The Upside Newsletter

Today we have the honor of interviewing Tristan Swanwick, the founder of Swanwick, a leading health optimization brand focusing on blue light management.

Swanwick is a health optimization company specializing in blue light management products designed to improve sleep, recovery, and overall well-being. Its flagship sleep glasses filter up to 99% of blue light, helping the body naturally produce melatonin even when users are exposed to artificial lighting from screens, LED lights, or stadium environments. The company also offers Focus and Relax glasses for daytime productivity and evening wind-down, as well as a growing range of circadian-friendly lighting products.

Swanwick's key competitive advantage is its strong scientific foundation, with its products validated through independent, third-party, peer-reviewed research demonstrating improvements in sleep quality and sleep onset.

Trusted by professional sports teams across the NBA, NFL, NHL, and Premier League, Swanwick's solutions provide athletes, coaches, and performance staff with a simple, non-invasive, and cost-effective way to support recovery, manage jet lag, reduce the impact of artificial light exposure, and optimize performance.

Product Portfolio Summary

Swanwick offers a range of products designed to optimize circadian health by managing blue light exposure throughout the day. Its portfolio includes Sleep, Relax, and Focus blue light blocking glasses, as well as a growing line of circadian-friendly lighting products that work together to improve sleep quality, recovery, daytime focus, and overall well-being.

* Sleep Glasses – Improve sleep quality, recovery, and melatonin production by blocking up to 99% of blue light.

* Focus Glasses – Support daytime productivity and reduce digital eye strain.

* Relax Glasses – Promote evening wind-down and prepare the body for restful sleep.

* Circadian Lighting (in development) – Lighting solutions that work alongside the glasses to optimize circadian health and overall well-being

Source: Swanwick, 2026

The Swanwick Circadian Regulation System is a 24-hour approach to managing light exposure in alignment with the body's natural circadian rhythm. By using different eyewear products at specific times of the day, the system aims to enhance daytime focus, promote evening relaxation, support natural melatonin production before bed, and improve sleep quality and recovery.

Swanwick Circadian Regulation System

* Focus Swannies (Morning to Afternoon) – Designed for productive hours during the day. They help reduce digital eye strain while maintaining a healthy balance of light exposure during working hours.

* Relax Swannies (Evening) – Worn after approximately 6:00 PM to reduce blue light exposure and help the body naturally transition into a relaxed state before bedtime.

* Sleep Swannies (1.5 Hours Before Bed) – Worn about 90 minutes before sleep to block blue light, allowing melatonin production to begin naturally and preparing the body for restful sleep.

* During Sleep – The goal is to achieve deep, restorative sleep in a cool, dark room. If users need to wake during the night, Swanwick recommends using anti-blue lighting to avoid disrupting melatonin production.

* Morning (Around 6:00 AM) – Melatonin production naturally stops, and exposure to natural sunlight helps reinforce the body’s circadian rhythm and supports alertness for the day ahead.

Overall, the system promotes a 24-hour approach to circadian health, using different products and lighting strategies at specific times of day to optimize focus, relaxation, sleep quality, and recovery.

Source: Swanwick, 2026

Sleep Benefits Validated by Scientific Research

Swanwick highlights research demonstrating that its blue light blocking glasses can significantly improve sleep quality and recovery. According to the infographic, users reported the following benefits after wearing the glasses before bedtime:

* 73% improvement in overall sleep quality

* 24% less time awake during the night

* 37% increase in waking up feeling more rested

* 14% more time spent in deep sleep

These findings support Swanwick’s position that reducing blue light exposure before bed can enhance sleep quality, promote deeper restorative sleep, and improve next-day recovery and well-being.

Source: Swanwick, 2026

Impact of Swanwick Blue Light Blocking Glasses on Athletes and teams

* Improves sleep quality and recovery by filtering up to 99% of blue light, allowing the body to naturally produce melatonin and supporting deeper, more restorative sleep.

* Helps athletes recover after evening competitions by reducing the negative effects of bright stadium lighting, screens, and other artificial light sources that can delay sleep.

* Supports travel and jet lag management, helping athletes adjust more quickly during long-haul trips and maintain better sleep routines.

* Contributes to incremental performance gains, as better sleep and recovery improve physical, mental, and cognitive readiness for training and competition.

* Backed by independent scientific research, giving professional sports organizations confidence that the glasses can meaningfully improve sleep quality and sleep onset.

Trusted by Elite Teams and Athletes

As shown in the table below, trusted by 20 professional sports teams across the NBA, NFL, NHL, and Premier League, Swanwick’s solutions provide athletes, coaches, and performance staff with a simple, non-invasive, and cost-effective way to support recovery, manage jet lag, reduce the impact of artificial light exposure, and optimize performance.

Source: Swanwick, 2026

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

📝Show Notes: During our interview with Tristan Swanwick, we discussed how Swanwick has grown from a blue light blocking glasses company into a broader circadian health brand focused on improving sleep, recovery, and performance. Tristan explained the science behind managing blue light exposure, the growing adoption of Swanwick products by professional sports organizations, and the role of quality sleep in helping athletes recover, manage jet lag, and achieve incremental performance gains.

He also shared the company's competitive advantages, including its peer-reviewed scientific validation, and outlined Swanwick's plans to expand its product portfolio with circadian-friendly lighting solutions over the next 12 months.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Tristan located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Tristan:

Q1. Tell me about your background.

“Before I tried my hand at entrepreneurship, I was a longtime newspaper journalist. Journalism taught me to be skeptical, ask questions, challenge claims, verify facts, and build relationships with people from all walks of life. You also become very curious and learn how to understand complex topics and communicate them clearly. It turned out to be excellent preparation for building a business.”

“Back in 2015, my brother, who was living in Los Angeles and becoming deeply involved in the early biohacking movement, approached me with the idea of starting a blue light blocking glasses company. People were already experimenting with crude solutions, and we thought we could build something specifically designed for the purpose that was also comfortable and stylish. That’s how Swanwick was born.”

Q2. Tell me about your company and product.

“The idea behind our product is simple. Artificial light, especially blue light, delays the body’s natural production of melatonin. If you can filter out those blue wavelengths, you give your body the opportunity to produce melatonin naturally, so when you go to bed your body is actually ready for sleep instead of trying to catch up.”

“Our sleep glasses filter out up to 99% of blue light. That means people can still use their phones, computers and modern LED lighting while significantly reducing the impact those lights have on their sleep. T…

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Today we have the honor of interviewing a group of NCAA sports performance experts.

* Dr. John DeWitt, Director of applied sports science in the athletic department and a faculty member, Rice University (NCAA team).

* Paul Silvestri, Sr director of sports health and performance, University of Florida football (NCAA team).

* Drew Lukes, Senior PT at Duke University and the head of sports science, Duke university’s women soccer team (NCAA team).

* Elva Salcido, Director of Sports Medicine and Head Athletic Trainer, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (NCAA Team).

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on the following questions and topics:

* Heat Acclimatization: During training camp, what is your approach to helping athletes adapt to the heat? Which cooling and hydration strategies have you found to be the most effective?

