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

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: Through this interview, we touched on the following topics:

* MLB playoffs

* NFL 1st week

* NHL/NBA training camps start.

* NBA Expansion: NBA going global. China, Paris, Berlin, London

* Alcaraz Vs Sinner..the new rivalry in pro tennis?

* Netflix doc on Dallas Cowboys

* College sports & the NIL

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

MLB Playoffs

“What an exciting time to be a sports fan, right? Coming up into September and October, we’ve got the Fall Classic on the horizon, and our Fighting Phils are looking strong—up 10 games in the Eastern Division. In the Central, the Brewers and Cubs are in a dogfight, while out West you’ve got the Dodgers, Padres, and Giants all jockeying for position. Over in the American League, Toronto has a narrow lead over the Yankees and Red Sox, Detroit looks like they’re going to run away and hide in the Central, and then in the West, Houston, Seattle, and Texas are all right there. It’s going to be an absolute thrilling finish, especially for some of those wild card spots. That’s what makes this time of year so incredible—you’ve got meaningful games every night, and on top of that, the NFL, NBA, NHL, and college football are all starting up. It’s one of the best stretches on the sports calendar.”

NFL 1st Week

“When the NFL kicks off, you can feel the energy—it really feels like business time. Every single week is so critical that it feels like a playoff game, because if you start losing, the season can slip away quickly. What’s fascinating this year is the international expansion—we now have seven regular season games across five different countries. We’ve already seen the Chiefs and Chargers play in Brazil, and for the first time ever we’ll have NFL games in Dublin, Ireland, and Madrid, Spain. The Steelers are going to face the Vikings in Ireland, the Dolphins will play the Commanders in Spain, and then of course London continues to be a hub with its 40th regular season game, followed by more in Berlin. This is where the growth is—the U.S. market is saturated, the NFL is the number one sport domestically, but going global is the next frontier. Just like the NBA did years ago, the NFL is laying the groundwork for international players and fans to become part of the ecosystem.”

NHL/NBA Training Camps Start

“Believe it or not, NHL training camps are already here. Rookies started on September 12th for orientation, the veterans return on the 18th, and then by September 20th we’ll already see preseason action. The regular season begins October 8th, and it’s a huge year for storylines. One of the biggest rumors swirling is around Sidney Crosby—he used to say all the time that he’d be a Penguin for life, a one-jersey guy. But lately, when asked the same question, his answers have shifted. He’s not saying it as definitively anymore, which makes you wonder: could he be traded in what might be his final chapter? Imagine him finishing his career in Montreal or Toronto, bringing a championship-starved franchise like the Maple Leafs back to glory. Toronto hasn’t won a Stanley Cup since 1967—that’s astonishing for a franchise with so much history and resources. A Crosby trade could both replenish the Penguins with picks and young players, while also giving a city like Toronto the kind of storybook ending LeBron James gave Cleveland. It’s only a rumor for now, but it’s one of the most intriguing possibilities of the season.”

NBA Expansion: Global (China, Paris, Berlin, London)

“The NBA is pushing hard on global expansion. We’re seeing preseason games like the Raptors vs. Nuggets in Vancouver, and the Suns vs. Nets in China, cultivating huge markets. Regular season games are going global too—the Pistons and Mavericks will play in Mexico City, the Magic and Grizzlies will tip off in Berlin on January 15th, and then three days later they’ll square off again in London. Everyone in the league knows that the real growth is outside the U.S.—we’ve got 325 million people here, but billions around the world hungry to see NBA basketball live. And it’s not just about the fans. Of the 450 NBA players, between 90 and 100 were born outside the U.S., and that number keeps rising. Players like Luka Dončić, Nikola Jokić, and Victor Wembanyama aren’t just participating—they’re MVP-caliber players redefining the league. The average salary in the NBA is now over $11 million, and the pipeline of international talent is only getting stronger. Basketball has become a truly global game, and the NBA is leaning into that future with these expansion moves.”

Alcaraz vs Sinner – The New Rivalry in Pro Tennis?

“We might be witnessing the birth of the next great rivalry in tennis. Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are already dominating the sport—Alcaraz just beat Sinner in the U.S. Open Final, number one vs. number two in the world. If you look at the past year, they’ve been squaring off in almost every major final, and it feels reminiscent of Nadal vs. Federer in the early days. What makes it even more compelling is what Novak Djokovic himself admitted: ‘If it goes into five sets, there’s no chance I can beat those guys.’ That’s Djokovic—the ultimate competitor—acknowledging that these young stars have surpassed him in stamina and intensity. Alcaraz, at just 20, is already being called the new Nadal because of his versatility on every surface—he can win at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, and the French. Sinner, who grew up as a skier in Italy before choosing tennis, brings a completely different style, but just as much fire. This feels like the beginning of a rivalry that could define the next decade of men’s tennis.”

Netflix Documentary on the Dallas Cowboys

“The Netflix documentary on Jerry Jones and the Cowboys was absolutely captivating—I binge-watched it straight through. It tells the story of how Jones wasn’t even supposed to own the team; Jerry Buss of the Lakers actually offered more money, but the NFL owners rejected him over his Playboy lifestyle. Jones, down to his last big drilling bet, struck oil and used the windfall to buy the Cowboys for about $90–100 million in 1989. What followed was one of the great turnarounds in sports history—hiring his college teammate Jimmy Johnson, enduring a brutal 1–15 season, then building a dynasty through the Herschel Walker trade and shrewd draft picks. But the documentary also shows the pitfalls of ego. Jones and Johnson couldn’t share the credit when they started winning, and their rift ultimately ended one of the most promising dynasties in NFL history. Imagine how many more Super Bowls Dallas could have won if they had stayed together. The film also doesn’t shy away from the mishandling of Tom Landry’s firing or Michael Irvin’s controversies, though Jones still controlled the narrative to make himself look good. Still, as someone who lived through that era, I can say it’s must-watch television for anyone who cares about the NFL’s history.”

College sports & NIL

“The only other quick thing I wanted to announce—we talk about the collectives, the whole name, image, and likeness (NIL) system that’s paying players—It doubled this year. We now have the final numbers: $1.9 billion was spent on college football players this year. That’s up from $950 million the year before, so essentially it has doubled in just one year. And I only see that number continuing to rise over time”.

“We’re only one or two games into the season, but already the top 10 is shaping up with powerhouses like Ohio State, Penn State, LSU, Oregon, Miami, Notre Dame, Texas, Georgia, Illinois, and Florida State. Locally, we were supposed to have the Backyard Brawl—Pitt versus West Virginia—on national TV at 3:30 Saturday, but because West Virginia lost at Ohio University, they flexed that game out for another matchup. Still, it’s an exciting start to the season.”

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

* Ted Rath, Director of sports performance, New Orleans Saints (NFL team).

* Roderick Moore Jr, coordinator of sports science, Pittsburgh Steelers (NFL team).

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: Through this interview, we touched on the best practices related to:

* Team culture,

* Handling adversity,

* Leadership councils,

* Their roles’ challenges,

* Underrated technologies

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 Ted and Roderick:

Q1. Team Culture

* Roderick Moore Jr: “With culture here, especially with Coach Tomlin, he does a great job establishing it and then repeating it so consistently that it becomes ingrained. One of his favorite quotes is, ‘the standard is the standard,’ and that’s the anchor for everything we do. In the offseason, he sets expectations—how we practice, how we prepare, how we approach games. Then in camp, the same message is reinforced, and in-season it gets repeated again, but tailored toward our weekly opponents. Even last year when we started 10–3 and then lost five in a row, it didn’t feel like a losing streak because the message never changed. We addressed what needed fixing, but it was always about us versus us. If we’re not locked in on assignments and execution, the opponent doesn’t matter. That consistency—echoed not just by Coach but also by our captains and leadership group—is what carries the team through both highs and lows.”

* Ted Rath:“Rod nailed it with consistency. To me, the best leaders in sports and in life have that as almost a superpower. Culture isn’t static—it’s a living, breathing organism that evolves week to week in the NFL. It’s not about what you put on a wall or graphics in the weight room—it’s about whether your actions truly match your words. The star of the team is the team, and if everyone—from the 70 players on the roster to the coaches, front office, medical and performance staff—isn’t aligned, things fall apart fast. I’ve been fortunate to see it with young head coaches like Sean McVay early on and now with Kellen Moore, and the common thread is that they keep things simple, clear, and consistent. When your captains and leadership council uphold that standard, you can literally see the culture being lived out every day.”

Q2. Handling Adversity

* Ted Rath:“Mike Tyson said it best: everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. In the NFL, adversity is constant—it could be an injury, a fourth down you don’t convert, or a losing streak that tests everybody. What I’ve found is that when you’re losing, people become more self-critical, they look inward, they ask, ‘What can I do to fix this?’ But ironically, long winning streaks can be even more dangerous because they mask underlying problems. You can sweep issues under the rug by saying, ‘We still won.’ That’s when you have to be most self-critical and brutally honest. Every week feels like its own mini-season, and how you respond to setbacks—whether it’s with open communication or recommitting to your process—is what determines if you’re going to grow or crumble under pressure.”

