan:

1. Why has neck training become a priority in your sport, and how has your approach evolved over the past 5–10 years?

Pieter Bulsink (F1):

“In motorsports, especially Formula One, everything starts at 300 kilometers an hour, and the G-forces on the neck are brutal. But what's often overlooked is the cognitive load that comes with it. When the neck fatigues, the entire sensory feedback loop—vision, vestibular input, motor coordination—begins to break down. That’s why our approach has evolved from just building neck strength to building strategic overcapacity. We don’t just want a strong neck—we want an unbreakable foundation for visual processing and cognitive function, especially under fatigue.”

Ryan Juarez (NFL):

“In American football, concussions have always been a concern, but about 10 to 15 years ago, awareness really exploded. Since then, everything has changed—from prevention to rehab, to return-to-play protocols. The evolution has been dramatic. Neck training used to be kind of generic—just another part of the strength program. But now it’s much more personalized and targeted. When I was in college football, we had a season with over 20 concussions. It became a crisis. Strength coaches were asking, ‘What more can I do?’ That’s when we really started to focus on neck training as a key piece of the puzzle.”

Kim Brouzes (Kinmetrix):

“To this day, we still don’t have a normative data pool for neck strength in athletes. People ask me all the time, ‘What’s a strong neck?’ And I have to say, ‘I honestly don’t know.’ We used to assume the big football guys with massive necks were the strongest, but that’s not always true. You can’t just look at size and assume strength. As we collect more data on the rest of the body, it’s becoming more clear that we need to apply the same data-driven approach to the neck.”

2. How do you assess neck strength and function in your athletes? Are there specific tools or protocols you rely on?

Pieter Bulsink:

“We have a testing protocol for our F1 drivers where strength is just the starting point—but function is king. We measure isometric holds in all planes, assess rotational control, and evaluate fatigue resilience through stress testing. One of our key differentiators is what we call ‘cognitive coupling.’ We put athletes through visual cognitive drills while they’re under neck fatigue to see how mental performance holds up. That’s where we find the real difference in high-level performance.”

Ryan Juarez:

“In football, neck strength assessments are usually tied to our concussion baseline and orthopedic physical exams. But I’ll be honest—it’s mostly subjective. We use simple isometric strength tests, goniometers for range of motion, or a 0 to 5 scale for manual resistance. It’s not very precise, which is why we’re always on the lookout for more objective tools that can help us be proactive, not just reactive.”

Kim Brouzes:

“For years, neck assessments were completely subjective—just a practitioner using their hands and saying, ‘Yeah, that feels like a 4 out of 5.’ Now with technologies like the Kinmetrix Arc device, we can finally collect objective data. We can assess strength isometrically and isokinetically through the full range of motion, and that opens the door for tracking progress, comparing athletes, and tailoring rehab or performance plans in a much more meaningful way.”

3. What does a typical neck training program look like during the offseason vs. in-season for your athletes?

Ryan Juarez:

“Right now we’re in our offseason, and our players lift four times a week—two upper body, two lower body. Neck training is built into the upper body sessions. Once we’re in-season, the load drops. Players are required to lift at least once a week, sometimes twice depending on the individual. We use four-way neck machines, manual resistance, bands, and sometimes med balls with rotational patterns. At one college I was at, we went from 21 concussions in one season down significantly after adding manual resistance neck work. The guys bought into it.”

Pieter Bulsink:

“Our F1 drivers travel constantly, so in the offseason we focus on building capacity through max strength, isometrics, resistance training, and fatigue protocols—especially emphasizing rotation, which is key for performance. We train 2–3 times a week using progressive overload. In-season, it’s all about maintenance and neuromuscular readiness. We microdose—short bursts, high intent, low volume—to keep them sharp without overloading them.”

Kim Brouzes:

“In-season training is all about maintenance. You don’t want to create tissue damage or inflammation that could compromise performance. The real adaptations—strength, resilience, tissue changes—happen in the offseason. That’s when you load and build.”

4. Have you seen any correlations between neck strength and reduced concussion or whiplash incidents?

Pieter Bulsink:

“We had one driver who crashed hard—into the tire wall, then spun into a concrete wall. Even with safety gear like the HANS device, it was a brutal hit. But he recovered incredibly fast, and I believe that was because of his neck strength. It's anecdotal, but it was very clear that his neck helped reduce the long-term effects.”