* Practice Progression: How do you manage the ramp-up period during training camp? What factors guide the progression of practice intensity, tempo, and workload?

* Recovery Optimization: What are your key recovery strategies during training camp to ensure athletes are prepared to perform from one day to the next?

* Nutrition: How do you optimize nutrition during training camp? What are the biggest nutritional challenges you encounter, and how do you address them?

* Working with Agents: How do you approach communication and collaboration with player agents, particularly regarding logistics, documentation, and maintaining productive relationships?

* Interdisciplinary Communication: Successful training camps require collaboration across multiple departments. How do you optimize communication and decision-making among the medical staff, performance team, coaching staff, front office, and general manager to keep everyone aligned?

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

You can leave a comment by clicking on the button below:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with them:

1. Heat Acclimatization

Elva Salcido (UNLV)

“At UNLV, we definitely try to individualize our approach rather than making blanket recommendations. Living in Las Vegas, heat is a daily challenge for us, so it’s important to distinguish prevention from emergency management because those are two completely different situations. We have conversations with coaches ahead of time about predicted wet bulb globe temperatures, practice schedules, shade opportunities, cooling strategies, and making sure cold-water immersion is always available if an emergency occurs.”

“One of the things I always say is, ‘Assess, don’t guess.’ Don’t assume you know why an athlete is cramping or struggling with the heat. We’ll use blood work, urine specific gravity testing, and work closely with nutrition to determine what’s actually causing the issue before deciding on an intervention.”

Paul Silvestri (University of Florida)

“We take a very individualized approach. Every football player completes sweat testing before training camp, and we build individualized hydration plans based on exactly what they’re losing during practice. We also use saliva testing, body-weight monitoring, refrigerated cooling trucks, cool benches, and multiple hydration strategies. The biggest priority is making sure athletes are acclimated to the heat before camp starts. If they’ve been training indoors all summer, training camp becomes a shock to the system.”

Dr. John DeWitt (Rice University)

“We use a phased approach to heat exposure. Football progresses from no pads, to shoulder pads, to full equipment while mandatory hydration testing before every outdoor session helps us identify athletes who may need additional hydration or closer monitoring before practice even begins. Much of what we do is preventative—we’re trying to stay ahead of athletes becoming overheated.”

Heat Acclimatization - Key Recommendations for Teams

* Individualize hydration using sweat testing, hydration testing, and body-weight monitoring.

* Separate heat illness prevention from emergency response protocols.

* Gradually acclimate athletes before training camp through phased exposure.

* Monitor environmental conditions (WBGT) and adjust practice schedules accordingly.

* Educate coaches and athletes before camp begins.

* Use objective testing instead of assuming dehydration or cramping causes.

2. Practice Progression

Drew Lukes (Duke University)

“From the sports science side, it’s really about having a plan. We know when our first matches and scrimmages are, and then we reverse engineer the entire training camp from there. The challenge is balancing the workload with everything coaches need to accomplish technically and tactically. Ultimately, you can build the most meticulous plan in the world, but if everyone isn’t bought into it, the plan becomes meaningless.”

Elva Salcido

“Technology and sports science have significantly helped sports medicine communicate with coaches because now we have objective data to support what we’re seeing clinically. We can connect workload with fatigue, injury trends, or heat stress. Everyone may complete the same practice, but each athlete responds differently. That’s why we rely on tools like RPE to better understand the individual athlete.”

Paul Silvestri

“You have to prepare athletes during the summer for what training camp and competition are going to demand. If you’re expecting players to reach game-level speeds during camp, they need exposure to those speeds beforehand. If the first time they’re running that fast is training camp, that’s when soft tissue injuries happen.”

Dr. John DeWitt

“Sometimes coaches have to realize that an early scrimmage is simply another practice against another team. It shouldn’t cause you to abandon your progression plan. Fortunately, our athletes have already been preparing for weeks before preseason officially begins, so the ramp-up happens before the first official practice.”

Practice Progression - Key Recommendations for Teams

* Reverse engineer workload from the first competition.

* Build coach buy-in before camp starts.

* Prepare athletes during the summer for competition demands.

* Combine GPS/workload data with subjective wellness measures like RPE.

* Individualize progression for returning or rehabbing athletes.

* Don’t let early scrimmages disrupt long-term planning.

3. Recovery Optimization

Paul Silvestri

“There are a ton of recovery modalities available today, but there are no better modalities than hydration, nutrition, and sleep. If those three things aren’t dialed in, athletes aren’t going to recover regardless of how many recovery tools you own. The hardest one to manage is sleep because it’s the only thing we can’t directly monitor once athletes leave the building.”

Drew Lukes

“I wholeheartedly agree. It’s not the coolest or the sexiest thing, but it’s the most effective. Sleep continues to be a struggle, especially with college athletes.”

Elva Salcido

“We’ve tried to educate athletes by gamifying recovery. Different recovery behaviors earn points, helping athletes understand that a protein shake shortly after practice may provide a greater recovery benefit than immediately getting a massage. The goal is to educate athletes on why they’re using each recovery strategy instead of simply following trends.”

Dr. John DeWitt

“There’s not one recovery modality that works for everyone. Some athletes prefer cold tubs, others massage, others naps. The important part is giving athletes options and encouraging them to consistently do something that prepares them for the next day.”

Recovery Optimization - Key Recommendations for Teams

* Prioritize sleep, hydration, and nutrition above recovery technologies.

* Individualize recovery modalities.

* Educate athletes about why recovery matters.

* Use recovery technology to complement—not replace—the fundamentals.

* Consider gamification to improve athlete adherence.

4. Nutrition

Dr. John DeWitt

“The key is making nutrition available. The easier it is for athletes to grab quality food, the better chance they’ll actually eat it. We spend a lot of time educating athletes …

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This week we have the honor to interview again a group of sports performance executives to talk about the latest trends in the world of sports performance and rehabilitation.

* Darcy Norman, the director of performance, Chicago Fire FC (MLS).

* Michael Messer, the head of rehabilitation, Nashville SC (MLS).

* Felix Proessl, Sr. Director of Sport and Data Science at the Colorado Rapids (MLS)

* Karam Al Hamdani , the director of sports medicine and head athletic therapist at CF Montreal (MLS).

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

* Heat Adaptation & Cooling Strategies: As matches are increasingly played in hot and humid conditions, what are the most effective heat adaptation and cooling strategies you’ve seen or implemented? Which interventions have the strongest scientific evidence behind them, and which are more hype than reality?

* Hydration Breaks in MLS: MLS includes hydration breaks during matches. From a sports science perspective, how much do these breaks actually help with player performance, recovery, and safety? Beyond hydration, do they provide meaningful opportunities for coaches to reset tactics or influence the flow of the game?

* Cardiovascular Health in Soccer: Player cardiac health has become an increasingly important topic. How should clubs approach cardiovascular screening and heart rate monitoring throughout the season? With initiatives like MLS’s partnership with Athletic Heart, where do you see the biggest opportunities to improve player safety and performance?