* Roderick Moore Jr:“Winning can cover up a lot of issues, but losing exposes everything. When you’re on a skid, it’s about being honest, identifying the root causes, and asking: are we repeating the same mistakes? Division games are a great example—you might lose to a team that knows you inside out, but when you play them again, it can’t just be about revenge. It has to be about the ‘get right’ mentality: fixing what we didn’t execute, correcting details, and making sure we’re in position to succeed. That’s how you shift the focus from being stuck in a losing streak to regaining confidence and momentum. Adversity tests everyone, but if you control what you can control, the morale and the message stay steady.”

Q3. Leadership Councils

* Roderick Moore Jr:“We rely heavily on our captains and those senior-type leaders who might not wear the title but lead by example every day. They mirror the culture we’re trying to build, and they’re the ones who make sure the message coming from Coach and staff gets lived out in the locker room. The way we do it isn’t overly formal—it’s organic and impromptu. Sometimes they meet weekly, sometimes only when an issue arises. What matters is that the communication is honest and timely. That flexibility has worked well for us because it allows leaders to step up naturally and ensures that the culture isn’t just top-down, but reinforced laterally among the players themselves.”

* Ted Rath:“The leadership council is really an extension of the head coach’s voice and the culture itself. We make sure those guys are part of key conversations early on, whether it’s travel logistics—like explaining why we leave early for a West Coast game for circadian rhythm reasons—or how we structure recovery. When the council understands the ‘why,’ they communicate it to the locker room in a way that resonates. That prevents confusion and ensures buy-in. These players are the bridge for teammates who might not feel comfortable going directly to the head coach or staff. They drive the message, they live the culture, and in the best situations, they embody it so fully that you can feel the alignment across the entire building.”

Q4. Role Challenges

* Roderick Moore Jr:“People often underestimate how much of our job is about relationships and communication. You have to wear a lot of hats—psychologist, sociologist, sometimes even family counselor. These are adults with kids, spouses, pets, and lives outside of football, and those factors affect performance. Asking, ‘How’s your family doing?’ or ‘How’s your dog?’ builds trust. When athletes know you genuinely care about them as people, not just players, they open up. That bond becomes critical when things get tough. Outsiders see the weight room and practice field, but they don’t see the conversations behind the scenes that strengthen the fabric of the team.”

* Ted Rath:“I’ve told young professionals coming into the field to consider a master’s in psychology because honestly, so much of what we do is people-driven. Communication is never good enough—we’re always working on it. Every issue that a player or staff member brings into your office is the most important thing in their life at that moment, and you have to give it the attention it deserves. Add to that the reality of the hours—missed birthdays, missed family time, constant travel—and it’s a sacrifice not just for you but for your family. Work-life balance doesn’t really exist; it’s an integration. But when you can build a family-oriented environment inside the facility, those moments help. At the end of the day, it’s about mind, body, and soul—helping athletes be better on the field and better human beings off it. That’s what makes a team special.”

Q5. Underrated Technologies

* Roderick Moore Jr:“A lot of teams use GPS to track mechanical load, but I think physiological load—the body’s response to that stress—is still undervalued. Heart rate monitoring, recovery markers, readiness—all of that tells you how the athlete is really responding. But it’s not just about collecting numbers; it’s about relationships and trust. Athletes are wary of data because they want to know: how will this help me, and how is it being used? If they believe it’s about career longevity and performance, they’ll buy in. But if you collect data and don’t apply it—or worse, you still have the same injuries—players notice that. The tech only matters if you use it to make sound, science-based decisions that actually improve outcomes.”

* Ted Rath:“There are endless technologies we can use, but one of the most underrated tools is the subjective wellness questionnaire. It’s simple, but it provides invaluable context. Asking a player, ‘How sore are you today? How did you sleep? Where are you feeling discomfort?’ opens the door to meaningful adjustments. If a player reports soreness in his quad, maybe we change his squat pattern that day. That context drives action. And sometimes, if a player is giving the same answer every day, that’s a flag too—it tells me something deeper might be going on, whether physically or mentally. The tool isn’t about the form; it’s about the conversation it sparks. When you combine technology with trust and human connection, that’s when you really get value.”

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This week we have the honor to interview a group of experts in AI Agents in elite sports to talk about the latest trends, best practices and case studies related to AI Agents in elite sports.

* Ben Levicki, AI solution architect, Cleveland Cavaliers (NBA)

* Andre Antonelli, CEO of Machina Sports., a leading AI Agent platform for sports.

* Garrett Wang, CEO of Cerbrec, a leading AI Agent platform for sports.

* Jesse White, Sr Partner Sales Manager for US Sports & Live Events, Amazon Web Services

Here are the topics that we covered during the video interview:

* Best Practices in AI Agent adoption

* AI Agent’s case studies in elite sports.

* Balancing human and AI expertise.

* Trust and Ethics

* AI Agents - Future direction

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:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Ben, Jesse, Andre and Garrett:

Q1. Best Practices in Adoption

* Andre Antonelli:“Usually it’s always a good idea to start small, ship fast, and iterate fast as well. That way you can always apply the learnings and create a feedback loop from real usage. Even if it’s just a small group of people testing inside the organization, the growth of improvements goes much higher once you have actual real users. You’re not just engineers working on it—you’re getting feedback from coaches, staff, or fans. Once you have real users, you can improve the prompts, the experience, and the agents themselves. The improvements come much faster when it leaves the engineering team and goes to the people actually using it.”

* Jesse White:“Working across so many teams, what I’ve seen is that everyone’s at a different stage of their AI journey, but the best place to start is always small and scale gradually. At Amazon we call it ‘working backwards’—you identify a pain point tied to a real business impact. That ensures the first use case you pick actually delivers value and measurable ROI. If you target the wrong problem, it’s hard to get adoption, but if you hit the right use case that truly moves the needle, you get buy-in across the organization.”

* Ben Levicki:“With the Cavaliers, we’ve really found success by creating a business-driven roadmap. It’s about prioritization and alignment—getting everyone on the same page with how an AI project will affect their KPIs and the organization as a whole. We use what we call our ‘core four’ questions: does AI enable something that wasn’t possible before, does it solve a real pain point, does it solve the problem better than traditional methods, and does it improve the user experience internally and externally? We weigh each one by impact and use that framework to prioritize projects. That way, adoption isn’t just a technical exercise—it’s organizational alignment that drives lasting impact.”

Q2. Case Studies in Elite Sports

* Garrett Wang:“We’ve had real success with contract value analysis for pro teams. Imagine negotiating an upper eight-figure contract—it’s high stakes. Our AI agent acts like a playbook for GMs and VPs. Every couple of weeks, they run updated reports on all the players they’re monitoring. The system ingests the latest information, updates valuations, and flags risks. That means when they go into negotiations—whether it’s free agency, restructuring, or a rookie extension—they’re equipped with a constantly refreshed view of player value. The AI helps mitigate risk and improves ROI on contracts that could define a franchise’s future.”

* Andre Antonelli:“From a fan engagement side, DAZN used our AI agents for multimodal gamification during the Club World Cup. The system automatically generated quizzes and posts using live statistics, historical data, and real-time news. It worked across more than ten languages, which immediately expanded reach. The ROI was twofold—time savings for studio teams who normally create that content manually, and the ability to cover far more events than they ever could before. The same technology is now being used by sportsbooks to generate content and conversational betting copilots that are always aware of the latest odds and stats. It’s a clear example of how AI agents scale human capacity.”

* Jesse White:“With AWS we’ve seen use cases across multiple sports. The NFL’s Next Gen Stats are powered by AI and ML. MLB is far ahead—teams are using AI for pitch analysis, talent ID from scouting videos, and real-time decision-making on the field. NBA teams are using AI for injury prevention, analyzing video of hip and knee flexion to flag potential injury risks before they happen. Swimming Australia uses our AI tools to optimize training and performance—helping athletes peak when it matters most, like at the Olympics. These aren’t hypothetical; they’re measurable improvements teams are already implementing.”

* Ben Levicki:“Beyond performance, AI has proven useful in unexpected areas. Our security team was struggling with managing underground parking, so we tried Perplexity’s Labs. Within two days, using no code, they built a fully functioning app to manage it. That was done by a non-technical manager, not IT. It showed us how general-purpose AI can empower people across the organization, saving budget and reducing reliance on external vendors. Sometimes the transformative case studies aren’t in the obvious places like player development—they’re in everyday operations that free up resources and time.”

Q3. Balancing Human and AI Expertise

* Jesse White:“The way we see it at AWS, AI should augment, not replace human expertise. Some people think AI should replace junior employees—that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. The reality is younger workers are often the ones leaning in hardest, using AI in their daily workflow. Experienced staff can be resistant, but the future is about balance. Let AI handle the heavy lifting—data crunching, repetitive analysis—so humans can focus on judgment, leadership, and higher-level decision-making. That’s where the real value comes.”