Ryan Juarez:

“In college football, I’ve seen seasons with 20 concussions drop dramatically the next year when we added more targeted neck training. It’s hard to say definitively that neck strength alone was responsible, but I believe it played a huge role. The guys who lift consistently and take their training seriously seem to recover faster from concussions, too.”

Kim Brouzes:

“Some studies suggest every pound of neck strength reduces concussion risk by about 5%, and increased extension strength can reduce concussion severity by 13%. But the quality of the research varies because the tools used were inconsistent—devices made in garages, tubing, etc. We need more standardized, accurate testing to really validate those findings. That said, the logic holds: a stronger neck means more control and less violent movement of the head during impact.”

5. What innovative technologies or techniques are making an impact in neck training right now?

Pieter Bulsink:

“For us, the game-changer has been integrating cognitive fatigue into our neck training. Our drivers don’t need balance—they’re strapped into a seat—but they do need razor-sharp focus under pressure. When cognitive fatigue sets in, motor control slows down. If your neck can’t stabilize that properly, everything else falls apart. That’s why we’re starting to explore connections between cognitive fatigue and concussion risk—it’s going to be a huge area of development.”

Kim Brouzes:

“At Kinmetrix, we’ve developed a device called the ARC that allows us to test neck strength isometrically and isokinetically through a full 72-degree range. Early in-house testing is showing improvements in spatial awareness, cervicogenic headaches, and reduced neck pain. But we’re not here to replace existing tools like Iron Neck or TopSpin 360—we’re here to complement them and provide the data to validate what’s working.”

6. What advice would you give to programs with limited resources who still want to prioritize neck health and performance?

Pieter Bulsink:

“Start simple, but don’t wing it. Use isometric holds in every direction—partner drills, resistance bands, towels, even neck harnesses if you have them. Most importantly, be consistent. Focus on endurance and movement control, not just brute strength. You don’t need fancy tools to build a smart, strategic neck training program.”

Ryan Juarez:

“The most important thing is just to start. There’s a lot of gear out there—from high-end devices to simple bands. You don’t need all of it. Focus on workflow. Athletes are busy—so find something that fits into their routine without adding friction. Efficiency is everything.”

Kim Brouzes:

“Understand the difference between harm and hurt. A lot of people don’t train their necks, so when they do, the soreness can scare them off. But that’s normal—just like training legs or shoulders. Be consistent, educate your athletes, and use simple tools like bands, towels, and manual resistance. That’s how we did it for decades, and it still works.”

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Cartan Capital is a private investment firm specializing in growth-oriented partnerships with businesses across a range of sectors, including technology, healthcare, and financial services. The firm takes a long-term, research-driven approach to investing, combining deep industry expertise with a commitment to operational excellence. Cartan Capital collaborates closely with management teams to support strategic expansion, innovation, and value creation, often providing both capital and advisory resources to help companies scale sustainably.

Here is a recap on their past investments:

Source: Cartan Capital, vendors, 2025

This week, we interviewed CiCi Bellis, Managing Partner of Cartan Capital a venture capital firm centered around seed and series a stage companies focusing on advances in human performance, sports tech and health tech.. We discussed her background, investment thesis, and what she is typically looking for when investing in women teams. She also gave us her advice to raise money and to start a career in sports investment.

Here is a summary of the best quotes of our interview with CiCi:

Q1. Can you please tell me about your background?

“Absolutely. As you mentioned, I was a former professional athlete. I played professional tennis on the WTA tour for about five years. My career ended a little bit early due to some injuries that I had. So I decided to stop playing as I was finishing my undergrad degree. At that point, I worked for an early-stage sports tech-focused venture firm. I absolutely loved it—I stayed there for about four years. I did my MBA while I was there, and then back in 2023, I started to get the itch to build something on my own. So I decided to leave that firm and launch Cartan Capital. We launched our first fund in 2023.”

Q2. Can you please tell me about your VC?

“Our first fund was a $10 million fund, focused on seed and Series A stage companies with a real emphasis on human performance. In January of this year, we launched our second fund, which we're targeting at $40 million fund. It’s the exact same thesis—we are still focused primarily on Series A, with some later-stage seed deals. We’re really excited about where we’re heading and the momentum we’re building.”

Q3. What is your sports tech investment philosophy?