* Wearable Technology & GPS Limitations: GPS systems have become standard across professional soccer, but what are their biggest limitations? Where do they fall short when it comes to understanding player workload, fatigue, or readiness?

* The Next Generation of Performance Metrics: New technologies—including solutions from companies like ADI—are aiming to provide more objective measures of performance and physiological stress. What gaps do these technologies address, and how do you see them complementing or replacing traditional GPS-based metrics over the next few years?

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Darcy, Karam, Felix and Michael:

Q1. Heat Adaptation & Cooling Strategies

Darcy Norman

“It’s really about building up your core temperature and your skin temperature so the body adapts to performing in those conditions. In team sports it’s much more challenging than in individual sports because of all the variables you have to manage. Teams that train in hot, humid environments naturally adapt, while clubs in cooler climates have to be much more intentional about creating those adaptation opportunities.”

“The preparation to play in the heat is all about cooling strategies. You’re trying to get your core temperature as low as possible before kickoff so you delay that heating effect. That could be cooling vests, cold plunges, slushies, cold towels on the neck, or cooling again at halftime. There isn’t one magic solution—it’s about combining several strategies.”

Mike Messer

“Ultimately, what’s most successful is what the player will actually do. We’re seeing much more individualization within the team environment. It’s about finding what a player actually likes—whether it’s a particular electrolyte drink, cooling strategy or recovery method—because the best intervention is the one they’ll consistently adopt.”

Felix Proessl

“There’s a tremendous amount of variability in how much athletes sweat—not just the volume, but the sodium concentration as well. Understanding each athlete’s sweat profile allows you to individualize hydration and electrolyte replacement rather than treating every player the same.”

Karam Al Hamdani

“We’re not reinventing the wheel. We take a strategic approach. Once the temperature reaches a certain threshold, our pre-cooling protocol automatically starts. The nutritionist prepares the slushies, the players know exactly what they’re expected to do, and because we practice it consistently in training, it becomes very easy to implement on match day.”

Karam Al Hamdani (On the use of Pickle Juice)

“There’s really no point taking pickle juice at halftime. You want to take it when you actually feel a cramp coming on. The science suggests it’s the vinegar that creates the sensory response, so timing is important if you’re hoping to get the benefit.”

Q2. Hydration Breaks in MLS

Darcy Norman

“Any time you can take a break from being physically active, it helps recharge your systems. It gives players an opportunity to rehydrate, refuel, recover, and reset mentally and tactically. The flip side is that if your team has momentum, it can interrupt that flow, so it’s something every team has to prepare for.”

Felix Proessl

“We’ve seen momentum shifts after hydration breaks, particularly at the World Cup, where teams have clearly used those moments to make tactical adjustments. From a sports science perspective, we also know that even as little as two percent dehydration reduces performance, so from an athlete’s perspective those breaks are only beneficial.”

Karam Al Hamdani

“Anything above about two percent dehydration starts reducing power output. For a striker who relies on explosive sprinting, that can literally be the difference between getting to the ball first or missing the opportunity entirely. That’s why hydration breaks are so important.”

Mike Messer

“Our coaches definitely appreciate the opportunity to make quick interventions. Maybe it’s not the entire team listening, but if there are two or three players who need a small tactical adjustment, it’s much easier than trying to shout instructions across the field.”

Q3. Cardiovascular Health in Soccer

Karam Al Hamdani

“The MLS has done a phenomenal job with its partnership with Athletic Heart. The league has created a very stringent decision tree that clubs have to follow before a player can be cleared. It starts with an ECG, progresses to echocardiograms if necessary, and if anything remains abnormal, additional testing is required before participation.”

“Early recognition, being prepared and practicing emergency scenarios are just as important as screening. We practice these situations regularly because the more you rehearse them, the easier it becomes if you’re ever faced with a real-life cardiac emergency.”

Darcy Norman

“Everybody would love better monitoring technology because we all want more consistent ways to measure internal load and heart rate during training. If there were better technology that worked reliably in the soccer environment, it could really help us monitor players and potentially identify issues earlier.”

Felix Proessl

“Screening is by far the most helpful way of approaching this right now. Ideally we’d have better in-training monitoring methods, but until that technology exists, continuing to improve screening protocols is the best way to evolve player safety.”

Q4. Wearable Technology & GPS Limitations

Felix Proessl

“GPS has become so common in our sport that we’re starting to mistake quantitative information for qualitative conclusions. A player might accumulate 800 meters of high-speed running, but that could come from pressing actions, recovery runs or even goal celebrations. Without context, those numbers can mean completely different things.”

Darcy Norman

“GPS is really just a proxy for work. It’s not the full picture because there are a lot of things happening that aren’t being measured. Sometimes we start treating the numbers as gospel and making hard decisions based solely on those metrics, when in reality we need to remember they’re only one piece of the puzzle.”

“Linking the mechanical workload from GPS directly to video gives you a much more holistic picture. You can actually see why a player produced a certain workload instead of just looking at a number, and that context makes much better decisions possible.”

Mike Mess…

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This week we had the honor to interview again Dr. Ron Dick, associate professor of sports marketing at Duquesne University in the school of business. Ron also worked for 20 years in sports, including 15 years in the NBA with the Sixers and the Nets, and then five years in the NCAA.

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on:

* MLB All Star game,

* MLB: second half of season, who win, why a lock out. Looming strike.

* NFL training camps open.

* College football: who is favorite, what is 5 in 5 years rule.

* NBA draft and trades, NBA Summer League.

* 2026 Soccer World Cup: FIFA to make $13B from the 2026 World Cup. Controversies

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Ron located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Ron:

Q1. MLB All-Star Game

“Philadelphia did a great job handling the draft and also handling the All-Star Game, the Home Run Contest, the Future Game—everything they did.

Philadelphia really showcased itself well.” He also highlighted one of the biggest stories from the festivities: “Jordan Walker won the Home Run Contest and the $1 million prize. His salary this year is just under $800,000, so he actually made more money winning the Home Run Contest than he’ll make playing potentially 162 games this season.”

Q2. MLB: Second Half of the Season, Playoff Race & Looming Lockout

“As we turn the page to the second half, it’s really hard to make the playoffs in the National League. We have eight teams at .500 or better, with the Dodgers, Brewers and Atlanta leading, while the Cubs, Phillies, Miami, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Arizona, San Diego and Washington are all fighting for those final playoff spots.”

Looking beyond this season, Dr. Dick warned of major labor issues: “We have a lockout looming. The players do not want a salary cap—they will not sign anything that has one. The owners will not sign anything that doesn’t have one. I don’t know that we’re going to have a season come spring training.”

He added, “The owners also want to reduce the draft from 20 rounds to 12 and eliminate drafting high school players. The players want a salary floor but they do not want a salary ceiling. Player service-time manipulation continues to frustrate players, so we’ve definitely got a major problem looming.”

Q3. NFL Training Camps Open

“Training camps begin July 28 for most NFL teams.”

