NCAA

JIMBO FISHERS SECRET WEAPON FOR CHAMP FSU? IT COMES FROM AUSTRALIA
CBS Sports
Jimbo Fisher has a strange way of getting to the point.
The Florida State coach has embraced a sports science that he directly credits for last seasons national
championship. It is both mysterious and effective. Its also from Australia.
That gets Fisher going on our nations global athletic positioning.
Heres my philosophy in America, the coach began. Were spoiled. We have the largest gene pool of athletes
in the world. When one breaks down we say, Go get another one.
The toy isnt broke, dont fix it. All these other countries and all these other sports, how do they beat us and
dont have the caliber of athlete?
Theyre ahead in training.
Otherwise, Fisher is gushing because as far as he is concerned Florida State is catching up in its own corner of
the world. The coach has no problem directly attributing some of the Seminoles 2013 success to Catapult GPS.
The physiological/biological player monitoring system from Down Under is blowing up in the NFL and college.
Fisher said the Noles suffered 88 percent less soft-tissue injuries last season using Catapult. Thats less pulls,
less tears, more front-line players on the field.
Catapult is more than happy to ride the wave of hype. It is the hip player development tool of the moment.
WHAT IS CATAPULT?
Catapult is aphysiological/biological monitoring device that allows coaches and trainers to know who is
overworked and economize practice by removing the guesswork with scientific performance management. It
compares athletes, sessions, weeks and seasons and stops the guessing.
Those who use it, though, arent exactly sharing. Half of Catapults 14 NFL clients cant be mentioned
according to Gary McCoy, one of the companys sports scientists. The companys own website calls it The
Most Used Secret In Sport.
Catapult counts five college football programs that have at least played in a BCS bowl since 2010 as clients.
FSU, Oregon and LSU have played for national championships since that year. Baylor and Central Florida
played in last seasons Fiesta Bowl.
It is to strength and conditioning, said fellow convert Tommy Moffitt, the LSU strength coach, what the
barbell was 40 or 50 years ago.
Simply put, Catapult compiles live data relating to exertion and performance. Players wear a sports bro -- it
resembles a female sports bra -- that contains a GPS monitor.
The technology tracks a thousand data points a second. If FSU receiver Rashad Greene isnt feeling it one day
in practice, it may be because he is worn down, not because he is dogging it. Based on that information, coaches
wont push him, theyll understand him.
The technology is so new -- Fisher says misunderstood -- the NCAA does not allow it to be utilized in games.
Catapult is an interesting concept, NCAA chief medical officer Brian Hainline wrote in an email. We are
awaiting better scientific validation.
To that Fisher almost literally turns up his nose. He wants to be able to use the in-game technology now.
They say its a competitive advantage, Fisher said. They dont know enough about it.
While the system is growing popular among trainers, sports scientists and coaches in the know, theres that
secrecy factor. Teams using it are not exactly sharing information. Maybe thats the football culture. Maybe its
because the technology is so revolutionary none of them have figured it out yet.
Perhaps both.
Its against everything as a football coach I ever believed, Fisher said.
Asked if he allows other schools to come in to study Catapult, Fisher suddenly got quiet. Ushering two reporters
into a hotel conference room, he said, I think its a huge advantage for us. I dont even care if I told yall. Yall
figured it out.
The concept would be less interesting if FSU hadnt beaten Auburn. Kentucky is heavily involved with
Catapult. So is Cal. The term cutting-edge hasnt been attached to either programs football lately.
Were going to win football games, Kentucky high performance coach Erik Korem said. [But] just because
we have a performance program doesnt mean youre going to win the national championship.
It does mean Catapult gains credibility when Jimbo Fisher is continually pumping it.
Football tends to be linear, conservative. Free thinking isnt much tolerated. More or less everybody does the
same drills, the same way.
Catapult takes into account individuals. Each player has a dashboard that shows his max load. If a player
gets to -- or surpasses -- that number, Fisher and his cadre of analysts know enough to back off.
The coach said that has earned him a new level respect among the players.
The trust factor between us has grown tremendously, he said.
Fisher has no problem being the lead college apostle for Catapult. It was developed by the Australian Institute
of Sport in the late 1990s. It is still in the process of making it to these shores.
I was the first one to ever do it, Fisher crowed. Were trying to keep an attitude of domination.
American football is the perfect incubator for marketing McCoys product. He calls our sport the duckbill
platypus of athletics.
