#040 Monday Minutes: The Biggest Challenge with Performance Technologies

In this episode of the Decoding Excellence Show, we're returning to our Monday Minute theme and discussing the biggest challenges and hurdles with performance technologies. If you are thinking about purchasing a new piece of technology for your performance training facility, you do not want to miss these insights.

As a reminder, our Monday Minutes shows are a quick 10-15 minute episode where I discuss current industry trends, research reads, current events, and occasionally offer my insights into the training process that we're undertaking each week. I believe with conviction, you'll take away something interesting from this show and I hope it delivers you a little bit of value in your day.

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Key Takeaways

• The biggest challenge with performance technology is not the financial barrier. Buying the hardware is the easiest step in the process; anyone can pull out a credit card. The hard part is turning what the device measures into actionable decisions.
• Before acquiring anything, ask whether your organization is actually ready to change. If the data will only ever be used to justify what you already do, and practice structure, periodization, and load management will not move when the data disagrees, the money is better spent elsewhere.
• Adoption is also a logistics and people problem: floor space and secure storage for devices like force plates, a NordBord, a GroinBar, or a DEXA, HIPAA-compliant places to store the data, and enough qualified staff to act on outputs like hamstring strength, adduction-to-abduction ratios, and asymmetries.
• Warehoused data has some long-term value for longitudinal analysis, but the real advantage comes from shifting away from collecting for collection's sake. People are more important than the technology: the right people, in the right places, making decisions from valid and repeatable data.

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Episode Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated. While we strive for accuracy, some words or phrases may be misheard.

[00:00:00] Sport science, strength and conditioning, high performance coaching, welcome to the Coating Excellence Show. Hey everybody, this is your host Adam Ringler and welcome to the Decoding Excellence Show Monday Minutes. It is a brief five to ten minute episode where we are catching up on everything that is happening in our industry. Things were reading, things were checking out, things that we are experimenting with,

[00:00:51] Exploring and it is meant to just be a quick little summary, little tidbits, little breadcrumbs of things that are happening around our strength conditioning and high performance industry. Like always, if you enjoy the show, there's a couple ways that you can support it. The very first thing I would recommend is please head over to AdamRingler.com forward slash newsletter. Pop in your email, I promise I won't spam you, and occasionally about once a month,

[00:01:20] I'll send you an email, it will be things that I'm reading almost like a monthly recap of these Monday Minute episodes. I think you'll get a lot out of it. I explained to my friends that it is essentially the birch box of newsletters. You don't know what you're going to get, but you know whatever you receive is going to be chuckful of great information. So head over to AdamRingler.com forward slash newsletter. Hey everybody, welcome to this week's Monday Minutes. I'm your host, AdamRingler.

[00:01:52] And thanks again for joining me on this sort of mini episode, these Monday Minutes, where we try to deliver anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes of some actionable information. My thoughts, anything within our industry, current events or news or just things that we are discussing on Twitter, Instagram and elsewhere, this is an audio version of those same conversations. So today on the minutes, I wanted to discuss something that is near and dear to my heart, and that is sport technologies. Obviously, I'm probably pretty vocal on a lot of these social

[00:02:30] Platforms about trying to use diagnostic devices, performance technologies in the training process to hopefully try to deliver more information for us practitioners, us coaches. And part of that is really trying to use the data that we get from these devices into actually decision making abilities for our coaches, for our medical team, for our sport technical, sport coaches. So one of the things that I think most people get wrong, gets confused is that they often think that the financial barrier is the biggest hurdle

[00:03:14] That most organization, most coaches need to navigate in order to obtain and use performance technologies. And what I mean by that, that could be anything from wearable technologies, like GPS devices, accelerometers. It could be force plate technologies, and motion capture sensors, there's a number of them that we could go down. And I'll try not to be listing too many companies on that. There's devices to measure hamstring strengths and different ratios between your adductors and your hips, and all the various devices, whether it's upper body,

[00:03:53] Lower body, whatever, VBT, you name it. The challenge isn't necessarily, do I have the budget? That's that's a hurdle. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to refute that a financial barrier is not indeed a barrier. But in my experience, in my history of doing this, a lot of people think that's the the only barrier to obtaining any of this performance hardware. And in reality, I honestly think that's the easiest barrier to jump, because the acquisition for performance technologies, really at the end of the day, is a financial one, and that's the only hurdle,

[00:04:33] Right? So any company or organization, what, what be it, can really just whip out a wallet or a credit card and finance it or work out the terms of, terms of agreement for any performance technology, right? The much more difficult and often challenge that most people don't often think about is the, well, how do we actually use this within my own organization? How do we make information and turn those, that information and data that we collect from it into actionable decisions? And that is something I think more people need to think about when they go into the actual

[00:05:15] Sort of brainstorming or acquisition phase of any performance technology. It's not, can we afford this? It's that if we do have it, what are we going to do from it? So I'll tell you a couple of different things. I know in, I probably spoke about this in the number of other Monday minutes, but it's one thing to data warehouse information on the back ends, right? So I see this all the time, there's some several threads within Twitter over the last couple of days of different, pretty high level sporting organization talking about the role of analytics and data within