Dr. Dick also pointed to the NFL’s growing global footprint: “We now have 10 countries hosting NFL regular-season games. Germany gets its first regular-season game, Australia gets its first, and for the first time the Steelers and Saints will play a regular-season game in Paris. The Eagles will also play Jacksonville in London. The NFL continues expanding internationally in a very significant way.”

He also noted the league’s soaring franchise values: “The Seattle Seahawks just sold for nearly $9.7 billion. It’s safe to say virtually every NFL franchise is worth $10 billion or will be shortly.”

Q4. College Football: Favorites & the New “5-in-5” Rule

“Ohio State is my preseason No. 1, followed by Texas, Notre Dame, Oregon and Georgia.”

Beyond the rankings, Dr. Dick believes the sport’s biggest development is the new eligibility rule: “The ‘five-and-five’ rule is a wonderful new rule. From graduation—or your 19th birthday—you have five years to play. There’s no more redshirting. If you get injured, you lose that year. I think it’s a wonderful idea. No more 27- or 28-year-old quarterbacks playing against 18-year-olds. It just doesn’t make sense.” He also observed the continued financial arms race in college athletics: “The money just keeps growing.”

Q5. NBA Draft, Trades & Summer League

“For LeBron, I’d narrow it down to four destinations: Golden State, Cleveland, Miami and Philadelphia. He wants to get on a dream team, and I think the Sixers might be the way to go.”

On Victor Wembanyama, Dr. Dick praised his decision to prioritize winning: “Wemby didn’t sign the Supermax. He saved the Spurs about $50 million by taking the max instead. It reminds me of Tom Brady taking less so the Patriots could build a better roster around him.”

He also contrasted the NBA’s labor relations with MLB’s: “The NBA has Basketball Related Income (BRI), where 51% of league revenues go to player salaries. Grow the revenues and the players get paid. MLB could learn a lot from the NBA because they seem to have much better harmony with their players.”

Regarding the surprising Jaylen Brown trade, he added: “It hasn’t bled out yet, but there has to be something personal between the coach, GM or owner. Hall of Fame-caliber players don’t usually get moved unless something significant is happening behind the scenes.”

Q6. 2026 FIFA World Cup: Record Revenue & Controversies

“FIFA has been a huge success. Stadiums have been running at about 98% capacity. Everyone talked beforehand about expensive ticket prices, but the market found its level, prices adjusted and fans showed up.”

He added that the commercial performance has been unprecedented: “The television ratings were through the roof, especially in Spain, and they shattered U.S. television records as well. The tournament generated more television and ticket revenue than ever before, surpassing even the 1994 World Cup.”

On controversies, Dr. Dick noted FIFA’s strict commercial policies: “If you don’t pay FIFA, they don’t acknowledge you. They wouldn’t call it AT&T Stadium—they simply called it Dallas Stadium.”

Addressing the political controversy involving the U.S. team, he said, “Any time politics collide with sports, we have a problem.” Referring to the overturned red card against the United States, he added, “I thought the red card was a little harsh, but once it was reversed, it got everybody fired up. In the end, Belgium won fair and square, 4-1.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Bryce Murphy, the Director of performance science and innovation, at the IMG academy, a premier sports-focused boarding school and training institution in Florida that combines college-preparatory academics with elite athletic development across multiple sports. IMG Academy also focuses on student lifestyle with leadership and character development.

Bryce Murphy is the Director of Performance Science and Innovation at IMG Academy in Florida, where he leads a team of five performance scientists, two performance analysts, and one PhD student supporting roughly 1,700 student-athletes across 12 sports. His path into sports science was nonlinear: he began college on an academic scholarship studying athletic training, pivoted to pre-med/pre-physical therapy, and ultimately found his calling in strength and conditioning, earning his CSCS and working as a personal trainer. A move to Minnesota led him into coaching, including a stint with Minnesota United in the NPSL and being named Minnesota’s competitive boys’ soccer coach of the year in 2018, while he served as a teaching assistant and pursued sports science research at the University of Minnesota under mentors including Tyler Bosch and Cal Dietz.

Pictures: Bryce Murphy with soccer legend Thierry Henry (Left) and Mo Wagner (Orlando Magic/NBA, right).

He then completed a fellowship with US Ski and Snowboard in Park City, Utah, working alongside biomechanist Bill Sands, before joining the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s performance team to help build out the early version of what became the Athlete360 monitoring system. From there, he spent three seasons as an applied sports scientist with the Orlando Magic, taking on additional strength and rehab coaching responsibilities at various points, before moving to IMG Academy to help build out its athlete management system. He stepped into his current director-level role a little over a year ago.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Bryce located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Bryce:

Q1 – His Career journey:“I’ve never been afraid to pivot, and I’ve always been really curious.”“I took a course in strength and conditioning my senior year of undergrad, and I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do — I want to train athletes.’”On his mentor in Minnesota: “He told me, ‘You need to learn how to code. You need to take all these biostatistics courses.’”On building the first athlete-monitoring systems for Team USA: “It was really just the three of us typing away in that office, piecing it together with Tableau and R scripts.”On getting the call that led to the Orlando Magic job: “Dave Tenney said to me, ‘I talked to two different people, and they both recommended you.’ We chatted for about 30 minutes, and then he asked when I could come down to Orlando for an interview.”

Q2 – His Current role at IMG Academy:“There’s no typical day, given the scale of this place — we have 12 sports now, more than 80 teams, roughly 1,700 student-athletes, and about 150 to 200 coaches.”“My team has five performance scientists, two performance analysts, and one PhD student. Together, that’s our Performance Science and Innovation Group.”“You don’t necessarily learn leadership skills in grad school — you have to go seek them out.”

Q3 – His Athlete development philosophy:“There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. It’s about asking the right question and implementing the right plan at the right time for that athlete.”“We’ve broken it down into roughly five stages an athlete can fit into, and we build their environment around learning optimally at that stage.”“The challenge can’t be too easy, but it can’t be too hard either, or the athlete gets discouraged. Finding that fine line is the goal.”

Q4 – Innovation and technology:“AI is a key unlock for everyone, in any field — the ability to build rapidly at scale.”“If you’d told me four years ago that I could describe what I wanted to an LLM and it would build it for me, I’d have said you were crazy.”“It’s the old adage: garbage in, garbage out. We’re revamping our standard operating procedures to make sure our data is clean before it ever reaches our AI models.”“At our scale, it’s nearly impossible for a human to track everything — but these systems unlock the ability to make better decisions.”

Q5 – Integrating training, rehab, nutrition, and mental prep:“It starts with the human loop — every discipline is making decisions they believe are best for their group.”“We run what we call the pod model: every week, leaders from each discipline come together, guided by shared dashboards, so everyone can see what everyone else is working on. There’s no lack of transparency.”

Q6 – Common mistakes young athletes make:“There are two main mistakes: the first is no recovery — not leaving space for your mind and body to adapt.”“The second is reps without purpose. Taking a thousand uncontested shots doesn’t help once you already have the technique down — there’s no challenge, no defender, nothing forcing you to adapt.”“Skipping recovery and doing reps without purpose — it’s almost a waste of time.”