This is the only place in the world it is found, the 49-year old senior sports scientist said. Theyve [FSU]
done a better job than anybody with the utilization. They took a year and analyzed everything.
The possibilities are so profound that this story suggests the technology could convince the NFL Players
Association an 18-game NFL season is viable.
For the same reasons might some day Catapult help convince the college playoff police that an eight-team
bracket makes sense?
Two years ago, Korem was a 31-year strength and conditioning whiz at FSU. Kentucky head coach Mark
Stoops immediately snapped up Korem when the former FSU defensive coordinator went to the Wildcats in
2012.
When they arrived at Kentucky there wasnt a player who ran 20 mph. Soon after -- partially because of
Catapult -- the skill players alone were averaging 21.7 mph.
Thats an extra 2 feet per second.
Korems Kentucky title probably makes him the only high performance coach in college athletics. A couple
of years ago he traveled with friend and New York Giants strength coach Joe Danos to Australia. His eyes were
opened.
Were behind the times, Korem said of the US. The old Soviets, the reason they were kicking our teeth in,
they didnt have better athletes. They were better at everything else.
Korem agreed with his old boss, Jimbo:
If youre an elite, big-time football school and Player A doesnt work out, roll Player B in. In a country like
Australia, they dont have all these great athletes. They maximize what they have.
Catapult was first used in Australian rules football, a sport McCoy calls the most physiologically demanding
on the planet.
We were able to manage this thing called fatigue, McCoy said.
It is all a bit unconventional. If players can get past the whole sports bro thing, they become finely tuned test
subjects. Safer. Better prepared. On the FSU sideline are analysts with laptops recording their information,
managing Excel spreadsheets on each player.
Its on my desk every morning, Fisher said.
Theres the ultimate selling point: Catapult makes it less likely a player will be pushed to the point of injury --
or worse.
I think it will take a long time for everybody to get to this position, Korem said. Its not just buying
technology, its knowing how to leverage it.
Its really based on your imagination, Moffitt said.
A national championship may have grown out of the sweltering heat of last years summer drills. There they
were, a bunch of sweating Seminoles running around in sports bros. They were monitored by coaches, trainers
and laptops.
They were hot but they werent overheated.
Know how many IVs we gave in August last year? Fisher boasted one more time. One.


BEARS ON CUTTING EDGE WITH NEW TECHNOLOGY
Baylor Bears
Sitting behind a desk at a computer, going through mind-numbing pages of data, doesnt sound like the work of
a strength and conditioning coach.
But as director of Baylor Athletics new Applied Performance department, thats exactly what Andrew Althoff
will be doing.
Based off the European and Australian High Performance model thats been used more internationally with
rugby and soccer, Applied Performance tries to monitor the additional stressors of a college setting and how
they affect athletic performance.
Everything that stresses a student-athlete - physical, psychological or social - we want to make sure were
aware of it, and find ways to assess that, to make sure were putting the athlete as a whole in a great position to
be successful, said Althoff, who was formerly an Associate Director of Athletic Performance.
We felt Applied Performance was a more applicable title for us, because were trying to find out whats going
on with these guys, how we can best manage these stressors, and apply it to performance.
While some of the technology has begun creeping into the U.S. with NBA and NFL teams, Baylor is definitely
on the cutting edge in the collegiate world.
We spent a lot of time talking to people, both state-side and internationally, about what theyre doing, what
they believe in, Althoff said, and then taking it to our setting, with our individual athletes and our facilities
and resources, and how we can structure it where it works best for us.
The idea has been on the radar for more than two years, but Baylor began the process last summer with
wellness monitoring of its football student-athletes through self-reporting questionnaires that cover everything
from sleep and nutrition to academic and emotional stress.
The first thing is weve got to have great relationships with our student-athletes, Althoff said. And that starts
out with communication with those guys on a daily basis. (In the questionnaires), theyll tell us how much sleep
theyve had, how good was their sleep, how good was their nutrition, how stressed out they are, how sore they
are, where theyre sore. Then, we take all that information . . . and as the data stacks up, we look for trends.
Through the wellness monitoring, student-athletes can get advice on the areas where they need to improve to
produce the maximum performance in competitions.
Whereas your performance might be very closely related to your nutrition, somebody elses might be related to
how much sleep theyre getting, Althoff said. So, were able to individualize. Now, we can be specific and
say, `I want you to work on this one habit. Yeah, there are a bunch of things we can do, but I want you to
specifically work on this habit.