[00:05:53] Their sport construct. And one of the challenges, I think that the narrative people on Twitter were discussing is that, oh, well, you're just hanging on to data, you're just collecting it for collection purposes and not really doing anything. Well, what I would say is that any sort of longer phase epidemiological type of study or historical longitudinal type of study, you do need to hang on in data warehouse some of the actual information and the data that you collect from these devices. And fortunately, with more machine learning technologies and codes and capabilities coming out of

[00:06:33] The world of data science, we can leverage and harness machine learning to really comb through and make better sort of multivariant analysis of the data that we've collected in data warehouse to actually comb through it and make decisions or at least give us insights into what the data is suggesting even if we're just data warehousing it. So I still think there's an advantage of doing that, although the biggest advantage is shifting away from just collecting for collection purposes and actually using data in a way that drives meaningful change. And that is something I think more people

[00:07:12] Need to think about when they start to go through that acquisition phase. If I, let's just say wearable technologies. If I acquire 50, 60, you know, 100 wearable GPS devices for a particular team or 50, 30, whatever it might be, how am I going to actually use that information to affect day to day week to week, month to month season to season changes. So I think ultimately we have to have a real honest conversation with ourselves of see, do we even have the organizational readiness to adopt new strategies, new methodologies of training and new sort of logistical frameworks of

[00:07:55] Organizing how we structure or periodize practice plans or sessions from a day to day and week to week sort of time period. If we don't have the readiness to change, then I don't know if there's a huge benefit to getting wearable technologies if you're just only using the information to support what you're already doing. So, you know, I think at that point what we find ourselves in is like the technology is only there to justify what we're doing. But if we're not really going to use it to change anything, then there's probably better things to invest financial dollars towards.

[00:08:39] So the ultimately the idea is to take any sort of technology wearable tech in this manner and say, hey, if the data suggests one thing, perhaps we should try to intervene or try to change based on what the information is telling us. Yes, maybe it can support our previous notions of what we think we're doing, but in the case that it doesn't, are we willing to accept what the sort of objective data, objective information is telling us? It doesn't mean that we're wrong as coaches, just means that we might need to re-approach the way that we do things. We might need to re-approach

[00:09:18] Our ideas about the frameworks of how we are organizing conditioning sessions or how we're preparing athletes for the start of a pre-season camp or anything like that. How are we managing loads throughout an in-season period? Those are our very important things that we need to discuss ahead of time before we whip out the visa credit card and start to acquire some of these technologies. In the case of force plates or any sort of performance technology that might be in your weight room, do we have a the footprint within your building, your facility to actually hold this

[00:09:55] Information? So these devices or these technologies? So let's just say in the sake of like a Nordboard or a groinbar or force play or if you're investing, let's just say in body composition things. So you're going to pick up a DEXA unit or you're going to pick up a bod pod. Do we have places to put it? Number one, do we have places to hold it? Facilities to protect and safeguard it? Do we also have places digitally or physically where we can store that information? Do we have repositories that are hipocompliant that actually are compliant with all of the sort of

[00:10:40] Regulations that we need to do to safeguard student information or medical data information, things like that? And then do we have the actual capabilities of making changes on it? And not only is that really, really important, but then also on top of that, do we have the labor and the resources, the person power, if you will, to actually drive intervention? So if you do collect Nordic hamstrings or force play technologies, do we have the personnel that are equipped to make those decisions to make the programming prerequisite changes to their programs to be able to affect

[00:11:21] Hamstring strength or adduction to ABduction ratios or symmetry for a load-exploder drive or eccentric force production or peak power? All of the various parameters that some of these hardwares can allow us as practitioners to get information and to know information? Do we have the person power to actually make the changes that we should and should we make those changes? And do we have the organizational readiness to do all these things? Those are the questions that I think that more sport bodies in Geo's organizations and companies need to really think about when it comes to

[00:12:01] The part of do we acquire this technology versus that technology? Do we invest our money in X versus Y or Z? Because honestly, in my opinion, the very easiest thing to do is to really just whip out your credit card and buy something. And I so often think that coaches put more of a mental hurdle on that part. Oh, man, if I only could afford force plates, we would do more force plate testing. If I only could afford a couple of wearable technologies, a couple of GPS devices, we'd surely would win the next national championship. And I just think that's wrong. I think there's way

[00:12:47] Bigger hurdles to navigate when you're starting to think about do we acquire this performance tech versus another performance tech? And so often that has less to do about the financial component of those things and way more to do about do we have the right people and the right places to make the right decisions at the right time based on accurate, repeatable, valid and objective data-driven information. Hey, everybody, thanks for tuning in to this week's Monday minutes. Hopefully, you took away just maybe even my thoughts, my opinions about performance technologies and what

[00:13:31] The biggest hurdles actually are. So oftentimes, they're not the financial piece. They are the people piece. People are always more important than the performance technology. So hopefully, as you go through this and maybe you are in this sort of organizational phase where you're thinking about acquiring some new performance technology for your company, you pause, you stop, you take a moment to reflect and think, do we have these right pieces for this challenge, for this problem? Do we have the right people in the right place? And as always, there's a number of different ways

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