* Andre Antonelli:“What AI really does well is narrow the scope and surface the right data at the right time. Coaches, scouts, and doctors are drowning in data—game stats, social chatter, medical records, wearable feeds. AI organizes that chaos. But at the end of the day, especially in high-stakes decisions like health or player selection, a human expert must make the call. AI supports by reducing noise and flagging what might otherwise be missed, but it never replaces human judgment.”

* Ben Levicki:“In scouting, every scout has their own style and voice. That makes it hard to standardize reports and compare across the organization. Our AI tools help normalize those inputs and reduce data overload, especially with advanced tracking data like Hawkeye, which records 50 body joints per player at all times. AI structures that mountain of raw data into something decision-makers can actually use. But the scout’s insight still matters—the AI just helps elevate their observations into a standardized framework so leaders can act faster and with more confidence.”

* Garrett Wang:“What we’ve seen is that the best results come when AI and humans form a feedback loop. Take contract negotiations: the AI flags blind spots, trends, or inconsistencies, but the management team—who’ve been doing this for decades—can spot when something doesn’t make sense. Their feedback refines the AI. Over time, both sides improve: the AI gets smarter, and the humans get sharper insights. Remove the humans, and the AI’s value drops. Keep them together, and you get far stronger outcomes than either could deliver alone.”

Q4. Trust and Ethics

* Andre Antonelli:“We designed our platform from the start for explainability. Every output is traceable—you can see which stats, news, or data points were pulled into the context that led to that AI decision. That makes debugging possible when something goes wrong. And because some teams want tighter control, we support on-prem deployments. For sensitive data like customer or medical records, keeping AI inside your own infrastructure builds trust and compliance from day one.”

* Garrett Wang:“The first question teams ask us is always about data security. Running on AWS gives us credibility immediately, but we go further—we show where the data came from, how it was transformed, and how conclusions were reached. Raw data alone isn’t useful. What builds trust is transparency around the reasoning: how the AI connected the dots. That lets teams validate or challenge the outputs, and it builds confidence over time.”

* Jesse White:“At AWS we say security is job zero—it’s non-negotiable. Customer data stays within their environment and never flows back to model providers. With tools like Bedrock Guardrails, we filter out profanity, hate speech, sensitive data, and hallucinations. That way, AI doesn’t go rogue or make up answers. But beyond the tech, we advise teams to create regular feedback loops. Practitioners should label data and check outputs so the system gets more accurate over time. Transparency about the input, the output, and the process is what builds credibility with players and staff.”

* Ben Levicki:“Our philosophy is ‘built by you, for you.’ We start with non-technical workshops—asking stakeholders to explain in plain terms what they want, how they would do it manually, and what success looks like. Then we build guardrails to reduce variability and ensure outputs stay within expectations. One example: if the AI already knows who Evan Mobley is, we can whitelist or anonymize names to ensure bias doesn’t creep in. That kind of transparency—showing not just what the AI is doing but why—helps people trust the outputs and feel ownership of the solution.”

Q5. Future Direction

* Ben Levicki:“Five to ten years from now, I see fan engagement as the most transformed area. AI agents will unify scattered fan data and personalize every interaction—tickets, communications, even in-venue experiences. Imagine creating your own ticket package with an AI agent that knows your preferences, pulls together the best options, and buys it for you. Imagine a game-day concierge that meets you on the platform you use most and anticipates what you’ll want before you even ask. The ceiling for fan impact is massive, but it depends on whether we can centralize and unify fan data into something usable. Garbage in, garbage out still applies.”

* Jesse White:“I like to say sports should feel like airlines. When you fly, from the moment you wake up, your operating system is taken over—your flight details, when to leave, where to go, what gate. Why can’t sports be the same? On game day, your AI concierge could tell you where to park, which gate to enter, which concession stand has your favorite food, even update suggestions in real time based on traffic or game flow. Hyper-personalization will define the fan experience, whether you’re in the venue or watching from home.”

* Andre Antonelli:“The real step change will come when agents are always aware of the full sports context—live stats, news, social chatter, fan preferences. That constant ingestion builds a living brain that can power hyper-personalized fan experiences. Once agents are continuously aware and updating in real time, the number of use cases that become possible—across engagement, marketing, and operations—explodes.”

* Garrett Wang:“From our perspective, the biggest transformation will happen in business operations. Areas like risk management, recruiting, and player investment are ripe for disruption. AI won’t replace people—it will superpower them. Non-technical staff will become 10x more efficient because AI handles the complexity in the background. That means every manager, every coordinator, every back-office staff member gets augmented with superhuman capabilities, which changes the economics of running a team.”

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

* Alexi Pianosi, Head S&C coach, Colorado avalanche (NHL Team).

* Devan McConnell, High performance director, Utah Mammoth (NHL Team).

* Chris Stackpole, VP Athlete Care, NJ Devils (NHL Team).

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: Through this interview, we touched on the best practices related to:

* Data & Metrics

* ROI of Technology

* Emerging Tech

* Balancing Data with Human Observations

* Team Culture & Leadership

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 Alexi, Chris and Devan:

Q1. Data & Metrics

Devan McConnell:

“Our sports science platform is built around collecting as much relevant information as possible, but the trick is knowing which data actually matters for decision-making. On the ice, we use wearable technology to help us understand workload and intensity—things like skating volume, speed profiles, and heart rate data. In the weight room, we lean heavily on force plates and velocity-based training to track neuromuscular readiness and performance over time. More recently, we’ve incorporated technologies like the 1080 Sprint and 1080 Cables to create individualized force profiles on players. That kind of insight allows us to tailor training programs more precisely, rather than assuming a one-size-fits-all approach. It goes beyond traditional performance metrics and gives us a competitive edge in customizing how we load, recover, and develop each athlete throughout the season.”

Chris Stackpole:

“For us, the critical data isn’t just about performance output—it’s also about making sure players maintain their physical capabilities across a long, grueling season. So, we track things like muscle mass, fat mass, and even treatment frequency. Range of motion data is huge too, because when athletes start losing mobility, their risk of injury skyrockets. So it’s not always about hitting top speed or max wattage—sometimes it’s about maintaining the basics so they don’t break down. If we can catch those subtle changes early and intervene, we’re not just improving performance, we’re reducing time lost to injury.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“The challenge in hockey is that the data doesn’t always capture what’s really happening on the ice. In field sports, GPS metrics like acceleration thresholds or max velocity are easy to interpret—you sprint, you stop, you change direction. But in hockey, you’ve got gliding, edge work, contact, puck battles—none of which show up in clean data points. That creates a disconnect between testing numbers and actual game performance. So the real work for us is bridging that gap—figuring out how to connect the dots between lab-based data and the chaotic, unpredictable demands of hockey. That’s where the real edge lies.”

Q2. ROI of Technology

Devan McConnell:

“Return on investment is one of the trickiest things about sports tech. The reality is, the true payoff often comes down the road—better injury resilience two years from now, or improved development curves for young players that you won’t see until they hit their prime. But we don’t always have the luxury of waiting years to find out if something works. So we have to make decisions quickly and be pragmatic. For me, ease of use is absolutely critical. Our environment is chaotic—multiple games a week, travel, short practices—and if a piece of technology makes the workflow harder, it better be solving a problem we can’t solve any other way. Otherwise it’s just noise. If the staff can’t use it seamlessly and consistently, it’s not worth the investment.”

Chris Stackpole:

“Technology is only as good as the people using it. If the practitioners don’t really understand what it does or how to implement it properly, then you’re going to end up giving players and coaches misleading feedback. That’s dangerous, because once trust is broken, it’s hard to get it back. For me, ROI isn’t just about the money spent—it’s about accuracy, practicality, and making sure the information you provide actually improves decision-making. If it doesn’t check those boxes, then it’s not a good investment, no matter how shiny or popular the technology might be.”

Q3. Emerging Tech

Devan McConnell:

“If you look at where we are as a field, we’re pretty good at making athletes stronger, faster, and more powerful. The next big frontier, in my opinion, is recovery. For us in the Western Conference, travel is brutal—you’re dealing with time zone changes, late nights, early mornings, and long flights. The question we’re constantly asking is: how do we help players recover faster and get back to baseline more quickly? That’s where I see the next wave of innovation coming—tools and strategies that truly optimize recovery, not just for the next practice, but for long-term health and longevity.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“One of the challenges with emerging tech is that there’s always a latency period. A new device or idea comes out, but it’s not always clear how it applies to hockey right away. Hockey is such a unique sport biomechanically—things built for field sports often don’t transfer seamlessly. That’s why I think the real breakthrough won’t necessarily be some new gadget, but rather integration. Getting all the existing systems—wearables, AMS, force plates, GPS—to talk to each other and actually give us a clear, unified picture. That’s the impact tech that will really move the needle.”