That can be as simple as taking 10 or 20 minutes a day to just take a nice, relaxing nap, kind of kick your feet
up and calm everything down, Althoff said.
Another aspect of Applied Performance that was phased in during football training camp in August 2013 was
the Catapult GPS devices that monitor how fast and far athletes are traveling during practice and training.
The small monitors, which look like mini walkie-talkies, are placed in pouches and strapped to the back of a
players shoulder pads during a football practice. And the GPS units monitor max speeds, changes of direction
and distance covered.
Say you went 3,000 yards at practice. Well, 200 of those yards were 90-plus percent of your top velocity,
Althoff said. And then, this many yards were between 75 percent. So, we can break it down into velocity
ranges.
Heres where it gets difficult, particularly as you try to take this department-wide to all the other sports. The
Catapult GPS monitoring spits out more than 400 lines of data per athlete, per practice, Althoff said.
Really, one of the only issues with this is too much information, he said. My biggest job is to filter whats
important, and then give tangible action steps based off of the data that I found, so that its not just a bunch of
information.
Applied Performance also uses heart-rate and Omegawave monitoring, which uses sensors to assess how an
athletes body is responding to previous exertion while providing insights to optimize the next training session.
Just last week, Omegawave was recognized by UK-based Sports Technology Awards as the developer of the
Best Performance Technology for Elite Athletes.
We can use the Catapult GPS and what we do here in the weight room to measure the external lode, Althoff
said, and then we can use the Omegawave to measure the internal response, or how the bodys adapting to the
stress that were applying to it.
Through Project 1, a collaboration model thats attracted attention and approval from the NCAA office, there
are also monthly meetings with representatives from other departments that have direct influences on student-
athletes - including academic services, compliance, student life and spiritual life.
We all work together, and we all have the same goals, Althoff said. We all want to win. So, how can we
work together to make sure were doing that? I think it all starts with communication.
Down the road, as the program transitions to department-wide, there will be other things added like sleep
monitoring. The athletes tell us how much they slept and how good it is, but now well have actual numbers
and specific data that we can correlate to performance, Althoff said.
Without the support of Baylor Director of Athletics Ian McCaw, football head coach Art Briles and Kaz Kazadi,
Assistant Athletic Director for Athletic Performance, Althoff said the Applied Performance department
wouldnt have got off the ground.
Their leadership and vision to understand that this is the next thing, and lets get out on the front and be trend-
setters and be the standard, he said. It really is fun to work with Coach Kaz and the rest of the staff. There are
no egos. Its just a bunch of humble people, rolling up their sleeves and going to work and making sure we can
protect the student-athletes and do whatever we can to put them in a great position to succeed.


TRACKING TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTIONIZES ATHLETE TRAINING
Athletic Business
As finely tuned as strength and conditioning coaches would like todays athletes to be, much of performance
training to date has been based more on time-honored norms than real science.
Catapults tracking device is capable of providing upwards of 100 data points per second. (Photos courtesy of
Catapult USA)
As finely tuned as strength and conditioning coaches would like todays athletes to be, much of performance
training to date has been based more on time-honored norms than real science. Enter the new era of sports
analytics, fueled by advances in athlete tracking technology.
Imagine driving a Formula One vehicle and not having a dashboard to know how that engine is performing,
says Gary McCoy, applied sports scientist for Catapult USA, whose Australian-based parent company markets
the athlete monitoring system that has gained unparalleled traction this year in American professional and
collegiate sports. Its the same with athletes. If you dont have the information readily available, its very
difficult to know what on-field performance truly looks like. And thats really what we provide through our
technology - a dashboard that provides insight into athlete performance.
A computer-mouse-sized device weighing little more than an ounce fits into the back of a jersey, a separate
undergarment or even shoulder pads at the base of the athletes neck. The device employs gyroscopes,
accelerometers, magnetometers and GPS systems to provide upwards of 100 data points per second as to whats
happening - as McCoy puts it - onboard the athlete. Its technology born of the Australian Institute of Sport
and now approaching two decades in development and application.
One of the more liberating measures that comes of this is something that we call player load, McCoy says.
We measure all the different movements an athlete makes in practice - acceleration, deceleration, jumps,
changes of direction. All those metrics are scored as a single number, so a strength and conditioning coach or a
football coach can turn around and say, Gee, that was a tough practice, or ask, Was it an easy practice? We
actually take the subjectivity out.