Q7 – The future of sports science:“The age of information is coming to an end. Everything will live on the computer and be readily available.”“The traits to cultivate are open-mindedness, curiosity, elite communication, and honesty — with yourself and with the people you’re working with.”“Once we know everything about an athlete, the real question becomes: how do you build the habits that create consistency over time?”“Computers will know everything about your athletes. The real differentiator will be EQ — how well you build relationships and communicate.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Victor Bergonzoli, ceo of SportsEdTV, a leading global sports education platform that provides free, world-class instructional videos, expert-led blogs, and coaching resources to athletes, coaches, and parents.

SportsEdTV is a global sports education platform that provides free, expert-led instructional content for athletes, coaches, parents, and sports enthusiasts. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Miami, the company offers video and written instruction across more than 30 sports, covering technical skills, tactics, strength and conditioning, nutrition, and mental performance. The platform features coaching from world-class athletes and coaches, many with Olympic, world championship, and professional-level experience. SportsEdTV reports more than 1 million social media followers, content consumption in every country worldwide, and partnerships with organizations such as FIBA China and SHAPE America. Its growing library includes thousands of instructional videos and articles designed to make high-quality sports education accessible to participants of all ages and skill levels.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Victor located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Victor:

Q1. Can you tell us a little about your background and the experiences that led you to create SportsEdTV?

From Elite Performance to Mass Participation

“My first venture was Dartfish. We started that in 1999, and as you know, Dartfish has been very active in video analysis and video solutions for teams and Olympic programs. Over seventy percent of the medals won were won by people using Dartfish. In 2017, I was approached by my partner, Robert Mazzucchelli, and eventually became CEO in 2020. The reason I saw the progression from Dartfish to SportsEdTV was that I wanted to help the masses. I went from helping teams at the very high level—college, Olympic athletes, some high schools—to helping everybody: coaches, parents, and athletes. That’s the switch I made.”

A Mission Bigger Than Winning Medals

“I was helping Olympians win medals. What I really wanted to do next was help people live healthier lives. Sports education shouldn’t only be available to elite athletes. It should be available to every coach, every parent, and every athlete who wants to improve.”

Q2. What gap in the market were you trying to solve when you launched SportsEdTV, and what is the core mission of the company today?

The Lacrosse Story That Started It All

“My son came to me when he was six years old and said, ‘Dad, I want to play lacrosse.’ I’m from Switzerland—what do I know about lacrosse? So I went online looking for videos because I wanted to work with him in the backyard. I found videos with millions of views and sent them to his coach. The coach said, ‘Don’t do that. That’s really bad instruction.’ I was shocked. There were millions of views, but no way to know whether the content was actually good. That was the moment I realized there was a real problem.”

Creating a Trusted Brand in Sports Instruction

“When we started SportsEdTV, everybody with a phone had become an expert. You had people with millions of followers and people with five followers, but nobody knew what content was actually good. What surprised us most was that there wasn’t a single trusted brand leading the sports instruction market. We looked at that and said, ‘This is amazing. We are going to become the leading brand.’”

Expert-Led Content as the Foundation

“We decided that if we were going to do this, we would do it the right way. We brought in the best coaches—people who either played or coached at the highest level. If you’re teaching a crossover in basketball, why not learn from Tim Hardaway Sr., the player who invented it? Our goal was to create one place where people know that everything they watch and read is expert-driven and expert-recommended.”

Q3. What unique value does SportsEdTV provide, and what makes it different from traditional sports learning resources?

Built Around What People Actually Need

“We don’t create content in a vacuum. We started by doing extensive research on what people were actually searching for online. We looked at what parents needed, what coaches needed, and what athletes needed. Then we created content to answer those needs. We focused on solving eighty percent of the questions people had before building out the rest of the library.”

Quality and Credibility Matter

“We have more than 800 videos and more than 1,800 blogs and articles. Every video was shot in cinema quality using NBC crews, multiple cameras, scripting, and world-class coaches. We created the content from A to Z with experts. So when someone comes to SportsEdTV, they don’t have to wonder if the content is good or bad. They know it’s been created by people who have competed and coached at the highest levels.”

A Safe Platform for Families

“SportsEdTV is a very safe platform. We don’t put gambling ads, vaping ads, smoking ads, or anything inappropriate around our content. Parents know that if they send their kids to SportsEdTV, they’re going to find educational content, not distractions.”

Q4. What are the typical user personas at SportsEdTV?

Coaches, Athletes, and Parents

“The personas are coaches, athletes, parents—really any age group. Parents who want to help their kids improve use the platform. Coaches use it to discover drills and coaching methods. Athletes use it to improve their own performance. We serve all three audiences simultaneously.”

Everyday Athletes Matter Too

“We’re not only focused on kids who want athletic scholarships. If you play tennis, golf, pickleball, or any sport recreationally, you still want to improve. You want to beat your brother-in-law or your friends. People are competitive by nature, and we help those athletes improve too.”

A Truly Global Audience

“It’s global. On social media, it’s everywhere in the world. We have sports like Taekwondo where we have more than 181,000 Instagram followers. Countries like Brazil and Iran consume our content. On the website, North America is our largest audience, but on social media we truly have a worldwide community.”

Q5. What are the big brands and organizations SportsEdTV is working with?

Building Value Through Strategic Partnerships

“Today, before we create content in a new sport, we look for partners. In tennis, for example, we work with Volkl. They sponsor the content, and their products become part of the storytelling. It’s not traditional advertising. It’s authentic integration.”

Partnerships That Expand Reach

“We have a partnership with the Racket Sports Professional Association, and together we’ve brought partners like Volkl into the ecosystem. We’ve also signed an agreement with SHAPE America, which represents 200,000 physical education teachers.”

Validation from Major Organizations

“The videos we produce have been used by FIBA, i9 Sports, and Chicago Public Schools. That’s important because it validates the quality of what we’re creating and shows that leading organizations trust our content.”

Q6. Can you walk us through the business model and how you balance accessibility with sustainability?

Free Access, Long-Term Value

“First of all, SportsEdTV is free. We are not charging anything. We invested millions of dollars creating the content, building the platform, and building the community because we believed sports education should be accessible.”

Rejecting Traditional Advertising

“We didn’t want traditional advertising interrupting the learning experience. We didn’t want someone watching a sports instruction video and suddenly seeing an ad for soap or some unrelated product. Instead, we wanted partners that naturally fit within sports and education.”

Education Creates Stronger Brand Connections

“When you help a parent help their child, there is …

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Felix Proessl, Sr. Director of Sport and Data Science at the Colorado Rapids, an MLS team.

Felix Proessl is the Senior Director of Sport and Data Science for the Colorado Rapids (MLS), where he leads the club’s sports science, performance analytics, athlete monitoring, and data-driven decision-making initiatives across the first team, second team, and academy. Originally from Germany, Proessl played collegiate soccer in the United States before earning his Master’s degree at Colorado State University, where he conducted research in the Integrative Neurophysiology Lab focused on fatigue, performance, and human movement.