Chris Stackpole:

“I think the next big leap will come in skill acquisition and decision-making. We’ve gotten so good at developing the physical qualities—strength, speed, conditioning—but hockey is ultimately about applying skills in the game. The question is: how do you maximize limited practice exposures and make players better at reading situations, making faster decisions, and executing skills under fatigue? That’s where I think tech can help us—bridging that gap between training and actual on-ice performance.”

Q4. Balancing Data with Human Observations

Chris Stackpole:

“For us, data is there to either confirm or defend. If a coach comes to me and says, ‘This player looks slow,’ we can look at the numbers and either validate that or show otherwise. It gives us an objective layer to either back up the observation or challenge it. But the point isn’t to replace the coach’s eye or the athlete’s feedback—it’s to give everyone more confidence that the decisions we’re making are grounded in reality, not just opinion.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“You always have to weigh where the subjective information is coming from. Some coaches or players you trust more than others, because their feedback tends to align with the data over time. If a veteran tells me, ‘I don’t feel right today,’ I’m probably going to trust that a lot, because usually the numbers will confirm it. But at the same time, there are players who might always say they’re tired, and you have to put that in context. So it’s always a blend—using the data to support the human side, not override it, but also not being blinded by one player’s feelings.”

Devan McConnell:

“Good sports science is both art and science. Data is incredibly valuable, but it doesn’t make decisions for us—we still have to apply context, experience, and judgment. The skill lies in knowing when to lean more on the objective side and when to trust the subjective. That’s where the best practitioners separate themselves—not in collecting the most numbers, but in knowing how to interpret them alongside what they see and hear every day.”

Q5. Team Culture & Leadership

Chris Stackpole:

“Culture, to me, is probably the single most important thing. You can have all the talent in the world, but if you don’t have shared values, accountability, and a common vision, it won’t matter. Every year we spend time not just talking about performance and rehab, but also about what kind of culture we want to build and protect. It’s not a buzzword—it’s a real driver of performance, not just for players but for staff across the entire organization.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“Culture is everything. It’s not built by one star player or one coach—it’s built by the whole organization. And it’s not just in the locker room; it shows up in the weight room, in the medical room, in how you handle adversity when things don’t go well. With a strong culture, players are more open-minded, more adaptable, and more willing to embrace new technologies and methods because they trust that everyone’s aligned. Without culture, you end up with silos, and that’s when things break down.”

Devan McConnell:

“Culture is the foundation. You can have all the motivational slogans you want, but if the organization doesn’t live up to them day in and day out, they’re meaningless. The truth is, whatever the lowest common denominator is—that’s your real culture. If even one part of the group isn’t aligned, that sets the tone. When everyone’s accountable and pulling in the same direction, that’s when you see special things happen. That’s when all the science and technology we talk about actually makes a difference, because it’s built on a foundation of trust and shared commitment.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Ciara Burgi, the director of health and performance at the Las Vegas Aces, a top WNBA team.

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: In our interview with Ciara Burgi, Head of Health and Performance for the Las Vegas Aces, we explored her professional journey and what drew her into sports performance, the scope of her role and how it evolves throughout the season, and how she manages the balance between strength and conditioning, recovery, and rehabilitation in a demanding league. We asked how her department contributes to sustaining the Aces’ championship culture, the challenges of maintaining player health across a long, travel-heavy WNBA season, and the key differences in performance management between women’s basketball and men’s leagues. Finally, we discussed her vision for the future of performance science in the WNBA over the next five to ten years.

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

Here are the quotes from the interview with Ciara:

Q1. Journey into sports performance

"My career has really been a succession of opportunities that I just said yes to. I started in strength and conditioning, but as a female I wasn’t sure what my longevity in that field would look like. So I decided to diversify, went to physical therapy school at Duke, and worked in outpatient PT for a few years. Eventually I got curious about higher-level sport—not because it was my dream to work in college or pro sports, but because I wanted to experience that environment. I ended up doing a fellowship at Duke in Division I athletics, which I loved because of the collaborative nature—you’re working with dieticians, mental health professionals, physicians, coaches, athletic trainers. After that, I joined the Houston Texans in the NFL, and later the Las Vegas Aces came calling. It wasn’t just about the director title, but about the opportunity to create a structure and culture within an organization already known for excellence. That curiosity and challenge drew me here, and now I’m in my second season with the Aces."

Q2. Role as Head of Health and Performance

"When I first arrived, it was three weeks before the season started. Honestly, it was survival mode—just all hands on deck, filling needs wherever they were. Last season was about making it through. This off-season was when we really started to build: figuring out what pieces of the staff fit, where we needed new ones, and shaping the culture. My role is both leadership and hands-on clinical, and as we’ve moved into my second year it’s become more about fine-tuning—onboarding new staff, refining systems, and making sure we’re heading the bus in the right direction. Each season feels like a cycle: first survival, then adjustment, then refinement, and eventually you get to that well-oiled machine."

Q3. Balancing S&C, recovery, and rehab

"The biggest shock moving from the NFL to the WNBA was how unpredictable the schedule is. In the NFL, you have a seven-day rhythm—Sunday games, Monday recovery, Tuesday off, Wednesday prep. In the WNBA, it’s eight games in 15 days across five cities, or 18 games in 36 days. You’re either stressed or recovering every other day. That density is the biggest challenge. So we keep our highs high and our lows low. Game days are high days—sometimes even high-minute players lift postgame just to keep the stress on the high day. Low-minute players follow a different schedule, but everything has to be individualized. With only 11 women on the roster, individualization isn’t just ideal, it’s required—because a low-minute player can suddenly become a high-minute player overnight. So every player’s stress-recovery cycle has to be carefully mapped across microcycles of 7, 10, or 12 days. It’s not easy, but it’s the only way to keep them always ready to perform."

Q4. Contributing to the Aces’ culture of excellence

"Our organization is surrounded by excellence. Our president, Nikki Fargas, has championship expectations. Becky Hammon is a champion. We have four potential future Hall of Famers on our roster. When you’re in that kind of environment, you can’t help but rise to the occasion. Mediocrity just isn’t tolerated here. At one point this season we were .500, and you would have thought we were 0–30—that’s the standard. For us in performance and health, our job is to make sure the athletes have everything they need to succeed. The culture isn’t about ‘win at all costs,’ it’s about demanding excellence in a healthy way. The belief in the locker room never wavers, even during tough stretches. That resilience, paired with high expectations, is what sustains a championship culture."

Q5. Challenges of the WNBA schedule

"The density and intensity of the WNBA schedule is nothing to take for granted. In school we learn about recovery timelines for hormones, tissues, and systems—but in this league, nothing ever fully returns to baseline when you’re playing every 48 hours or back-to-backs. So you have to throw out the rigidity of textbook ‘optimal.’ It becomes about weighing risk and reward: what’s the best low-risk, high-reward intervention we can do today that sets us up for three days or three weeks down the line? You have to zoom out, plan ahead, and know what the next 14 days look like while still being present in the moment. There’s no perfect answer, only the best decision for that stretch of time. And with a small roster and staff, we don’t have an excuse not to be individualized. If we’re not having those detailed conversations about each athlete, we’re not meeting the standard."

Q6. Differences between women’s and men’s leagues

"One of the biggest differences is roster size. In the NFL, with 53 players, individualization is limited. In the WNBA, with 11 players, it’s mandatory. The other big difference is culture. Football is very militant—yes sir, yes ma’am, follow the program. Women’s basketball is not that culture. Our players have had to make it overseas, often without resources, so they’ve become incredibly educated about their bodies and how to care for themselves. They come with strong opinions and expect collaboration. They’ll share what works for them, and they expect us to listen and meet them halfway. It’s not that they’re less disciplined, it’s that the sport’s culture is built on self-reliance and collaboration. If you come in with a dictator-style, militant approach, you won’t succeed in women’s basketball. It requires curiosity, adaptability, and respect for how the athletes have learned to survive and thrive."

Q7. Future of performance science in the WNBA

"The future isn’t just about high-budget technology. The lowest hanging fruit is still the basics—nutrition, sleep, facilities, recovery resources. Not every WNBA team even has its own practice facility or provides consistent post-game meals. We just got charter flights last year. Until the basics are equalized across the league, technology is secondary. My hope is that over the next few years, the CBA and growing resources will level the playing field so every athlete has access to those essentials. Then, once the foundation is solid, we can start layering on the advanced tech—AI-driven injury prediction, biomarker tracking, menstrual cycle monitoring, and other innovations. But if I have $100,000 right now, I’m not buying an AMS. I’m making sure our players have meals and the basics. Do the basics extraordinarily well first, then build toward the future of performance science."

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This week we had the honor to interview again a group of sports performance experts (NHL, FIFA, Ligue 1).

* Pierre Barrieu, the director of performance for the Canadian men national soccer team.

* Alexi Pianosi, the head S&C coach for the Colorado avalanche (NHL team).

* Rick Cost, the High Performance Director at l’Olympique Lyonnais (Ligue 1).