“I think our thesis around sports is to try and keep it as broad as possible. We look at anything under the sports umbrella—it can be fan engagement solutions, data and analytics, sports performance, streaming, and more. We want to ride the tailwinds we’ve been seeing in the sports industry over the last five to ten years and focus on areas where we can really support companies through our network and expertise. Lately, we’ve been particularly excited about the next generation of sports viewership—things like in-stadium experiences, more interactive broadcasting, and how Gen Z wants to consume sports. We’re also really interested in data and analytics, especially when it comes to optimizing athlete performance and decision-making using AI.”

Q4. What are the things you are looking for when deciding to invest in a new startup?

“You mentioned a lot of great points—team, tech, go-to-market strategy, competitive advantage, and market size—and honestly, they’re all critical. For us, even at the early stage we focus on, team is still number one. Who is leading the company? Do they have deep industry expertise? Can we see them being leaders in the space? That’s a huge factor for us. Market opportunity is also massive—we’re in the business of supporting startups, but at the end of the day, we need to return capital to our LPs. So, we look closely at whether the market is large and growing. And yes, go-to-market strategy and business model matter a lot, too, but if you don’t have the right team and market, it’s tough to get behind the rest.”

Q5. What are the sports tech sectors you are most excited about?

“Firstly, we’re really excited about what the next generation of sports viewership looks like. So that can be a very broad category—from in-stadium experiences to streaming experiences, to more interactive kind of broadcasting, things like that. We’re excited about that just because we know that Gen Z and below are going to be the ones streaming sports in the near future. They’re going to be the majority of people watching sports. So, how do they want to consume it? We’re really focused on that area.”

“I would say we’re also really interested still in data and analytics within sports—so trying to create better schedules for athletes using data, potentially AI as well… trying to gather as much data as we can from performance to make better, more informed decisions going forward.”

Q6. Which sports tech startups you have invested in so far?

“On the sports side we have a few investments. So, firstly a company called AI.io—they’re in the data and analytics space for scouting, in addition to just extracting more data from performance. Also on the sports side, we invested into a company in the fan engagement space called Edge Sound Research, which we’re really excited about. And then there’s another one in the fan engagement space called Proto. They have a lot of applications in sports along with health as well. We also have another one that touches sports in a way, but that is more on the health side, called Springbok Analytics. So we have a good amount of investments that are solely sports related, but a lot that is touching on the sports health or other industries as well.”

Q7. What advice would you give to anyone looking to start a career in sports tech investment?

“That’s a great question. I didn’t know much about sports tech investing when I first started, and I think that’s encouraging for people trying to break into the space. You don’t necessarily need to have prior experience—if you can land an internship and prove your worth, that’s often the best way in. That’s exactly how I started. It’s such a fun and dynamic industry, especially if you come from a sports background like I did. There’s so much to learn, and if you’re willing to put in the hard work, you can definitely find your path, even if you feel like you’re starting from scratch.”

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This week we have the honor to interview again a group of sports performance executives to talk about the latest trends in the world of sports performance and rehabilitation.

• Jason Han, the former head of rehabilitation at LAFC (MLS). Jason is also the head of business development in North America at OneBase health.

• Michael Messer, the head of rehabilitation at Nashville SC (MLS).

• Chris Wolbert, the director of rehabilitation at Sporting KC (MLS).

• Derek Lawrance, the Assistant Athletic trainer of the U.S. Men’s Soccer National soccer team.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

• How advances in sports science changed the way teams approach training and load management.

• The notable trends in common injuries in professional soccer, and how teams are addressing them.

• The most common sleep-related issues among professional soccer players, and how teams are addressing them.

• Experimental cutting-edge rehab techniques that teams are testing right now.

• How teams are preparing for these conditions extreme heat expected at the 2026 World Cup and if there are adjustments being made to training schedules, hydration strategies, or match-day protocols.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Michael, Derek, Chris, and Jason:

Q1: How have advances in sports science changed the way teams approach training and load management?

Mike Messer (Nashville SC):

“Load management has always been part of training, but the evolution of sports science has made it more precise. Now we’re able to quantify load from multiple angles—volume, intensity, change of direction—using GPS, heart rate, even technical data. It allows us to build sessions that mirror match demands and return-to-play goals more accurately. Earlier in my career, I had to rely on session RPE and duration alone. Now, with all these tools, our decision-making is more refined, and the athlete’s transition back to performance is better supported.”