He later completed a PhD in Rehabilitation Science at the University of Pittsburgh, studying the neuromuscular and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying skill acquisition, fatigue, and athletic performance. During his time at Pittsburgh, he worked closely with the men’s soccer program and subsequently served as Director of Sports Science for the university’s athletic department, helping scale performance and sports science practices across multiple teams. His expertise spans sports science, performance analytics, athlete development, and the application of data and emerging technologies to optimize performance in elite sport.

You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with Felix located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with Felix:

Q1. Tell me about your background.

“I grew up in Germany playing soccer there. My journey really started to pick up when I decided to leave Germany and go to the U.S. to play collegiate soccer. I was fortunate to have that opportunity and really enjoyed being in the U.S. The excitement around sports and the interest in research were very attractive to me, so I decided to stay after completing my undergraduate degree.

I was always curious about the cognitive and perceptual aspects of sport just as much as the physical aspects. At Colorado State University, I joined the Integrative Neurophysiology Lab and spent two years trying to better understand the neuromuscular mechanisms of fatigue, while also working with the women’s soccer team because I never wanted to lose touch with the applied side of sport.

I then completed my PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, where our lab focused on understanding what happens both in the brain and muscle when we get better at something, and how that is impacted by factors like fatigue and sleep deprivation. Afterward, I became Director of Sports Science at the university before eventually joining the Colorado Rapids, where I’m now in my third season as Senior Director of Sport and Data Science.”

Q2. Can you tell me about your role in your club? What does your typical day look like?

“When I was first hired, my focus was creating the infrastructure—building a database, an athlete management system, dashboards, centralizing data streams, and creating processes that would allow data to become part of our decision-making process.

But it’s one thing to give people access to data and dashboards; it’s another thing to ensure that information is actually used in decision-making. Since then, my role has evolved into being more of a strategic decision-maker as part of the larger coaching and support staff.”

“A typical day starts with high-performance meetings and meetings with the coaching staff where we finalize the training session, discuss player health status, and incorporate information such as wellness reports. Then I’m out on the field collecting information through GPS, body-weight monitoring, and other performance metrics.

After training, the bulk of my work begins with processing and reporting that information, communicating it back to coaches, and helping inform how we train, how much we train, and how we design future sessions. We essentially sit between the performance and medical side of the organization and the coaching side.”

“Another important part of my role is making sure that what we do with the first team becomes the gold standard throughout the club. We apply the same profiling and testing models to the second team and academy, allowing us to project player development and better understand when young players are ready to transition into the first-team environment.”

Q3. What is your approach towards sports science, innovation, and training?

“I firmly believe that sports science is almost a high-performance philosophy more than anything else. To me, sports science is the application of the scientific method to solve problems in a professional sporting environment.

Because of that, it can’t happen in a vacuum or a silo. It touches medical, nutrition, performance, and technical areas, and it requires transdisciplinary collaboration. Everybody needs a shared understanding of the processes and workflows that ultimately lead to better decisions.”

“I think it’s important that these processes are data-informed, not data-driven. We collect information and incorporate it into the decision-making process, but we always have to weigh it in the context of uncertainty and understand what we’ve measured versus what we may not have measured.

The most important thing is context. That’s where collaboration with coaches becomes critical. Decisions shouldn’t happen in isolation.”

“Innovation, to me, is being critical of existing beliefs. It’s applying the scientific method to challenge assumptions and asking whether something is actually true in the environment where we’re applying it. That’s where innovation occurs—understanding there’s a gap, filling it with knowledge, and through collaboration nudging the field forward.”

Q4. How do you see AI impacting the work of practitioners in the coming years?

“I think AI is an extremely powerful method to enhance productivity, increase efficiency, and automate processes that occur on a day-to-day basis in our environment. AI functions best with large datasets, strong contextual information, and standardized questions that occur repeatedly over time.”

“I don’t think AI is going to replace people because many of the questions we face in sport are too variable and volatile. The human will always be needed to gauge the uncertainty of the model and apply rational thinking to it.”

“Where AI is helping practitioners right now is by adding new processing pipelines to existing technologies. Optical tracking is a great example. We’re now able to derive a whole host of new metrics from video and paint a much richer contextual picture.

We don’t just know how much players run anymore—we understand the phase of play, the location of the ball, the behavior of opponents, and other contextual factors.”

“In the end, these technologies are only a means to derive metrics. The effective incorporation and implementation of that information requires collaboration with actual decision-makers. There needs to be someone capable of digesting those outputs, understanding their uncertainty, and incorporating them into day-to-day workflows.”

Q5. If you had unlimited resources (funding, staff), which sports tech solution would you build? Why?

“Given my background and my passion for complex sports, I would want to build something that allows us to dive much deeper into the neurophysiological processes that underpin performance.

Sport is fundamentally a perception-action coupling activity. Whether you decide to move, sprint, pass, or shoot begins with recognizing an opportunity before the physical action ever takes place.”

“We have a tremendous number of tools to understand the muscular and fitness capacities of athletes, but relatively little insight into the earlier part of the process—which arguably may be even more important.

Ideally, we would develop better ways to quantify how athletes perceive information, make decisions, and recognize opportun…

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Today we have the honor to interview Spencer Posey, the Military & Human Performance Lead for Garmin. Spencer will also be speaking at the Austin Peay State University Health and Performance Summit on October 17, 2026.

You can check out the agenda of the Austin Peay State University Health and Performance Summit, get your ticket for the summit by clicking on the link below and select register now:

For sponsorship information, attendees can visit the event website or contact Dr. Tim Leszczak, Chair of the APSU Health and Human Performance Department, at [email protected].

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Spencer:

Q1. Background & Career Journey

“I clawed myself out of that hole through these principles of taking care of oneself in a holistic manner. I put effort into what I put into my body, into my mind, how I trained myself, how I slept — and that investment in those areas helped me claw out of that space.”

“As I read that historical document — Field Manual 7-22 — I realized that the program the US Army was trying to implement, essentially I had done in my own private practice in industry and academics for the better part of a decade.”

“The mission and vision of Garmin is they exist to help people beat yesterday. And that simple sentence aligns with my entire life’s work. Hands down.”

“When I came back in at the US Army, my sole goal was to give. Give whatever I could to the institution.”

Q2. Role at Garmin Health

“My role is part relationship building, part strategic vision and direction for the organization, and part translating science into real world application for different opportunities.”

“Across a week, I can work with military organizations, researchers, tactical professionals, strength and conditioning coaches, and also healthcare providers to help them understand what problems they’re actually trying to solve, what questions they’re trying to answer, and what interventions they can make based off those data points.”

Q3. Training, Recovery & Rehabilitation

“I see the biggest change in the space going from reactive decision-making to proactive.”

“The best organizations are finding which metrics — and I’m gonna say just a couple, not all of them — they zoom in on a couple metrics that they find have the strongest correlation or causation to their genre of people or population, and they focus on those.”

“Context matters. When organizations start to understand that all this data matters, but then having the individual of whose data you’re taking provide the context of what goes on the 23 hours outside of training — that’s where the magic happens.”