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: Through this interview, we touched on:

* Resistance training trends

* Physical therapy innovations

* Recovery modalities in practice

* Leveraging diverse expertise

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 them:

1. Resistance Training Trends

Rick Cost:

“What we try to do is sort of a healthy mix, but it starts most of all with microdosing on a daily basis. It’s not about doing massive strength sessions, because in Europe the most important moment of the day is being on the football field. No training should ever negatively influence movement quality on the field. We use flywheel training mostly for its eccentric braking power and the timing of different movements. But the keyword for us is microdosing—lots of small, functional implementations. Then on an individual level, we target more specific needs—sometimes hypertrophy, sometimes isometric work, sometimes dynamic work like sprinting, which itself can be considered power training. So it’s very individual, very functional, but always built around the concept of microdosing.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“These technologies—whether it’s isokinetics, flywheels, or velocity-based training—have given us a variety of ways to approach the process and tailor the stimulus more specifically, and perhaps more safely, with less guesswork. You can put a Tendo unit on a bar and check if the load is moving at the right speed, but some of these systems allow you to skip steps and customize the load exactly to what you want. It’s new tools on an old process—we’re still chasing hypertrophy, motor unit recruitment, and power, the same things coaches have talked about for decades. But now we can do it more efficiently. The key, though, is not getting distracted by the shiny new toy. Too many practitioners jump on technologies just because they’re new or cool, not because they solve a problem. If you don’t start with the problem and then find the solution, you’ll just bounce from product to product and never really move forward.”

Pierre Barrieu:

“In my career, only once have I actively looked for a technology to fill a specific gap. Most of the time, I’ve discovered tools through colleagues, not vendors. You want equipment that meets a need, but you also want buy-in from players—because if they don’t use it, it doesn’t matter how good it is. Sometimes a tool only works for two or three players, and that’s fine. To me, that’s also microdosing—individualizing interventions so they have meaning. Too often people buy equipment just because another team has it, or because a GM says, ‘Look at this.’ That’s risky. Players aren’t blind—they see when tech gets bought and then collects dust in the corner of the gym. So for me, the decision comes down to: does it solve a problem we actually have, and will the players buy into it?”

2. Physical Therapy Innovations

Pierre Barrieu:

“There used to be almost a race to get players with ACL injuries back on the field in six months. But the reality is, most of them ended up injured again at seven. Now the accepted return is closer to nine months, which is what it always should have been. For me, that’s the biggest innovation—not a new gadget, but a rational, science-based respect for biology. You still hit the same KPIs, you still progress step by step, but over a safer timeline. Unless surgical techniques themselves change, the real progress has been in communication, and in getting coaches and organizations to accept that biology doesn’t care about your season schedule.”

Rick Cost:

“I think the biggest innovation isn’t a machine or modality, but a cultural one. There’s more respect for practitioners and more understanding from coaches. Ten years ago people tried to push ACL return-to-play to five or six months. Now coaches understand that nine months is what’s realistic. The same with hamstrings—people used to think a player could be ready in a few days, but now there’s more understanding of location, history, and the individual context. That shift in communication and respect has changed rehab more than any technology has.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“The real improvements in rehab come from understanding that what you do in month one and two matters more than what you do in month seven. We used to keep players at home for weeks after surgery, but now we know the quality of tendon starts degrading almost immediately if you don’t move. So we get people moving right away—in the pool, with small exercises—because that’s what helps us truly shorten the timeline. As for modalities, most of them just promote blood flow. Whether it’s BFR, compression, or stim, they’re all basically trying to deliver oxygen and remove waste. The key is matching the modality to your environment. For us, with long flights, it’s compression boots, stim, or recovery shoes, because we need to combat hours of sitting still. For another team, it might be circadian tools for crossing time zones. It’s less about reinventing the wheel, more about finding the right fit for your specific context.”

3. Recovery Modalities in Practice

Alexi Pianosi:

“Most recovery tools—cryotherapy, compression, BFR—they all do the same basic thing: promote blood flow. The real question isn’t which tool is the flashiest, but which one addresses the challenges of your environment. For us, we spend more time in the air than most teams, so compression and electrical stimulation make sense to combat immobility. If you’re a team that constantly changes time zones, maybe it’s circadian rhythm strategies. It’s about pairing the right tool with the problem you actually have, not buying everything because it looks good.”

4. The Human Side of the Role

Rick Cost:

“People still call me the ‘warm-up guy,’ but that couldn’t be further from reality. My job is strategy, budgets, individual development plans, and making sure the structure is in place for specialists to do their jobs. At big clubs, you might oversee 30 to 70 people. You rarely touch players directly anymore. That’s what’s misunderstood about the role—it’s much more executive and managerial than people realize.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“The hardest part is the sheer amount of time. You’re at the facility hours before and after players, you’re on the road constantly, and even in the off-season you don’t really get time off. The pressure is challenging, but in a way it’s fun—that’s why you sign up for pro sports. The real cost is time away from family, from friends, from living any sort of normal life. Charter flights and fancy meals are exciting for a year, but eventually you just miss being at home on the couch with people you care about. That’s the side most people don’t see.”

Pierre Barrieu:

“The biggest challenge for me is federating a diverse group of specialists around the same project—giving them freedom, responsibility, and respect, but also leading them. In national teams, it’s easier. In clubs, it’s the grind: the hours, the toll on families, the constant need to coordinate people from different areas and avoid frustration. The only way it works is if you put experts in positions of responsibility, sometimes people who know more than you, and then coordinate the whole machine so it functions daily. That’s the part people don’t see.”

5. Leveraging Diverse Expertise

Pierre Barrieu:

“At the end of the day, it’s about people. Assemble good characters first, because the real test comes when results dip. Never too high when you win, never too low when you lose—that applies to staff as much as players. Cultural context matters too: in some countries you can raise your voice, in others it’s counterproductive. If you don’t adapt to the cultural context of your staff and players, you set yourself up for failure. That’s something leaders often underestimate.”

Alexi Pianosi:

“With bigger staffs you’ll never have total harmony. You’ll always have disagreements, and that’s okay. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s progress. Real culture forms when standards are clear, vulnerability is allowed, and everyone is held accountable with care. If you can do that, you can handle disagreements, move on, and get ready for the next challenge. And in pro sports, there’s always another challenge—somebody tired, injured, or upset. If you acknowledge that imperfection is part of the process, you’ll build something resilient.”

Rick Cost:

“For me, the key is transparency and autonomy. Everyone should know their role and feel empowered to make decisions, not wait for me. The more accountability you give people, the more they enjoy their work, and the more they push themselves to deliver quality. In sport, there is no small job—because everyone’s work impacts everyone else. Finding the right people is half the battle. Once you do, you need to trust them, support them, and hold them accountable, so the whole group can function together.”

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Kevin Kidd a top motor sports executive in NASCAR.

Kevin Kidd is a seasoned NASCAR executive with extensive experience in motorsports engineering, data strategy, and team management. Over his career, he has played pivotal roles in helping NASCAR teams leverage advanced analytics and performance insights to gain a competitive edge on and off the track, including his time at RFK Racing where he contributed to advancing performance innovation. Known for his deep technical expertise and forward-thinking approach, Kidd has championed innovation in how data is collected, shared, and applied across teams, recognizing the importance of collaboration while still driving individual team performance. His leadership reflects a balance of technical precision and strategic vision, making him a respected figure in the evolution of NASCAR’s data-driven era.

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 Kevin Kidd, we asked him about the best practices he has seen in applying data and analytics to drive innovation in NASCAR, both on the track and in team operations; how technology such as sensors, AI, and simulation has impacted driver and car performance; how teams leverage real-time data during races to influence split-second strategy decisions; what lessons from motorsports could be applied to other elite sports like football, basketball, and soccer; and where he sees the biggest opportunities for data and technology to shape the future of performance and safety in racing.

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

Here are the quotes from the interview with Kevin:

1. Innovation in Data Use

"When we talk about innovation in NASCAR, the conversation always starts with the problem you’re trying to solve. I’ve told people for years: racing is actually pretty easy if you know exactly what the problem is. But getting to that clarity is the hardest part. Once you define the question, then the data becomes useful. The challenge in our sport isn’t that we don’t have data—if anything, it’s that we have too much. There’s no shortage of information coming at us from sensors, cars, simulations, and operations. The best practice, in my opinion, is making sure the data you’re working with is clean and governed properly. There’s nothing worse than making strategic decisions based on bad or misinterpreted data. So as a leader, one of the things I focused on at RFK Racing was building processes around data governance—publishing clean data, in clean formats, to the right users at the right time. That’s how you unlock innovation—by ensuring the information foundation is trustworthy and focused on the real problems, not just noise."

1. On the Various Groups (Drivers, Pit Crew, Engineers, Mechanics, Fabricators) In NASCAR

On the Main Groups:

* "There are three main groups: The drivers, pit crew, and engineers. I would add on a fourth group, which would be the mechanics and the fabricators who actually build the cars”.