Jason Han (formerly LAFC):

“It’s become a blend of art and science. The numbers help, but you still have to read the athlete, know their baseline, their body language, even their personality. What an RPE of 8 means for one guy might be a 5 for another. When we started getting internal and external load data in MLS, it allowed us to be more strategic with training and rehab. But it doesn’t replace experience or intuition—it complements it. That human piece is just as important as the technology.”

Chris Wolbert (Sporting KC):

“The data is only as useful as the environment you’re in. If the head coach doesn’t buy in, it doesn’t matter how sophisticated your systems are. Fortunately, I’ve worked with coaches like Peter Vermes and now Kerry who understand the value of data and apply it within their philosophy. It creates alignment across departments. That alignment is where sports science can really thrive and influence daily decision-making, especially around training loads and return-to-play progression.”

Q2: Have there been notable trends in common injuries in pro soccer, and how are teams addressing them?

Chris Wolbert:

“We’re still seeing familiar injuries—hamstrings, groins, quads, calves—but the severity of those soft tissue injuries has increased. We’re also seeing more cartilage issues than before. Part of that is due to how fast and powerful today’s players are. The body’s under more load, more often, and that cumulative stress shows up in injury data. That’s where load monitoring and recovery strategies become even more essential.”

Jason Han:

“The packed schedule is a big factor. The body only has so much capacity. Even if you load manage perfectly, the reality is, the schedule is what it is. So we zoom out—look at the whole chain, not just the injured muscle. A hamstring issue might be related to hip stiffness or something contralateral. And we’re integrating regenerative modalities—shockwave, EMTT, hyperbaric oxygen therapy. These show potential, but they need more research, especially in elite, high-load settings like ours.”

Derek Lawrance:

“What’s interesting is, even with all the investment in hamstring prevention, those injuries are still climbing. That says a lot. The context keeps shifting—MLS added more games, more competitions, longer playoffs. Players are being asked to do more, and we’re constantly reacting to new demands. It’s hard to stay ahead when the workload grows every season. We’re solving yesterday’s problems while trying to meet today’s realities.”

Q3: What are the most common sleep-related issues among pro soccer players, and how are teams addressing them?

Chris Wolbert:

“Post-game sleep is the most common issue. Almost every player struggles to sleep after a night game. They’re wired from the adrenaline, or sometimes stimulants. Melatonin and sleep aids are common, but a lot of guys try to ‘make up’ for it with long naps the next day. That throws off their circadian rhythm even more. Our role is to educate them—keep naps short, manage caffeine, understand how sleep architecture works. It’s about small habits that make a big difference.”

Derek Lawrance:

“People always point to adrenaline, but the unspoken factor is caffeine. Guys take caffeine pills or energy drinks right before games—200 mg at 7 or 8 PM—and then they wonder why they’re staring at the ceiling at 3 AM. Everyone metabolizes caffeine differently, so the stimulation lasts longer for some than others. That messes up sleep, and if they’re in the facility for recovery the next morning, they’re doing it on 3 hours of rest. It’s a cycle we’re trying to break with better planning and education.”

Michael Messer:

“We’ve been exploring whether we should shift training later the day after a game or adjust off days to help guys recover better. But it’s not simple. Some players didn’t even play, some have kids waking them up early, others went out to blow off steam. Everyone’s schedule and lifestyle are different. Sleep recovery, like load management, has to be individualized. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach.”

Q4: Are there any experimental or cutting-edge rehab techniques that teams are testing right now?

Chris Wolbert:

“I’m exploring virtual and augmented reality applications in rehab. The idea is to simulate tactical scenarios and decision-making for players in long-term recovery, keeping their mental sharpness intact. It’s still early, and I haven’t implemented it yet, but there’s some interesting early feedback from the UK. I think it could become part of holistic recovery in the near future.”

Jason Han:

“I’ve been using EMTT—Extra Corporeal Magnetotransduction Therapy—and combining it with shockwave therapy. It’s non-invasive and powerful. When done correctly, studies suggest it boosts healing outcomes by 15 to 25 percent. For chronic conditions or cases where we want to avoid injections or surgery, it’s a promising tool. In elite sport, where recovery time is everything, it offers another layer to our toolkit.”