“With heart rate variability, there’s a lot of folks that haven’t dove into what that means over time, and they’re looking at it in a very acute sense. In reality, you need to look at the trend and then also the variation over time as the two most important variables.”

Q4. Innovation & Future Trends

“In the next three to five years I see a ton happening around individualized and contextualized decision support — the use of AI, or language models, to provide that contextualized specific intervention for the individual.”

“I think we already have more data than we need. It’s about creating a better interpretation or educating folks on how to interpret that data. Right now with the amount that we have, I would say it’s a lot of noise. So how do we create a strong signal versus so much noise with data?”

“I see a merger of many different tools that build a larger ecosystem. Wearables are absolutely an amazing tool, but they’re not the only tool for organizations to be able to implement change.”

“Imagine if you go to your doctor and he pulls up your data and says, ‘Actually, you’re moving 30% less than last year. You’re sleeping 15% less. I would say you’re not doing great.’ That’s being able to zoom out and look at some of those larger things — looking at health in a longitudinal way instead of just snapshots.”

Q5. Health & Performance Summit at Austin Peay State University

“My first goal anytime I speak is to give practical application for everybody that’s there. How to actually apply what they’ve heard is generally the gap.”

“The athlete narrative is what got human performance optimization off the ground within the United States military. But that narrative is not gonna be what’s gonna take us to the next level. It got us off the ground, but it’s not what war fighting is.”

“When you look at what a war fighter is asked to do — in the face of imminent death — it is nowhere close to what an athlete does on a field. Not only is it a higher stress environment, there are different skills required, a different cognitive approach.”

“I’m going to show what from the athlete preparatory approach has worked and will continue to work — and what will now fail us as we’ve gotten the momentum we need with these programs. We no longer need to build leader engagement around it; now we need to fund these programs, operationalize them, and focus actually on the war fighter.”

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Today we are hosting a new group podcast with Dr. Tim Leszczak and Dr Bill Burgos to discuss Austin Peay State University Health and Performance Summit that you are organizing, which will take place on Saturday, October 17, 2026, at the APSU Health Professions Building in Clarksville, Tennessee.

Participants:

* Dr. Tim Leszczak is the Department Chair and Professor in the Department of Health and Human Performance at Austin Peay State University.

* Dr Bill Burgos is an adjunct professor at Austin Peay State university. He is also an experienced NBA Strength & Conditioning coach. He has worked for many NBA teams (Orlando Magic, NY Knicks, Timberwolves..). He also worked in the MiLB with the Pittsburgh pirates. He is also the CEO of LONU a next generation AI based nutrition platform.

You can check out the agenda of the Austin Peay State University Health and Performance Summit, get your ticket for the summit by clicking on the link below and select register now:

For sponsorship information, attendees can visit the event website or contact Dr. Tim Leszczak, Chair of the APSU Health and Human Performance Department, at [email protected].

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Tim and Bill:

Q1. To start, can each of you briefly share your background in sports and what led you to become involved with this summit?

Dr. Bill Burgos

“My career started at Austin Peay as a student athletic trainer, which exposed me to sports medicine and eventually strength and conditioning. That path led me from professional baseball to the NBA, where I spent more than a decade as a head strength coach. While my background is heavily rooted in basketball, I see myself as a human performance coach working with athletes across all sports. One of the experiences that had the greatest impact on my career was attending a summit, where I met a strength coach who helped open the door to my next opportunity. That experience showed me the value of networking and professional development, and it’s one of the reasons I wanted to help create this summit.”

Dr. Tim Leszczak

“My path into sports performance was somewhat unconventional. I originally studied accounting, but I eventually found my passion in fitness, wellness, and campus recreation while working at the University of Arkansas. I’ve always been interested in exercise, training, and nutrition, and that passion evolved into a deeper interest in human performance. Today, I teach foundational concepts related to sport performance and movement science at Austin Peay, helping prepare the next generation of professionals in the field.”

Q2. What inspired the creation of this summit, and what are the key goals you’re hoping to achieve for attendees?

Dr. Bill Burgos

“The summit was inspired by both my own career journey and a gap I noticed between what students learn in college and what they encounter in the workforce. While Austin Peay does an excellent job preparing students academically, I realized that many students still needed opportunities to connect with employers, understand emerging trends, and see how performance concepts are applied in the real world. Through this summit, we want to expose students and professionals to current innovations, create meaningful networking opportunities, strengthen relationships with Fort Campbell and the military community, and ultimately help attendees better understand what’s possible in their careers. More than anything, we want to make a lasting impact on students’ lives and professional development.”

Dr. Tim Leszczak

“The idea for the summit began with a desire to strengthen the connection between Austin Peay State University and Fort Campbell while creating a meaningful educational experience for a broad range of professionals. Our goal is to bring together strength and conditioning coaches, athletic trainers, physical therapists, coaches, military personnel, and students for a collaborative learning experience. We wanted to build a summit that covers the full spectrum of human performance—from mental performance and recovery to physical preparation and Olympic lifting—while providing practical information that attendees can immediately apply in their own environments.”

Q3. Can you walk us through the agenda and highlight some of the sessions, speakers, or topics that you’re most excited about?

Dr. Bill Burgos

“What excites me most about this year’s lineup is that every speaker brings a unique perspective while contributing to the broader theme of human performance. The summit blends expertise from professional sports, collegiate athletics, sports medicine, and the military, showing how these disciplines intersect and learn from one another. I’m especially excited about speakers like Dr Andy Barr, Ryan Metzger, Paul Robbins, and Sergeant Spencer Posey because each offers practical insights that can directly impact coaching, injury prevention, performance, and leadership. These are professionals I’ve learned from throughout my career, and bringing them to Austin Peay creates an incredible opportunity for attendees to gain knowledge that is both current and immediately applicable.”

Dr. Tim Leszczak

“We’ve put together what I believe is a very well-rounded and robust agenda. The day begins with Chris Dunaway of the Los Angeles Dodgers discussing innovation in performance and the importance of tailoring solutions to individual athletes rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach. From there, attendees will learn about injury prevention, recovery science, Olympic weightlifting instruction, military performance, and mental performance strategies. Personally, I’m particularly interested in the Olympic lifting and mental performance sessions because they align closely with areas where I want to continue growing professionally. Overall, the agenda was intentionally designed to provide diverse perspectives across the entire performance spectrum.”

Q4. Who is this summit designed for, and why should coaches, practitioners, students, executives, and other professionals consider attending?

Dr. Bill Burgos

“This summit is for anyone who wants to continue learning and improving, whether they’re in their first year of practice or their twentieth. Coaches, athletic trainers, sports scientists, physicians, military professionals, and students will all find value because they’ll be exposed to experts from multiple disciplines working toward the same goal: improving human performance. Throughout my career, I’ve learned that the best practitioners are constantly seeking knowledge outside their own specialty. This summit helps attendees understand how different professionals collaborate, communicate, and contribute to athlete and tactical performance, making it valuable regardless of one’s specific role.”

Dr. Tim Leszczak

“Our target audience includes strength and conditioning coaches, athletic trainers, physical therapists, coaches, students, ROTC cadets, and other professionals interested in performance and wellness. We designed the summit to be broad enough that people from different backgrounds can benefit while still being focused on practical performance topics. Whether someone is trying to expand their network, learn about new trends in the field, improve their coaching skills, or simply gain exposure to new ideas, there will be valuable takeaways throughout the day.”

Q5. There are many conferences and events in the sports industry today. What makes this summit at Austin Peay State University different, and what unique experience or value will attendees take away?

Dr. Bill Burgos

“What makes this summit unique is the combination of collegiate athletics, professional sports, and military performance all under one roof. That’s a blend you don’t often find at other events. Austin Peay’s proximity to Fort Campbell creates a natural connectio…

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Today we are hosting a new group podcast on muscle fatigue, the current practices to monitor muscle fatigue, the tools used, and what the future looks like.

Participants:

* Raphaël Ravet, Chief Commercial Officer, Myocene, a leading Belgian based sports tech company.

* João Ribeiro, Head of performance, SC Braga (Primeira Liga).

As a reminder, Myocene is a Belgium based sports technology company revolutionizing how muscle fatigue is measured and managed. Recognizing the need for objective and precise monitoring in athletic performance, Myocene has developed an innovative device that combines a sensor, stimulator, and proprietary algorithm to assess the loss of force and speed linked to muscle fatigue. In just two minutes, the device generates a comprehensive muscle fatigue index, offering clear insights into an athlete’s readiness, recovery, and overall physical condition.

By providing objective, data-driven feedback, Myocene empowers teams and coaches to make smarter decisions about training and recovery. Myocene helps identify muscular imbalances, optimize performance, and reduce the risk of overtraining. Trusted by leading sports organizations Myocene is setting a new standard in performance monitoring and athletic recovery.

João Ribeiro is a leading performance and sports science professional currently serving as Head of Performance for S.C. Braga in Portugal’s Primeira Liga. With a background in exercise physiology, high-performance training, and sports science research, Ribeiro has played a key role in optimizing athlete performance within one of Portugal’s top football clubs. He holds a PhD in Sports Sciences from the University of Porto and has combined elite applied practice with academia through lecturing and research in human performance, monitoring, and rehabilitation. Recognized for integrating data, sports science, and performance innovation into professional football, Ribeiro is widely respected for his expertise in athlete development, recovery, and performance optimization.

Picture: João Ribeiro (SC Braga)

You can watch the video interview below or you can listen to the audio interview above:

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we discussed the following topics:

Q1. Current Practices

* How do you currently define and measure muscle fatigue in your environment, and how consistent is that definition across your staff?

What are the primary tools or modalities you rely on today—and which have proven most actionable?

Q2. Decision-Making & Application

* Can you walk through how fatigue data actually influences day-to-day decisions like training load, recovery protocols, or return-to-play?

Q3. Challenges & Limitations

* Where do you see the biggest gaps or limitations in current fatigue monitoring—whether that’s accuracy, cost, athlete compliance, or interpretation?

Q4. Individualization vs. Standardization

How do you balance individualized fatigue profiles for each athlete with the need for scalable systems across an entire team?

Q5. Future Outlook

* Looking ahead 3–5 years, what do you think will fundamentally change in how we monitor and manage muscle fatigue—especially with advances in technology and data integration?

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview located at the top of this blog post.

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with João and Raphaël:

Q1. Current Practices

João Ribeiro:

“We face muscle fatigue as a multidimensional approach — neuromuscular, perceptual, performance decay. We cannot oversimplify the way we measure it. So we use objective data and subjective data — for external load we use GPS systems, and for internal load we use biochemical markers like CK, as well as subjective markers from wellness questionnaires.”

“We’re not measuring muscle fatigue itself, we are inferring about muscle fatigue. Imagine a player is doing more than he’s used to — we can assume he may be facing some fatigue. But we are always inferring, not measuring it directly. That’s why we also use Myocene and maximum voluntary contraction tests to get more objective measures of muscle status.”

Raphaël Ravet:

“The proper method to assess peripheral fatigue is by measuring this loss of force. The Myocene technology uses a combination of a force sensor, a specific neurostimulator, and an algorithm to calculate an index. When an athlete is in a rested state, the muscle produces a force and the system computes an index.”

“When there is muscle fatigue, the muscle responds less to a given stimulation — in this case produced by the neurostimulator of the Myocene system — and therefore the index drops. We have here a specific marker of a key aspect of performance, which is muscle fatigue, and we also address something which other methods cannot: objectivity.”

Q2. Decision-Making & Application

João Ribeiro:

“We make adjustments based on that data. The player maybe cannot train at all — he’s completely out of training according to the data we have from fatigue. Or, the most common scenario, is to adapt partially the training session — he can be present in some exercises and be out for the most demanding ones.”

“We also use this data to adapt recovery strategies. If a player is too fatigued, we promote the continuity of recovery modalities, or we adapt the recovery training session itself. If players tell us they are too fatigued, our day off can even be anticipated or changed according to that — especially if the fatigue is most demanding in a mental term.”

Raphaël Ravet:

“It’s not just about completing GPS metrics or data output. Athletes need to be able to recover, resist fatigue, and sustain repeated training in order to make sure they’re truly ready to reincorporate the team. A tool like Myocene can bring that — is the athlete able to sustain and repeat that load? That’s what really matters for return to play.”

Q3. Challenges & Limitations

João Ribeiro:

“There is no gold standard — fatigue is complex, and I think that is the biggest gap. We need to use a variety of tools, which is very, very difficult. Another issue is the data noise we obtain from these measurements”.

“The overload of data is sometimes contradictory — but it’s part of the process. If fatigue is complex, we need to analyze all the data. But this interpretation, I think, is the hardest part. And in some tests, we need athlete compliance, and that really impacts the measurements.”

Raphaël Ravet:

“Thanks to the Myocene system, the player is not involved in the measurement — which gives very actionable data, because you can take a decision right away based on that. On one side we use a specific and validated method to assess fatigue, well-described in the scientific literature. And on the other side, the player is not involved, which removes the compliance issue entirely.”

“We address a key limitation of other methods: objectivity. We don’t need the player to be compliant, and we have a baseline to compare against — which is very, very valuable. That’s something João himself has confirmed he values from the Myocene system.”

Q4. Individualization vs. Standardization

João Ribeiro:

“What we do is use the same system for everyone — the protocol is standardized. But the interpretation is individualized — it’s completely different depending on each player, his profile, his responsibility in the team. Some players can cope with high levels of fatigue, even while playing, and that’s why we need to know very well the profile of the player and the way he copes with these kinds of demands.”

“There are different responses to the same load. For instance, if a player is a midfielder and he’s 80% recovered, maybe he can cope a little with the next game. But if he’s a winger and he’s only 80% recovered, maybe we don’t want to risk it — because he will be doing a lot of high intensity running in the game. So the position and profile really matter in the interpretation.”

Raphaël Ravet:

“The common point for all players is that they need to be ready on game day. They may have different capacities to resist fatigue — some fatigu…

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