On Drivers and Pit Crew:

* "Drivers and pit crews are actually pretty similar. The typical athletic human performance-type things are of main interest to them."

* "With the drivers, it's a lot about endurance conditioning. A lot of the technology we use is really about understanding their ability to operate over a four or five-hour period in high heat and other extraneous circumstances."

* "The pit crews are a little bit different; they're almost like a sprint. Those guys do their job in about eight or nine seconds, so you have to really focus on a completely different thing with them, where a lot of their strength and conditioning focuses on explosive techniques and the ability to make quick cuts and pivots."

* "By and large, for drivers and pit crews, it's a lot of human and mental performance. A lot of focus and the ability to make quick decisions are really important for both groups."

On Engineers:

* "For our engineers, it's a little bit less athletic and a whole lot more analytic. A lot of the focus is on reducing cognitive load throughout a race weekend and particularly during the race itself."

* "Anything we can do from an analytics perspective to reduce the cognitive load and help them make decisions without having to go mine for data or do a whole lot of work—those are wins in their world. Providing them the right data at the right time to be able to make those decisions are all critical things for them."

On Mechanics and Fabricators

* "For our mechanics and fabricators, a lot of the data we focus on is really about operational workflow. We make sure they have the right information at the right time to be able to build cars the way the engineers call them out and have best practices on how to build those cars."

2. Technology and Performance

"If I had to pick one area where technology has transformed NASCAR in my career, it would be simulation. Simulation is the absolute lifeblood of motorsports today. We don’t get much practice or testing on track, and even in series that offer more track time, it’s never enough. The reality is there are millions of possible combinations of setup parameters for a car—you could never physically test all of them on the track. That’s where simulation comes in. Over the years, the tools have improved beyond anything I could have imagined when I first started. Today, before a single lap is run on race weekend, we’ve run hundreds of thousands of combinations through simulation to optimize the car’s setup. That gives us a much better starting point, and the precision with which we can hone in on the right balance is better than ever. But I’ll be honest—simulation isn’t bulletproof. There are still areas where the models don’t have enough data to be as predictive as we’d like. Those black boxes are where the next frontier is—if we can fill in those gaps, our simulations will become even more powerful. But even with limitations, the advancements have fundamentally changed how we prepare, how we engineer, and ultimately how drivers perform on race day."

3. Real-Time Decision Making

"Real-time data is where motorsports really distinguishes itself from other sports. NASCAR races are filled with split-second decisions, and the engineer or crew chief has to process an enormous flow of data in real time. The trick is reducing the cognitive load—if an engineer is drowning in raw data, they can’t make the critical calls when it matters most. A good example is fuel strategy. Most fans don’t realize this, but NASCAR vehicles don’t have fuel gauges. Drivers literally don’t know when they’re going to run out of gas—it’s by design, and it’s one of those quirks of the sport that has been there since the beginning. So it’s up to the engineers and strategists, using real-time data, to calculate fuel consumption lap by lap and project how far the car can go. We can get that projection down to almost the exact point on the track where the car will run out. That matters a lot when you’re trying to stretch a fuel window, make it to the end without pitting, or optimize your stop strategy. That kind of precision can win or lose you a race. And that’s just one example—there are dozens more layers of complexity happening simultaneously. The key is building systems and processes so that the data doesn’t overwhelm the team, but instead gives them clarity to make the right decision at the right moment."

4. Cross-Sport Lessons

"One of the things I’ve always appreciated about motorsports is that we’re often ahead of other sports in terms of data use. NASCAR, F1, IndyCar—these series have been ingesting and analyzing massive data streams for years. I’ve been watching the NFL introduce Hawkeye for first down measurements, and it’s gotten a lot of attention. But the truth is, we’ve been using video capture and machine learning to judge position in NASCAR for almost a decade. That’s not to downplay what the NFL is doing—on the contrary, I think it’s a smart, measured approach. And that’s the key lesson for other sports: don’t adopt technology just for the sake of it. Be thoughtful, be calculated, and bring it online where it actually adds value to the competition or the fan experience. Motorsports has taught me that not every shiny new tool will move the needle. You need to focus on the technologies that genuinely make the game safer, fairer, or more competitive. If you do that, you not only improve performance—you also build trust in the technology from athletes, coaches, and fans alike."

5. The Fact that NASCAR Teams are Sharing Data with Other NASCAR Teams during Races

“In NASCAR, what’s really unique is that each team in a race gets data not only about their own cars, but also about every other car in the field. Compared to F1, where you only get your own car’s data, that’s a huge difference. Even though we have fewer channels per car than F1, the fact that we can analyze our competitors’ data gives us a tremendous opportunity to understand our performance relative to theirs, see where they’re vulnerable, and find areas to exploit. That’s one of the things that makes NASCAR really fun—you’re not just optimizing your own car, you’re analyzing the entire field in real time.

6. The Fact that there is a Large Amount of data (12B) similar to F1 collected by Teams during NASCAR Races

Julien Blin: ”I remember reading that in Formula 1 they capture about 12 billion data points per race across all the teams”. Kevin Kidd:”In NASCAR, it’s probably similar or even more, but the types of data are very different. Each team only gets a limited number of channels on their own cars—that’s by rule, NASCAR doesn’t allow us to just capture everything. Compared to F1, you’d look at the data coming off one NASCAR car and say it’s not apples to apples. But what makes NASCAR unique is that we don’t just get our own car’s data—we get that limited set across every car in the field. So instead of having deep telemetry from one car like in F1, we’re analyzing the entire grid. That creates incredible opportunities to see where we stack up, find competitor vulnerabilities, and adjust strategy in real time”.

7. Future of Data in Racing

"Looking ahead, the frontier in NASCAR is clearly around AI and machine learning. Engineers and crew chiefs are already maxed out from the moment the green flag drops. Their mental bandwidth gets consumed immediately, and that can leave them without the clarity to make the hardest calls later in the race. If we can use AI to automate some of the simpler decision-making processes reliably, we free up our best people to focus on the complex problems where human judgment still matters. That’s a huge opportunity. On the human performance side, the innovations won’t stop either. We’re experimenting with hydration monitoring, biomechanics, movement analysis—all the things that can make drivers and pit crews stronger, faster, and more consistent. In pit stops, for example, we’re always chasing what we call ‘free speed.’ If you can shave one second off a stop, that can be the difference between winning and losing. Sometimes it takes an entire green-flag stint on track to gain that one second, but if your pit crew can do it instantly through better technique and technology, that’s a massive advantage. The same goes for drivers—if we can better understand their endurance and recovery, we can make sure they’re at their absolute best every time they strap into the car. So the future is about pushing the frontier of both machine intelligence and human performance—and doing it in ways that keep raising the bar for what’s possible in motorsports."

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Today we have the honor of interviewing Ryan Peterson the assistant S&C coach for the Chicago Bulls, a top NBA team.

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: Through this interview, we touched on his background, his role at the Chicago bulls, his approach towards training, S&C, rehab and innovation. We also discussed his preferred technologies, how he sees the future of S&C evolving in the coming years. He also gave us his thoughts on what he would build if he could build any tech and had unlimited resources.

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

Here are the quotes from the interview with Ryan:

1. Tell me about your background

* “I’m originally from southern Idaho, from a fairly small town. I grew up playing football, basketball, baseball, and spending a lot of time outdoors. I went to the University of Utah where I studied biology and chemistry with a pre-med plan, but as I got closer to graduation I realized physical therapy was a better fit for me personally. I went to PT school at the University of Montana, spent three years there, and then worked in outpatient orthopedic clinics. Over time I found myself most interested in the athletes I was treating, which was a small part of my caseload but the most engaging for me.”

* “When I moved back to Salt Lake, I connected with the US Ski and Snowboard team—at first just volunteering, but eventually traveling with their teams as a physical therapist. At the same time I did a strength and conditioning internship with the University of Utah football staff, and later stayed on as a kind of hybrid rehab and strength coach. That blend of rehab and performance was what I really wanted to do, and it’s what opened the path that eventually led me to the NBA.”

2. What is your role at the Chicago Bulls?

* “My position is assistant strength and conditioning coach, with an emphasis in rehab and injury mitigation programming. We have an excellent athletic training staff, so I’m not involved in day-to-day clinical work, but I have a lot of influence in late-stage return-to-play testing and programming. I also lead programming on soft-tissue injury mitigation while contributing to all of the team’s daily strength and conditioning work.”

* “I personally travel with the team to every game, home and away. Sometimes when a player has a long-term rehab they’ll stay in Chicago and work with staff who rotate staying behind, but many times even guys in rehab will come on the road and do their work with us. It just depends on their situation and what resources we have access to on the road.”

3. What is your approach towards training, S&C, rehab and innovation?

* “At a base level my approach is to keep things as simple as possible and do the simple things really well. Early in my career I fell into the trap of trying to do too many things at a moderate level instead of focusing on a few things and executing them really well. Simplifying allows the athlete to get a ton of repetitions, perfect their coordination, and build a foundation that makes everything more complex down the line much more effective.”