From there, coaches can prescribe a data-driven action plan.
The problem is that strength coaches are designing training programs for football and other sports with no
concept of what players are actually doing on the field, says Erik Korem, high performance coach at the
University of Kentucky, the only Southeastern Conference school to employ that specific job title. Most dont
start with a question: What do they do? They start with solutions: Were going to do these running drills.
Were going to lift these types of weights. What happens is you start developing an inefficient athlete whos
not prepared to physically perform what hes asked to perform on the field. By collecting this data, I was able to
start saying, Okay, coach, this is what a quarterback actually does, and heres how were going to train him to
match the demands of the game.
Such information allows for performance comparisons among athletes, but also indicates when recovery time is
necessary for each individual. We break down the physiological costs of deceleration and those really hard
changes of direction, McCoy says. Just like the shock absorbers in a car, they take a toll on the body, and all
of that load bearing on the musculoskeletal system answers the Was it a hard practice? question and provides a
sense of what recovery someone has to have.
This is seen as critical to preventing athlete injury and perhaps even extending playing careers. Are we
exceeding game parameters in practice? Are we doing too much? Are we doing too little? asks Korem, who
gleans answers to such questions from Catapults software algorithms. Then we can start actually affecting
football, which is what we want to do. We want to affect the way that we practice, the way that we train, so that
were not underdoing it or overdoing it, which can lead to injuries. It can also lead to guys not being able to
perform at their optimum on game day, and instead leave their best performances on a Tuesday practice field.
Return-to-play considerations following injury become less subjective, as well. Catapult monitored the
rehabilitation of a prominent basketball player who had sustained a left ACL injury. Athletic trainers thought
the athlete was ready to return, but the data revealed a 30 percent deficit in his ability to move to his right. If
they had put him back out on the floor, the opportunity for secondary injury would have been magnified,
McCoy contends.
Some athlete weaknesses are there all along. McCoy visited an NFL training camp this summer and noticed a
significant discrepancy in the lateral movement of the teams center. Eighty percent of his moves were in one
direction and only 20 percent of his moves were to the other direction, McCoy recalls. And a lot of his injury
history was built around the gross asymmetry that this athlete has developed. Because a functional view of the
athletes asymmetry is now available, the team is starting to change the way it trains that individual.
Tactics can also be altered. That same NFL team had a wide receiver whose data indicated that he could
accelerate three times as fast to his right compared to his left. Says McCoy, The head coach looked at me and
goes, Weve been lining him up on the wrong side of the field for five years.
McCoy points out that the NBA and NFL have been the most willing adaptors of the new sports science.
American football teams invest $100,000 in the Catapult system, on average, with basketballs smaller rosters
costing less. Monthly per-device subscriptions are now available, as well.
At least eight NBA teams will be using the Catapult device this year, and the NFL sent a memo to teams Aug. 1
stating that the league will require players to wear non-obtrusive tracking devices in select practices and
games and that likely all players will be required to wear them at some point over the next few seasons.
(UKs Korem predicts athlete tracking will be league-wide in the NFL within two years.) As Catapult cofounder
Shaun Holthouse told Forbes in May, We want to feel we have fundamentally changed elite sport for the
better.
Professional baseball, meanwhile, appears to be well behind the curve. Theres no sport science in baseball
whatsoever. The old adage Weve always done it this way prevails, says McCoy, providing one example:
So many Major League Baseball teams have their pitchers perform squats. They think squats make the legs
strong, and the legs need to be strong if youre going to pitch. The actual sequence of the squat is detrimental to
a pitchers stride length, and stride length and torso rotation equal velocity. Theres no reason a pitcher should
ever do a squat in his entire life.
For pitching coaches who want to toss the old methodology, McCoy offers this advice: Change your culture.
You have to have a sports science culture, not a strength and conditioning culture.
So far, the United States as a whole has lagged behind much of the world in terms of making that culture
change. As of this writing, Catapults website listed 42 U.S. clients (including 13 NCAA teams), compared to
72 in Australia and 66 in the United Kingdom. The website of GPSports, an athlete-tracking competitor, lists
one American client (Baylor University) and 106 outside the U.S. There are 300 million people in this country,
and when one athlete falls down, theres another guy just as good ready to go behind him, McCoy says. That
doesnt occur internationally, especially in Australia, with such a small population. If we find an athlete whos
good enough, we have to do everything we can to support him and keep him at that highest level possible. The
U.S. appears poised to make an attitude adjustment. The day AB spoke to McCoy, he had received calls from
two NFL teams, one NBA team and four NCAA Division I football programs.
