Cutting-edge technology is revealing how athletes' bodies work — and will transform sports forever

Today's professional athletes are faster and stronger than ever

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Top athletes in individual sports possess physical characteristics that make them uniquely suited to excel (picture Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps), and teams are built up of players with special skills and strength that make them some of the only people in the world capable of handling their roles.

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Duncan Watmore of Sunderland takes on John Stones of Everton during the Barclays Premier League match between Everton and Sunderland at Goodison Park on November 1, 2015 in Liverpool, England. David Ramos/Getty Images

But with players that are stronger and more specialized than ever, two things happen: Figuring out the work that's needed to unlock further performance gains become more difficult than ever, and with athletes pushing themselves to unprecedented levels of exertion, preventing injuries caused by overtraining or improper training is essential.

That's where the latest in sports science comes into play.

Companies are using everything from machine learning to three-dimensional biomechanical scanning to track the individual movements, strengths, and weaknesses of athletes. They're using that data to devise individual training plans that help coaches know when an athlete needs to take a break or when they need to adjust a workout to strengthen a player who might be susceptible to injury.

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Tech Insider spoke with Stephen Smith, the founder and CEO of Kitman Labs, one of the specialized companies that's using research-supported new technology to optimize performance, in order to understand how the latest sports science can help athletes excel. They work with teams ranging from the NFL's Miami Dolphins to the English Premier League's Everton FC.

"Everybody is unique in how they respond to different stress and stimulus," so they can't all follow the exact same training programs, says Smith. Since every person responds to stresses differently, Kitman has designed both software and hardware that help develop ideal training programs for each individual. 

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On the hardware side, Kitman uses a modified Xbox Kinect to scan athletes.

 

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Specialized software calculates what's going on in places where the camera isn't facing.

 

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The system can track deviations in motion that are imperceptible to the naked eye.

 

Other specialized labs like Vicon also do this work, using state of the art cameras. But that requires a visit to the lab. A smaller system like Kitman's can be used on a regular basis, as opposed to once or twice a season.

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If the system finds that in the last moment before a jump an athlete is leaning much harder on one leg than another, it's a sign an injury could be coming.

 

"That lets us know there’s weakness in glutes or hamstrings, which is huge in knowing what to do with an athlete," Smith says.

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That's what the deviation in the chart (below, at left) illustrates.

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On the software side, Kitman can track how much work an athlete has put in over a season.

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In this chart, you can see that a few players on this team already exceeded their seasonal averages (the black line).

Athlete Workloads tablet
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Smith, a former rugby coach, says tracking over a season is important. A snapshot of a player's biomechanics at the beginning of a season doesn't tell you what's happening after they've been pushing hard and getting hit.

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Tracking an individual player's workload can show if they are pushing too hard — or doing less than they normally do.

Player Workload
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That's important because some people need more training to reach their peak, while others need less work and are more susceptible to injury.

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New Zealand's Sonny Bill Williams is tackled by England's Mike Brown during their international rugby union match at Twickenham in London November 8, 2014. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth
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Smith says that with teams they've worked with so far, their system has helped reduce injuries by 30%.

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He says that the biggest advantage is that the software helps get usable information from all the data that pro teams are collecting.

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And while they work primarily with professionals now, Smith expects that "as this area of tech gets democratized, eventually we'll see these same analytics in high schools" and for everyone.

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