* “I see rehab and strength and conditioning as much closer than most people think. It’s a continuum—early rehab is cautious and limited, but we can still train the rest of the body hard. As healing progresses, it blends naturally into performance-based training. Our job is to keep the gap between ‘injured’ and ‘ready to perform’ as small as possible so the return doesn’t come with a big spike in load or risk.”

* “You can get so much out of calisthenics, running, skipping, change of direction, bodyweight squats, planks—just really refining how you move your body in space. Those simple things are hugely powerful, especially for younger athletes. They build an incredible foundation that sets them up to get the most out of heavier loading and advanced training later on.”

4. What are your preferred tech and why?

* “I’ve always valued simple, cost-effective tools. Before the NBA, budgets were very different, so I relied on things like a strain gauge called Tindeq. It’s small, portable, easy to use, and it gives an objective number for force output. That’s incredibly useful both for guiding rehab progression and for performance training.”

* “I also like app-based tools like My Jump, My Sprint, and Runmatic. With just a phone camera you can measure contact times, jump height, and break down running mechanics. They’re cheap, simple, and accessible to any practitioner at any level. Of course now we have access to force plates and motion capture, which provide richer data, but even with advanced tools I think you can build great programs just using the basics.”

* “The main criteria for me are: does it solve a problem we actually have, is it validated and reliable, and can I use it consistently with athletes without friction? I don’t want tech just to have tech—it has to fit the workflow and add value every day.”

5. How do you see the future of S&C evolving in the coming years?

* “We’re seeing a big expansion in quantification—velocity-based tracking, portable sensors, variable resistance machines. All of that is valuable, but we’re also asking: is there a point where it’s too much data? How much of it is actionable? At some stage I think the pendulum will swing back toward the art of coaching—having a skilled eye for movement, building strong relationships with athletes, and getting their buy-in. If you can’t connect with athletes, it doesn’t matter how advanced your tech is.”

* “I think the real skill of the future will be in coaches who can filter. There will be so much tech available that the best practitioners will be the ones who can determine what’s genuinely useful and ignore what’s distracting or irrelevant. Those who stay grounded, have a clear vision, and only adopt what aligns with their goals will move ahead of everyone else.”

6. If you could build any tech and had unlimited resources, what would you build and why?

* “If I could build anything, it would be a really reliable way to evaluate what’s happening to a tendon when it’s loaded. Tendon health is a huge point of emphasis in the NBA right now—reducing tendon injuries and catastrophic events. Right now we have proxy measures like strain gauges, ultrasound, and shear wave imaging, but they only tell part of the story. Two athletes can produce the same external force, but their tendons respond very differently.”

* “I’d love a tool that could tell us, in real time and at a microscopic level, how load is being transmitted through a tendon—the rate, the magnitude, how much it stretches, and how it changes over time. That would completely change how we prescribe weight-room work, manage load, and design rehab. It would take us from estimates and extrapolations to precision.”

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

* Dr Marco Nunez, the former head athletic trainer for the LA Lakers (NBA).

* Derek Millender, the head S&C coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers (NBA).

* Ryan Petersen, the assistant S&C coach for the Chicago Bulls (NBA).

Here are the topics that we covered during the video interview:

* Q1. Life after the NBA: “From your experience, how do you successfully transition from an NBA team settings to having your own practice outside of the NBA? What are the best practices there?”

* Q2. Technology adoption: “How do you evaluate when it’s the right time to implement a new technology, and what are the key factors that determine whether it actually adds value in an NBA setting and how long does it typically take to integrate and adopt a new technology into the workflow?”

* Q3. Leveraging diverse expertise: “NBA teams now include specialists from a wide range of backgrounds—performance science, data analytics, psychology, and more. What’s the best way to integrate these perspectives so they enhance, rather than compete with, each other, and best collaborate during tough conversations?”

* Q4. Performance optimization: “With the intensity of the NBA schedule, what are the most effective approaches you’ve seen to maintain peak performance throughout an 82-game season and playoffs?”

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:

Here are some of the best quotes of our conversation with Marco, Derek, and Ryan:

Q1. Life after the NBA

Marco Nuñez:

“When I first left the Lakers and started my own practice, I was reluctant to use my NBA credibility. I thought it might come off the wrong way, until someone told me, ‘You’ve got to use that—people want that experience.’ And it’s true. Clients—whether they’re athletes or weekend warriors—want to be treated like pros. The value isn’t just in what you do, but in knowing which ‘screw to turn,’ like in that old story about the engineer who charged $15,000 for knowing where to make a single adjustment. That’s what our experience at the NBA level gives us. Transitioning means you also have to hustle—learn marketing, business, even entrepreneurship—things we’re not taught in athletic training or strength programs. You have to decide whether you’re going for scale, like training a large pool of athletes, or the VIP concierge model where you work with fewer clients but give them full access. Either way, you need to lean into the credibility you earned.”

Derek Millender:

“It’s not easy for NBA coaches and trainers to think about life after the league, because we’ve worked so hard to get here. But the reality is—it’s not if, it’s when. At some point, this ends. That doesn’t mean you’re not professional or capable, it just means change is inevitable. So you need to start preparing while you’re still in it. Do you want to open your own facility, consult, or join forces with others? It’s about being proactive rather than waiting until you’re out and asking, ‘Now what?’ I think the biggest mindset shift is realizing that planning for what comes next is not a weakness—it’s a necessity.”

Ryan Petersen:

“I actually went the other way—I started in private practice and then came into the NBA. Running my own clinic taught me hard lessons in marketing, operations, and entrepreneurship. None of that was taught in PT school, so I learned by making mistakes. That perspective helps me know what the transition back might look like when my NBA career ends. I think it’s similar to players—many of them have no plan after basketball because they’ve been locked in for 20 years. For us as practitioners, we need to avoid the same trap. Having that foresight and being honest with yourself is key. Otherwise, you wake up one day and it feels like the dream just ended with no plan for what’s next.”

Q2. Technology Adoption

Derek Millender:

“The process for us is collaborative. It might start with a strength coach, an AT, or a dietitian who identifies a need. Then we research devices—look at scientific reviews, talk to peers, test them—and bring it to our high-performance group. From there, it’s about alignment. Even if the strength staff champions it, we want the PTs, ATs, and coaches to see how it adds value for them too. If it only helps one department, adoption stalls. When it works, it’s a slow burn. Year one, maybe you only use a device for one or two things even though it has 20 features. Over time, as comfort builds, usage grows. But that’s the reality—it takes at least a full season before technology really integrates. And if you swing and miss on a $30,000 purchase, it’s much harder to get buy-in the next time.”

Ryan Petersen:

“It starts with vision. If a piece of tech doesn’t align with your team’s philosophy, it’s wasted time and money no matter how good it is. The other big factor is friction. If a device is complicated, players won’t buy in and staff won’t use it consistently. I’d rather have a tool that does one or two things very well, with almost no friction, than something that claims to do everything but slows us down. For me, the best way to learn is hands-on—I’ll test it myself, do hundreds of reps, make mistakes—so I can teach athletes and staff with confidence. The easier it is to use daily, the more likely it’s going to stick.”

Marco Nuñez:

“I think it takes at least one full year to truly evaluate whether a new technology makes a difference. You can’t just test it in pre-season and assume it works. And the decision has to come from the inside out: what are our biggest injury risks or performance gaps? Then you look outward and see which tools might help solve those problems. You also need the staff bandwidth to use it properly. Sometimes there’s pressure—if another team wins a championship using a certain device, front offices start asking why we don’t have it. But just because it worked for them doesn’t mean it fits your environment. The real question is: does it make sense for us, right now?”

Q3. Leveraging Diverse Expertise

Derek Millender:

“Working across disciplines starts with relationships. You need to know the person before you can handle tough conversations with them. It might be grabbing dinner on the road, talking about music, family, or hobbies—something human. Once that trust is built, disagreements aren’t personal anymore. And you learn to recognize stress in each other, whether it’s someone eating more sweets during a losing streak or someone working out extra to cope. That’s when you step in with support, even small things like grabbing their favorite coffee. Those personal deposits make it easier to collaborate when pressure hits. At the end of the day, if everyone remembers we’re here for the players, it keeps us aligned.”

Ryan Petersen:

“I think humility and curiosity are the two most important qualities. If you walk into a room full of experts trying to prove how much you know, it doesn’t work. If you walk in genuinely curious, willing to learn, and clear that the goal is the player, then collaboration becomes natural. Some of the best meetings I’ve been in are when everyone—from PTs to data scientists to coaches—shares their piece of the puzzle, and you come away with a plan that reflects all perspectives. That only works if people check their egos and actually listen. It sounds simple, but it changes the whole dynamic.”

