When Kansas takes the court against Villanova in the Final Four on Saturday evening, the Jayhawks will do so having trained through a unique technological marriage.
Since 2012, under the direction of sports performance director Andrea Hudy, KU has partnered with Sparta Science’s injury prevention platform and EliteForm’s weightlifting tech that has produced voluminous insights into the players’ force production, fatigue and more.
“We’re probably sitting on more data than anyone, which is great,” Hudy, an assistant athletics director, told SportTechie from San Antonio, noting that the program has seen marked gains in injury prevention.
“Absolutely. And the performance numbers, too,” she added. “People think that we get the best athletes, and that’s not always the case. Sometimes we have to create it, and sometimes we have to keep the best athletes healthy.”
The use of the two tech platforms — Sparta Science relies on force plate software, EliteForm uses sensors and cameras integrated with weightlifting racks — has informed Kansas’ training work, a concept Hudy referred to as “power density.”
Time can be a key variable in strength and conditioning programs. Completing the same number of repetitions at the same weight can be more effective with less rest. That’s why even Kansas’ offseason workouts each summer are only between 35 minutes and an hour, Hudy said, while only 20-to-25 minutes during the season schedule.
“We’re feeding a lot of work in a small amount of time, and our power density increases throughout the season,” Hudy, a former National College Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year, said. “The workouts are faster, and I think there’s a huge conditioning effect to that.”
Among the other Final Four teams, Villanova’s strength and conditioning coach John Shackleton told the Wall Street Journal last fall how the Polar Team Pro system helps tracks training load. Michigan basketball coach John Beilein recently told MLive about his team’s use of Catapult’s wearable device, saying, “This whole Catapult system is changing our world.”
Hudy said Kansas’ trainers have been pleased with their use of FireFly (which was also mentioned during an ESPN game broadcast this winter) and that the hoops team has used ShotTracker as well.
The Jayhawks do not use a general training load-monitoring practice wearable like Catapult or Kinexon (but ShotTracker’s shoe sensor does capture player movement and positioning), focusing more on monitoring the weight room work with a keen eye on the measurement of rate of force production. Changes in that metric can also signal fatigue.
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Based on the data they have, Hudy said some of the higher performing players might focus more on healthy repetitions — long, slow and deliberate to maintain strength — while those that need training are more apt to do short, ballistic reps to improve performance.
“There’s a huge difference between health and performance. A lot of our high-performing guys, it’s like having a sports car — you’re not going to put the pedal to the metal the whole time,” Hudy said, adding: “We could make the car go a little bit faster, but if the car goes one mile-per-hour faster and gets hurt, we’re out of luck.”