Kentuckys program, which adopted athlete tracking upon Korems arrival last December, is still seasons away
from reaping the technologys full benefits on the field, the coach admits. But the Wildcats are no longer
training blindfolded. The idea of having periodized training programs in which everything is laid out for a full
year is dead, Korem says. You have to have a plan, then based off of the internal and the external costs of
training you have to adapt that plan on a daily basis. Until we get to that point as a U.S. culture, were going to
continue to see the things that plague us - athletes getting injured, reduced professional careers, great high
school athletes who disappear at the college level. Here at UK, we want to make sure the athletes we bring in
are developed to their maximum potential - whatever that potential is.
Player monitoring is increasingly seen as essential to optimizing performance and reducing injury risk. (Photo
courtesy of the University of Kentucky)
Cars come equipped with an engine temperature gauge, but the ability to measure whether or not an athlete is
overheating is something thats still on the Catapult drawing board, according to Catapult USA applied sports
scientist Gary McCoy, who says surface temperature is an insufficient indicator and gathering core temperature
data is more invasive and thus impractical. (At least one rival product, the Zephyr PMS Training ECHO,
estimates core temperature.) For now, the Catapult dashboard can integrate Polar heart rate monitoring data,
provided the athlete is wearing a Polar T31 transmitter. Says McCoy, Heart rate is a good tachometer of whats
going on with the metabolic system and the cardiovascular system.
Can so much information be considered too much? McCoy points to one warm-weather NFL team that opts not
to monitor players heart rates. Its as though they feel the more information on those athletes thats being
exposed, the more liability shifts to the team itself, the strength and conditioning staff and those who are
monitoring the players, McCoy says. Wow! Okay. Player safety isnt the number-one factor thats involved
here; its potential legal exposure.
One of the biggest surprises for University of Kentucky high performance coach Erik Korem when he began
tracking athlete data during his days at Florida State is just how little football players actually work during
games. A significant portion of the game is just walking and jogging, says Korem, who quickly realized that
traditional approaches to football conditioning are way off.
The game is aerobic and alactic, and the industry trains guys in a very lactic environment, Korem says. The
very nature of conditioning in a lactic environment reduces maximal outputs. It creates an inefficient engine.
The heart gets used to operating at higher heart rates, so it almost gets agitated. It immediately skips to these
extreme heart rates instead of allowing the aerobic system to replenish. If the aerobic system is more powerful,
then the heart rate doesnt get as high, and you have a more efficient engine. You basically have a V-8 thats
extremely fuel-efficient, instead of having a V-8 that guzzles a lot of gasoline and runs out of gas real fast.


KENTUCKY GOING ALL IN ON HIGH-PERFORMANCE TRAINING
CBS Sports
Last winter, while having lunch with new Miami offensive coordinator James Coley, we got to talking about
Florida States 2012 season. Coley, the Noles former offensive coordinator, mentioned one of the secrets to the
programs success had been this cutting-edge technology FSU had.
He said it was high-tech stuff from Australia. Coley was pretty vague on the details. Said it made a dramatic
difference in the performance of their athletes, though. Like it cut down on their injuries by some 90 percent.
The guy behind it, he said, was hired by Mark Stoops when he took the head coaching job at Kentucky. I was
fascinated to learn more about the technology and the innovative coach who brought it to FSU. Initially, I
wanted to do a story on that guy, Kentucky High-Performance Coach, 32-year-old Erik Korem, but with the
creation of our new Fast Football show on CBS Sports Network, it seemed like a natural to introduce his work
there.
One of the key elements of the training program is an athlete tracking system, which Korem learned about while
overseas studying Aussie rules football.
The athlete tracking device is the hub for gathering data, Korem explains. It uses GPS, accelerometers,
magnetometers, gyroscopes and heart rate sensors to collect data. You can get information on biodynamics:
speed, acceleration, impact, facing data (which direction the players are facing as they move: backpedal,
moving right/left, etc.). In addition, you can get bioenergetic data: heart rate. (For more on this, Korem suggests
exploring the catapults website.)
Apart from athlete tracking we use Omegawave to gather data on athlete readiness by looking at heart rate
variability, using ECG, and power output capabilities, Korem said. We can determine how prepared an athlete
is to practice or play by using this technology.
In regards to technology, we are also developing a massive database system that helps us monitor wellness
through subjective feedback and we input data on physiological output to help create injury prediction models.
Through the technology, Korem said the Noles did in fact reduce soft tissue injuries by 90 percent in 2012, a
stat that no doubt would turn any football coachs head, although Korem concedes there was some luck
involved in that.
Took what they were great at it and applied a bit of science to it, he said. Nothing surpasses listening to your
athletes.
There many intriguing methods Korem, a former Texas A&M football player, has brought to UK. Among them,
the reasoning behind not letting players wearing headsets while training.
When we first started, that was a shock, Korem said. But we showed them through some research that
theres something called, Fight or Flight, the sympathetic nervous system. When youre about to get into a
game or a fight, your nervous system is excited. When youre constantly plugged into music, we found the body
didnt have that natural response.
So when we first started training, we wanted to teach these guys how to naturally control their arousal levels. It
wasnt fun at the beginning, but then we explained to em, Youve got to learn how to create your own music.
It started to click with them that you can control your level of excitement. You dont want to be hooked on
stimulus. Aside from that, we try to work with our guys on not wearing their headphones all the time on
campus, because you miss out on the life. Music is great, but it shouldnt be used as the primary stimulus to get
you ready to go all the time.
Where exactly will this technology go next and how widespread will it become?
Its more than just technology, its a mindset, Korem said. I think its going to have a tremendous impact. If
you look internationally, and the reason I started branching and looking for other options, is if you look at
Australia, they have a small population but they do enormous things in international competitions by applying
science to what theyre doing. Great Britain poured millions of dollars into state-sponsored sports programs.
They employed the best coaches and sport scientist in the world and went from 10th (2000) to third place in
2012 in the summer Olympic Games.
A lot of this really doesnt require a ton of money. It requires inquisitive minds and it requires people that have
a bit of a different background.

HARDER, BETTER, FASTER, STRONGER
Kentucky Sports Radio
Kentuckys athletic teams are no strangers to technology. From Coach Cal and his heart monitors to the soccer
teams and Prozones performance analysis system, weve seen evidence that coaching strategy is moving past
simple Xs and Os on a chalkboard. And as a client of athletic analysis tech company Catapult Sports,
Kentucky may be well-positioned to be on the forefront of the latest technological innovations in college
athletics.
To recap, the soccer teams acquired Prozone 3 to use in the soccer stadium this past fall; eight to twelve
cameras are installed in the soccer stadium and used to track player and ball movement. The data is sent to a
computer program and compiled into a 2D animation that allows coaches and managers to examine the team as
a whole or position-by-position, including distribution maps, video clips, and a 2D recreation of the game.
Calipari, meanwhile, famously used heart monitors this winter to keep track of players exertion rate, sport
zones, caloric expenditure, and heart rate during practices. With that information, Calipari and his staff were
able to judge how much effort players were giving in practice and help the players adjust accordingly.
Mandatory pause to pay tribute to the Cat with the biggest heart in UK history
In fact, High Performance Coordinator Erik Korem, who has been spearheading the football teams player
development and training in Mark Stoops first off-season, endorses Catapult products on their website: You
simply couldnt measure the work rate of todays football team without these tools. In a game where the
margins for success are measured in inches, Ill take that kind of advantage.
Jon Lipsitz, Kentuckys womens soccer coach and a self-described absolute geek about sports science,
speaks glowingly about Korems value within Kentuckys athletics department. Korem, who is currently in
Australia (where sports science is much bigger than it is in the United States), set Lipsitz up with a colleague at
the Seattle Sounders professional soccer club who is the foremost sports scientist for soccer. Lipsitz was able to
meet with researchers at Nike Sparq, the advanced training sports science division of Nike, and learn more
about the latest technology and how to use it properly.
Sports science is already huge in Australia, New Zealand, and England- and its coming here next, noted
Lipsitz.
And what specifically is next on the horizon? GPS technology. In an article on Business of College Sports last
week, Mark Burns argued that GPS technology could be the next big thing in college sports. Catapult Sports
has engineered a way to use GPS tracking to monitor athletes performance:
For student-athletes to utilize the software, OptimEye tracking bugs are worn by players in a tight-fitted
jacket, with monitors being analyzed on the sidelines by athletic trainers and strength and conditioning coaches;
the tracking technology monitors 20 unique metrics such as acceleration speed. Additionally, it allows coaches
to make decisions in real time, and it also gives them a full picture of how hard their student-athletes are
working and what its doing to their bodies.