Q4. Performance Optimization

Derek Millender:

“The best systems I’ve seen are collective. Performance optimization isn’t about one department—it’s constant communication between strength, medical, nutrition, sports science, and coaching. It’s about stitching together all those small conversations—what the dietitian heard at breakfast, what the PT saw in treatment, what the coach noticed in practice—so the full picture of the athlete emerges. Data matters, but so does context. Maybe the force plate says one thing, but you know he’s dealing with family stress or a nagging issue. That blend of science and art—reading both the numbers and the person—is how you sustain performance over 82 games.”

Ryan Petersen:

“What stands out to me is how consistent the veterans are. The players who last 10, 15, 20 years all have simple, rock-solid habits—sleep, nutrition, warm-up, recovery—that they do every single day. It’s like brushing your teeth. Those habits don’t look flashy, but they compound over time. For younger players, one of the greatest gifts we can give them is exposure—let them try things, make mistakes, and eventually build their own routine. Because when the season gets hard—when they’re not playing well or not playing at all—that routine becomes their anchor. It gives them something they control in a world where so much is out of their hands.”

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This week we had the honor to interview a group of ATP sports performance experts in pro tennis.

* Al Murphy, senior S&C coach at Tennis Australia. Al works with tennis players such as Rinky Hijikata, Emerson Jones and Aleks Vukic. He is also the head of sports science at Tennis Australia.

* Zack Evenden, an experienced performance coach. Zack has worked with top tennis players like Frances Tiafoe, and Michael Mmoh.

* Dirk Spits, the National Physical Performance Manager at Tennis Australia. Dirk works with pro tennis players such as James Duckworth, and Ajla Tomljanovic.

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:

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

Q1. Recovery Innovations

Al Murphy:

“When you’re on the road for forty-plus weeks of the year, recovery tools need to be portable and practical. Players can’t be dragging around bulky devices to every city, so what we’ve been focusing on are compact, travel-friendly solutions. We still lean on the basics—contrast therapy, cold water immersion—when tournaments provide them, but the newer tech that excites me is neuromodulation and cooling. We’ve trialed companies like Firefly and Pulsetto, which target nerve stimulation, and even products like the CoolMitt for portable cooling on court. The key is, if a player can pull it out of their bag anywhere in the world and use it easily, it has a real chance of becoming part of their routine.”

Dirk Spits:

“We can’t underestimate the placebo effect in recovery. A big part of our philosophy is exposing players to different modalities and letting them decide what works for them. If they believe a device is helping, that belief alone can move the needle as long as it’s safe and backed by our applied science team. But we constantly remind them that gadgets don’t replace the fundamentals. Sleep hygiene, nutrition, and mental recovery are still the foundation. As an organization we place emphasis on well-being as part of recovery hence players can be direct to mindfulness apps like Calm, Headspace, or even Healthy Minds, which tracks your stress and meditation journey. Recovery isn’t about one magic tool—it’s about building a hundred-point scale of recovery habits, and each player needs to figure out their unique mix of strategies to hit that hundred.”

Zack Evenden:

“In my experience, recovery devices are as much about psychology as physiology. Sometimes a player tries something during a good week, and from that moment on, they swear by it—even if the science says otherwise. I’ve seen guys lug NormaTec boots across continents because they believe it gave them the edge. That belief makes them more disciplined in their recovery, so in a strange way it does work. At the same time, it has to fit their personality and habits. If the tool is too complicated, too heavy, or doesn’t mesh with how they travel, it won’t last. What matters is consistency. If a player finds something they trust—whether it’s neurostimulation, ice baths, or simply meditation—they’ll stick to it, and that routine becomes a cornerstone of their performance on tour.”

Q2. Nutrition & Hydration in Extreme Conditions

Zack Evenden:

“Science gives you the framework, but execution and discipline decide whether it works. Too many players think hydration starts an hour before the match, and they’re chugging bottles courtside trying to make up for it. By then, it’s too late. Hydration is a habit—you’ve got to be ahead of it the night before and even days leading in. I’ve seen everything courtside—pickle juice, Coca-Cola, maple syrup, even pasta sauce sachets. Some of it is superstition, some of it works neurologically, but ultimately it comes down to consistency. Are you hydrated before you step on court? Are you clear-headed and fueled? That’s the difference between surviving three hours in brutal heat and completely shutting down.”

Dirk Spits:

“Cramping isn’t always about fluid loss—it can also be neurological. That’s why interventions like pickle juice or menthol lozenges work: they disrupt the brain’s cramp signal, not the muscle itself. We’ve experimented with everything from sour lollies to menthol sprays to slushies pioneered by the Queensland Academy of Sport during the Beijing Olympics. The trick is not just cooling the body, but convincing the mind that conditions are tolerable. At Tennis Australia, we’ve moved away from putting all our faith in sweat testing and focused more on day-to-day behaviors: are players eating breakfast, are they drinking with meals, are they fueling consistently? Because if you don’t store fluid properly through food and routine, you’re setting yourself up for dehydration regardless of what drink is in your bottle on match day.”

Al Murphy:

“Heat adaptation is non-negotiable. It takes at least two weeks to properly adapt to high heat and humidity, and yet every year we see players try to fly straight into Melbourne or Miami and expect to cope. They end up shocked by the conditions. We’ve had players fly from winter in Brisbane to Florida, and the first few sessions are brutal—they’re sweating buckets, struggling with the heat load. So, we use saunas, steam rooms, and staged exposure in training blocks to start that adaptation before the trip. It’s not glamorous, but it’s the difference between a player who thrives in a four-hour Australian Open marathon and one who cramps out. You can’t fake physiological adaptation—it has to be built systematically.”

Q3. AI-Driven Analytics

Zack Evenden:

“One of the first times I really saw the power of live analytics was at the Next Gen Finals, where coaches had tablets courtside. Francis was over-covering the wide serve against Ugo Humbert because he assumed the lefty pattern would dominate. But the live data showed Ugo was punishing him with flat serves down the middle. With that information, we shifted Francis’ position by just a single step. That small tactical tweak completely changed the match dynamic—suddenly the pressure disappeared. For me, that was a lightbulb moment. When the data is clear and applied in real time, it feels like cheating—in the best possible way. It’s a competitive edge that can tilt a match with just one adjustment.”

Al Murphy:

“AI will never replace a coach’s eye, but it massively accelerates the process of analysis. What used to take a staffer a week of coding can now be done in hours through machine learning and pattern recognition. That means coaches can spend their time asking better questions rather than sifting through raw video. At Tennis Australia, our data teams are feeding Hawkeye and Bolt6 information live, which gives us a tactical breakdown as the match progresses. It’s not as useful early in the match, but once trends emerge—like a serve location bias or movement pattern—we can feed coaches actionable insights faster than ever before. The impact isn’t that AI changes the role of the coach; it’s that it empowers the coach to act with sharper, real-time intelligence.”

Dirk Spits:

“The danger with AI is creating over-reliant athletes. Players must still be able to solve problems themselves under pressure. If all the answers come from a data feed or a coach whispering adjustments, they lose the resilience to adapt in the moment. I see AI as a complement—something that accelerates learning, gives us richer scouting reports, and helps coaches refine match plans. But during a five-set battle, it’s still the player’s mind that has to figure it out. Matches at the elite level are often decided by a handful of points. Sometimes the right call is to stick to the game plan and trust your instincts. Technology can inform, but it can’t replace internal decision-making under stress.”

Q4. Virtual Reality & Immersive Training

Al Murphy:

“We’ve tested VR with PhD projects using AO match data, and the technology is improving, but in professional tennis it hasn’t crossed the threshold of adoption yet. The big hurdle is buy-in from both players and coaches. Most pros still prefer time on the court or traditional film review over strapping into a headset. For serve and return training, there’s potential—especially for juniors who’ve never seen the speed or shape of a top-10 player’s ball—but in general the transfer to live hitting isn’t there yet. Until VR can replicate the sound, the feel, and the timing of a real rally, it will remain on the fringes.”

Dirk Spits:

“I see VR as a tool with niche value rather than a mainstream training method. It might be powerful for juniors stepping up in competition—they could virtually experience what it’s like to face Novak Djokovic’s serve before ever standing on that baseline. It could also be a rehab tool for injured players who can’t hit balls but want to stay mentally sharp. But for tactical awareness, I still believe in old-school methods: players should be watching more tennis, studying patterns with their coach, and having real dialogue about how to construct points. VR can simulate, but it can’t yet replicate the sensory richness of live tennis—the sound, the timing, the depth perception. For me, film study is still the superior tool for developing tactical intelligence.”

Zack Evenden:

“For some players—especially those who are younger, injured, or into gamification—VR can keep them engaged and give them decision-making reps off court. But at the end of the day, tennis is a game of feel. You have to hear the ball, feel the spin, and judge the pace in real time. No VR system has captured that yet. I see it more as a supplemental tool, something you plug into very specific situations, rather than a core part of development. In other sports like Formula One or the NBA, VR is world class because the environments are more controlled. But in tennis, nothing will replace standing on the court and facing the reality of a live ball under pressure.”

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