Michael Messer:

“One thing I’ve been trying is using Catapult’s change of direction metrics—specifically IMA data—to detect imbalances during rehab. For example, if an athlete cuts more aggressively to one side post-injury, that asymmetry shows up in the data. It’s a way to ‘invisibly’ monitor tissue recovery in real-time without pulling them from a session. That kind of feedback helps us refine the rehab and track readiness to return.”

Q5: With extreme heat expected at the 2026 World Cup, how are teams preparing? Are there changes to training schedules, hydration strategies, or match-day protocols?

Derek Lawrance:

“A lot of the games will be in climate-controlled stadiums, but that doesn’t eliminate the need to prepare. In Qatar, we trained in 90+ degrees to help players acclimate. Hydration breaks were frequent, and we shifted our entire schedule to match 10 PM kickoff times. Managing circadian rhythm, load, and hydration all at once becomes the puzzle. You can’t just avoid the heat—you need a strategy to adapt to it before the tournament starts.”

Michael Messer:

“In MLS, we don’t get a buildup. If Seattle flies to Orlando for a game, you’ve got one or two days to adapt. So hydration and cooling strategies are key. We use individualized sweat profiles to tailor hydration plans, and we’ve looked into newer cooling devices like AVA, which cools the extremities quickly and helps regulate body temp faster than towels or ice alone. It’s about being prepared, even when conditions change game to game.”

Jason Han:

“Hydration starts with education. We used systems like Intake Health that gave players instant feedback on hydration status—if they were in the red or green. It became a talking point. Some players are stubborn—they’ll drink mate all day and think they’re fine. But once you show them the data, it creates buy-in. If they’re professionals, they’ll respond to information that helps them perform better.”

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This week we had the honor to interview a group of ATP/WTA sports performance experts in pro tennis.

• Al Murphy, senior S&C coach at Tennis Australia. Al works with tennis players such as Rinky Hijikata, Emerson Jones and Aleks Vukic. He is also the head of sports science at Tennis Australia.

• Zack Evenden, an experienced performance coach. Zack has worked with top tennis players like Frances Tiafoe, and Michael Mmoh.

• Abdul Sillah, an experienced performance coach. Abdul has worked with top players such as Serena Wiliams, and Naomi Osaka.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Abdul, Zack and Al located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with them:

1. Performance Training

Q: What are key underappreciated elements in tennis training, and how has it evolved?

Zack Evenden:

“One of the things that screams out to me is how overlooked the warmup still is. I’ve seen so many players—ranked 100 to 200—just rush through it, expecting a five-minute warmup or the first few games of a match to get them ready. But when you look at the top 50 players, it’s religious. They wake up early, maybe do Pilates, then a mobility session, then warm up before practice and again before the match. It’s layered. And the warmup isn’t just about injury prevention—it’s conditioning, mental prep, prehab, even performance. Yet outside the top tier, it’s often treated like an afterthought.”

Al Murphy:

“A lot of people talk about strength training now, and that’s great because it wasn’t always mainstream in tennis. But where I think we’re still lagging is in making that training individualized and aligned with a player’s game style. If your player needs to get into specific joint positions because of how they hit or move, your training needs to reflect that. I also think we undervalue reaction time and neural processing—how the brain links to movement and spatial awareness. That stuff can be game-changing if you integrate it right.”

Abdul Sillah:

“If your warmup is done in 15 minutes, something’s wrong. You need 45 minutes to an hour minimum. Players don’t realize—rehab means something went wrong. You prevent rehab through all those 'boring' things: prehab, mobility, tissue prep. The warmup is your first defense. The elite athletes? They live in this space. It’s not optional for them.”

2. Mental Preparation

Q: What are the latest mental resilience techniques in tennis?

Abdul Sillah:

“Tennis is one of the most mentally demanding sports—90% of it is mental. I create unpredictable scenarios, like waking athletes up at 2 a.m. during camp to train. Not because I want to torture them, but because I need them to be comfortable with the unexpected. If they’ve already trained under those kinds of stressors—sleep deprivation, emotional discomfort—then when they’re down two sets or facing a hostile crowd, it’s not new. They’ve already had to find focus and composure in chaos.”

Zack Evenden:

“Mental toughness doesn’t magically show up on match day. You have to train it. That means doing things your body and brain don’t want to do, like waking up at 6 a.m. for an ice bath. When you’re down in the third set and your body is screaming to slow down, that mental conditioning kicks in. And discipline—real discipline—is doing the small, uncomfortable things every day, not just flipping a switch when the match starts.”

Al Murphy: