AUSTIN, TEXAS – Over the weekend Gatorade held an experiential tour of their “locker room of the future” at SXSW that gave viewers a glimpse of the new Gatorade smart cap bottle. The specs of the bottle were announced in January and some Gatorade athletes and the Gatorade Sports Science team were on hand this weekend to discuss bringing the product to life.
The following insights are from the Kansas City Chiefs star tight end, Travis Kelce, Gatorade Head of Innovation and Design Xavi Cortadellas and Gatorade Sports Science Institute Lead Scientist Matt Pahnke.
Get The Latest Sports Tech Insights In Your Inbox!
Travis Kelce
What was the process like to get you educated about this new smart cap from Gatorade?
So I’ve actually been very fortunate to be working with Gatorade through the Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs were one of the first teams to start using the sweat pad and the smart pods to really test and see if we could get our performance levels personalized. It’s awesome, through the smart caps it’s like you have your own personal Gatorade bottle and it relates to how much potassium, electrolytes, sodium, etc., you’re loosing and then the smart pods are actually put into a bottle and specified for your needs. And you actually do feel the difference at the end of the day, and trust me, I’m not just hyping up Gatorade. I’m actually telling my trainers to make sure I got my pods.
So Gatorade comes in and trains the Chiefs players to use this new product? What’s that process like?
So they come in and work with Rick Burkholder, the Kansas City Chiefs Strength and Conditioning Coach and then grab a few guys to work with the pods. For me, I’m a heavy sweater, going through two pairs of shorts at practice. So for me, it was a matter of figuring out what I need to replenish and how each guy is different and has different needs.
How do you feel about teams and companies knowing intimate data about your physical performance?
I’m confident in the athlete I am. I know what I put into my body. I know that what the scan is going to read isn’t going to be anything bad. At least that’s my thought process on it. I want them to know as much as they can about my body because it’s going to make me the better athlete. It’s going to hopefully make me a top performer. So I want them to know how to help me workout and replenish and know how to attack or “prehab” the next workout.
How do your teammates and other players on other teams react to seeing these new Gatorade products?
So I actually had no idea that it was this exclusive and not everyone on the team has used them yet. So it’s kind of like Space Jam all over again where it’s MIchael Jordan’s secret stuff. And in all seriousness, I’m a hard worker so I’m always out there going to work and it’s nice to come off the field and have your own personal bottle and knowing this stuff is fueling me the best possible way.
How has your use of technology changed from the beginning of your college career to now?
I think it has created a whole new routine Monday through Friday. It starts from Monday where you need to get your body to top peak. Football is a grueling sport and you’re going to come out every Sunday feeling some sort of pain, some sort of injury, and that’s where the innovative science, like a Gatorade, comes into play and keeps helping. And now it’s starting to get into personalized stuff like the smart pods. Which is good to me, because the more personalized and customized these products get then the better off the athletes will be.
When looking to improve your skills and performance, do you go out of your way to find technology on your own or do you just rely on your trainers to bring it to you?
I am nonstop trying to find stuff. There are a lot of interesting ideas and theories that you get hit with about what could work or won’t work and it’s one of those things that you have to find what fits you. It’s truly a nonstop battle with trying to be the best athlete you can be. It’s all about what you can fit into your routine.
These new products and overall direction for Gatorade are a huge undertaking for the company. Can you walk us through the stages so far to get to this point?
Cortadellas
So today we are unveiling our new innovation but my favorite story here today is the idea around sports fuel personalization. We started working on this project around three years ago with the Brazil national football team. They told us that they wanted to win the World Cup and asked for our help. So we felt we could help them personalize their sports fuel solutions that their roster is using. So we started with one team, 25 players and testing all of them to come up with individualized solutions for them. And then also, with the addition of the smart cap and specific protein it just worked. So we felt it could be expandable to other sports and felt that could be relevant for every day athletes as well.
What was the implementation process like with the Kansas City Chiefs and smart cap bottle?
Pahnke
Just in general the Gatorade Sports Science institute has been working with athletes for thirty years so we’ve gotten used to working with teams but now we can add some of these extra tools. An example with the Chiefs, as well as with some other teams we are working with, is we can go in, test them and understand every athlete’s individual situations. Then once we understand an athlete’s physiology we can make recommendations. The beauty of this system is that with the pods for the smart cap bottle we can give them individual formulas for what they need.
Cortadellas
With the Chiefs specifically, we worked with twenty players to help us test this new product and they have given us great feedback in starting on this journey with them to use the smart cap. We have started tracing their hydration in real time to help them feel better.
The smart cap bottle provides really quick feedback for athletes. But how does help provide historical context over the course of a season or a career that can turn into actionable insights for athletes?
Cortadellas
It’s a very good question. While we give athletes quick feedback, the digital platform collects all this information and then you can start analyzing patterns as they happen and over time. And what’s interesting is you take this hydration data and cross it with data from like a Catapult Sports or other systems that use GPS player tracking to learn some interesting things. And we believe from a sports science perspective with the data aggregation over time that you can start to see things that are valuable.
And important point to make is that we are providing tools for a coach and player. We don’t want to replace the coach. In the end it’s up to them to educated and train their athletes. And every sport and team are different and we have been very respectful of that. The feedback we’ve gotten from athletic trainers and players has been great. Everyone has been really excited.
Pahnke
The important part is obviously to collect the data and with our system we are able to make the recommendations. So we have historical and live data and when we bring all that stuff together we can do predicting for athletes.