The biggest value is to get that inside information on each individual athlete, Gatz said. You can get stuff
that you wouldnt normally see just by standing on the sidelines the heart rates, the load production, that type
of stuff during the course of a match.
According to Lipsitz, the biggest benefit of having all this information is the ability to predict and thus prevent
injury.
Its great to see the workload that people do. What the GPS units give you is how much of their work and total
distance is high intensity- acceleration, deceleration, stuff like that. Lets say in a soccer game, we have a kid
who runs seven miles in a game. Seven miles isnt seven miles. How much is sprinting or decelerating? That
information is going to lead to decoding muscle soreness and injury.
One of the huge things about using heart rate monitors, GPS, sports science in general- injury correction.
Coaches can look at players information and see the load theyve taken, especially decelerations which are
very hard on your body. You can see when theyre about to be injured and pull back on training for a couple of
days.
Building a smarter and healthier athlete doesnt stop at GPS tracking inside stadiums and practice facilities.
Catapult also asks players to answer questions about emotions, sleep habits, and diet to give the teams specific
performance enhancement lifestyle strategies (an unsurprising find? Players perform significantly better with a
solid nights sleep. Tin Roof visits should be kept to a minimum during the season, it seems).
Theres no denying that the cost is steep- Catapult charges teams an average of $100K to utilize its software, a
package that includes regular upgrades and analytical software. However, the results are backed up by research
that shows how tracking technology is improving athletes performances (agility, speed, acceleration, force, and
more) while decreasing injuries by monitoring muscle fatigue levels over the season. And as a big name
athletics school with an AD who is incredibly supportive of these innovative endeavors, Kentucky is in a great
position to take advantage of this technology.
Ive never seen an administration that is so supportive doing whatever we need to do to make sure our student
athletes are treated properly and well, and giving our guys everything possible to compete at the highest level,
gushes Lipsitz. If theres something thats going to help our athletic program, Mitch wants to hear about it.
Hes very special that way.
Speaking of advantages of this technology, lets think about this one: recruiting. High school students these
days are more attuned to technology than ever before; hell, reading over Kentucky athletes tweets, I dont
recognize half the apps theyre referencing (Ive barely got a hold on Vine. And what on earth is Kik?). So
including state-of-the-art technology in recruiting pitches seems like a no-brainer, right up there with spotless
facilities and elite coaches.
Sure, some might argue this is just another notch on the bedpost for the haves of college athletics- one more
advantage to separate the big and rich schools from the others. Lipsitz, however, doesnt see it as significantly
different from any other advantage schools with money have.
Schools with money have a better opportunity to do things with academic support, nutrition, travel, in every
way. Its just one of the other advantages. Another great thing about Mitch, hell say if its important and the
student athletes need it, well get it, but were still practical about how we spend our money. I think everything
that we do that is special and innovative and advanced is very helpful with recruiting.
Although cost seems like the obvious disadvantage, teaching coaching staffs how to correctly use the
technology will be key in terms of how successful teams are. If staff doesnt know how to use the information
correctly, a $100,000 investment will ultimately be worthless.
Just because you have stats in front of you doesnt mean you know how to use it properly, warns Lipsitz.
You can have every statistic in the book about someones movement and recovery. How you use it properly is
the challenge.
(Hear that, Jonathan Schuette? Youre VERY employable)
Burns argues that some coaches will resist the technological advancements- apparently, some old dogs wont
want to be taught new tricks. Sure, maybe it seems like were inching closer to the bionic athlete, but would any
coach with a strong thirst to win ignore potentially game-changing technology?
When I asked Lipsitz his thoughts on this argument, he laughed, saying I heard a joke on my trip out west: If
youre a sports scientist and you get hired by an NFL team, get ready to be fired by the end of the season. If a
coach is old school, the last thing theyll want to hear is that a player is going to be pulled out of training
because a computer told us theyre likely to get injured. It goes against the old school work them to the bones
mindset. Resistance comes from this is new, its something thats being shown on a computer screen and
paper.
Its no different than how it took me quite awhile to convince my mom to text. But once she realized how
quickly she could get in touch with my sister and my by texting, she loved it- but it took her two years to do it.
Thats an example of how difficult it is to get new technology into a situation that works.
*Not Coach Lipsitzs mom. That I know of.
Unless its Bob Knight making a return to the sidelines, I believe that coaches will be open to this new wave of
technology- if its presented correctly and if they learn how to use it properly. Athletic departments facing this
predicament will have to find ways to make the information appealing to coaches, presenting the data with lots
of colors and graphs rather than just black and white printouts of straight information. With technology such as
Catapults becoming more widespread and available to college teams, coaches would be unwise not to at least
experiment with the units as a way to better understand their athletes in practice. And as we all know, you
practice the way you play; more efficient practices will translate into game time decisions and ultimately, more
wins. It cant be overstated how fortunate Kentucky is to be a financially secure school with the ability to
procure these coveted units- and how exciting it is to have coaches and staff who are ready to embrace the
future of practice.
Bottom line it for us, Coach Lipsitz:
In the end, the team that uses this technology properly will have lower injuries and higher success. No doubt
about it, thats what will happen.
Can I FINALLY throw in a Catapult-ing into the future pun? UK, welcome to the robot family.


GPS TRACKING TECHNOLOGY: THE NEXT BIG THING IN COLLEGE ATHLETICS
The Business of College Sports
Greg Gatz calls it the next big thing coming on down the line.
And no, the Director of Strength and Conditioning for Olympic Sports at North Carolina isnt talking about the latest
and greatest in athletic footwear.
Gatz is speaking about GPS tracking technology and specifically, Catapult Sports.
An Australian-based sports technology company, Catapult is on the forefront of cutting-edge technology that
measures athlete analytics. Just seven-years-old, the company has infiltrated the American sports market but mostly
with professional franchises like the New York Knicks, Dallas Cowboys, and Detroit Tigers.
Despite Catapult not directly targeting the college market, according to Media and Marketing Manager Boden
Westover, the company has still managed to gain a handful of clients in the form of college athletics departments,
including North Carolina.
About a year and a half ago, Tom Myslinski the former Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at UNC and current
Head Strength and Conditioning Coach with the Jacksonville Jaguars began slowly implementing the technology into
his regiment.
Once he headed South to the National Football League in 2012, Gatz picked up where Myslinski left off with the
technology. This past Fall, Gatz and the University of North Carolina Athletic Department purchased just 10 units from
Catapult.
It was kind of use it when you can as much as you can, Gatz said of the limited supply at first.
Initially, the North Carolina womens soccer team (won the 2012-13 NCAA Championship) has been the most consistent
user of the software. With head coach Anson Dorrance all on board, as Gatz stated, the Tar Heels could now quantify
their on-field performance.
In the future, Gatz would like to have enough units to put them on athletes for daily practice sessions. According to
Gatz, using the technology in the week leading up to a match or a game can help determine how much an athlete can
do on match/game day.
For student-athletes to utilize the software, OptimEye tracking bugs are worn by players in a tight-fitted jacket, with
monitors being analyzed on the sidelines by athletic trainers and strength and conditioning coaches; the tracking
technology monitors 20 unique metrics such as acceleration speed. Additionally, it allows coaches to make decisions in
real time, and it also gives them a full picture of how hard their student-athletes are working and what its doing to their
bodies.
The biggest value is to get that inside information on each individual athlete, Gatz said. You can get stuff that you
wouldnt normally see just by standing on the sidelines the heart rates, the load production, that type of stuff during
the course of a match.
So, what is preventing more athletic departments from taking advantage of GPS tracking technology?
One word: money. Catapult charges teams, on average, $100,000 to utilize its software, according to a recent article
from Forbes.com. The purchase includes regular upgrades and analytical software.
Naturally, it makes sense then that athletics departments ability to fund such sports technology depends on the size of
their budgets. Smaller colleges and universities just dont have the funding. For schools like North Carolina, Florida
State, Kentucky, and Oregon who have all utilized Catapult Sports in some fashion they are more equipped to
purchase the sports technology.
Coupled with funding is also awareness; considering its a relatively new product in the marketplace, some colleges and
universities dont even know of the sports technologys existence.
Yet, the third reason might be the biggest hurdle athletic departments and teams will have to overcome.
The most difficult part of it at this point is you have coaches who have been doing their job for 20, 25 years the way
theyre old school, Gatz said. Its tough to break in a new type of idea and concept like this when theyre not really
sure its beneficial at this point.
GPS technology might not be so commonplace now with the more recognizable sports like football and basketball. But
in 10 or 15 years, those old school coaches might have to re-consider if everyone else is getting the competitive edge
with GPS technology.