By John Portch

When the pandemic spread in 2020, it brought challenges for all. In the case of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art [RADA] a number of those challenges endure.

RADA no longer relies upon online classes as it did in 2020 and 2021, but, as Lucy Skilbeck, their Director of Actor Training, explained in a recent interview, “we have made changes not only to the curriculum but how we consider the curriculum and some of our approaches to teaching.”

One such change was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, which grew in prominence during that first year of the pandemic as systemic inequalities became evident in the higher infection and mortality rates in globe majority communities in the US, UK and beyond. Compounding matters was the succession of highly publicised, racially-motivated, tragic incidents involving Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.

The student body at RADA felt moved to speak up. “The students began to question our processes, some of our approaches, and some of our choices of material,” Skilbeck told the Leaders Performance Institute.

As the pandemic pushed everything online, Skilbeck’s students were working on three Restoration-era texts (plays written in England, Scotland and Ireland between 1660 and 1710). While this era was a time of revival in the dramatic arts – theatres had been closed for 18 years under Puritan rule prior to the restoration of the Stuart monarchy – there is a problematic link between Restoration drama and the Atlantic slave trade. RADA students raised the probability that some patrons of the Restoration-era arts benefited directly from the sale of enslaved African people for labour.

“One group chose to continue doing the Restoration project,” Skilbeck continued. “Two groups said they didn’t want to continue working with that material, so we made adaptations on the spot.”

Four years later, RADA continues to teach Restoration material (“that’s one of the reasons students come to RADA”) but has added a contextual evaluation of all texts – not just the Restoration era – for students and RADA project leaders.

“One of the big changes is how we contextualise how we discuss, how we critically examine and reflect on what the challenges are with any of the material we’re using.

“We’ve got more work to do, no question, but students are now saying they feel confident doing the work because the conversations can happen, are happening, are considered. That was the really big piece we weren’t doing before. We weren’t considering the impact of that work on globe majority students separately to the impact on white students.

“We were informally trying to make sure that was a consideration. Now we’ve made that a formal commitment.”

As Skilbeck once said during a Leaders webinar in 2021: “At RADA, we want teachers to follow the students as well as guide them”.

Contextual evaluation in the wake of Black Lives Matter is but one example of how this plays out at RADA. We discuss the others in the first of a two-part interview with Skilbeck. In the second, we focus on student development.

Listen to learners – they’ll tell you what they need

The Leaders Performance Institute asked Skilbeck to explain the dynamic of RADA tutors both following and guiding their students.

“The rationale is that the best teachers are the ones who are continually learning and who can be in a learner’s or a beginner’s mind,” she said. “In order to do that, one has to be willing to learn from the people we are teaching; and we will continually learn from the students because they are bringing the world now as it is for young people.

“That comes with them distinctly each year – and it changes year on year, as the world does – and so there’s a lot of learning to be done by listening to the students, by engaging with the students, by allowing students to educate us on what the world is for them and what they need in a learning environment.”

It does not mean Skilbeck and her colleagues always get it right. “Like all human activity, it is imperfect,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like things really develop and grow and, as a result, we move towards something more progressive; and sometimes it feels like they don’t. I don’t think there’s any way around that.”

Allow for meaningful engagement and contributions

It is tempting to view a dramatic production as akin to a team strategy or gameplan. There are parallels and both are ensemble activities. At RADA, it is another area where project leaders – managers of educational programmes, theatrical productions, or development initiatives – bring people together.

“Speaking as a director, which is my professional background, one of the roles of the director and the rehearsal process is to bring everybody into the same world so that everybody is in the play at the same time. That can sometimes be a struggle because there might be people with very strong ideas in one direction and others having strong ideas in another.”

The key is allowing cast members to contribute meaningfully. “A way we would begin to do that is close, detailed work on the story we want to tell collectively, because any play has an infinite number of possible interpretations, stories or emphases contained within it; and any production has to make a choice that it’s going to tell a particular part of that story.”

RADA uses ‘yes and’ work as it “develops the capacity to be ‘in response to’; so one is being reactive rather than generating one’s own action. A lot of that is built through gradually training people’s capacity to be working within an ensemble rather than standing to the side of an ensemble.

“A big part of what we do is trying to bring people to that place where they go ‘I can be here in a way that serves you’ and we talk about that quite explicitly.”

No right answer

At RADA, first and second-year acting students are no longer marked. “One of the big things we have to do early and throughout the training is really try and undo – it’s a really harsh way of putting it – some of the damage that the traditional school system does,” said Skilbeck, who was quick to explain that she is supportive of numerous elements of the scholastic system.

It is, however, a challenge for students. “We’re saying there isn’t a right answer – we’re not asking for the right answer,” she continued. Instead, “what we’re looking for is a much more holistic development of the whole person because that’s what an actor needs. Not ‘yes, I can’.

“I want them to have the capacity to interpret material but it doesn’t have to be the way that I would do it. What we want to do is develop their capacity to learn and to grow themselves and, therefore, be able to recognise and experience their own growth and development.”

Further reading:

Five Ways RADA Is Raising the Performance Ceiling of its Acting Students

A Human Performance article brought you by our Main Partners

By John Portch

“I think burnout is a runaway cousin of wellbeing,” said Dr Meg Popovic.

Last week, she hosted the second session of her three-part Performance Support Series for Leaders Performance Institute members entitled ‘Wellbeing – What’s Having the Most Impact?’ The focus for session two – by popular demand – was burnout: what it is and how one can prevent and manage it in sport.

The session began with a straw poll where Popovic asked attendees: what are the main sources of stress in your workplace? The results, which were collated in real time, were illustrative. The most common answer was work-life balance; second was workload; third was people and the workplace culture; and fourth was a lack of job security.

The results allude to a range of problems, and yet these stresses – which can lead to burnout – have been rarely discussed in elite sporting contexts.

“There is very little to nothing written about staff burnout in high performance sport, Olympic and professional sport,” added Popovic, who is the Senior Professional Sports Manager for North America at EPIC Global Solutions, the world’s leading independent gambling harm minimisation consultancy and a valued Partner of the Leaders Performance Institute.

“In sport, I think burnout is sometimes quite hidden or it just looks different in every person and you don’t know what to do to help.”

Over the course of an hour, she led a discussion on understanding burnout and its early warning signs before turning to stress management and the importance of supportive environments.

The five phases of burnout

Burnout is, as Popovic said, “a state where the employee feels exhausted emotionally and physically”. It is “often the outcome of feeling stress or frustration for a prolonged time” and “burnout can cause significant physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual damage to people”.

While sport is distinct from traditional workplaces, with unique time-sensitivity and performance pressures, Popovic distilled the stages of employee burnout into five phases that resonated with those members in attendance. They were:

1. The honeymoon phase: characterised by enthusiasm, high productivity, feeling invincible, and an individual being hyper-focused on tasks.
2. The onset of stress: there are early signs of fatigue and reduced performance.
3. Chronic stress: the individual is struggling to cope, suffers from persistent anxiety and detachment.
4. Burnout: an individual experiences emotional and physical exhaustion, reduced efficacy and disengagement.
5. Habitual burnout: left untreated, burnout can lead to chronic health issues and emotional numbness.

The early warning signs of burnout

Popovic explained that phases two and three of employee burnout – the onset of stress and chronic stress – are preceded by a series of early warnings signs that we can all become attuned to recognising. They are:

Higher sensitivity – an individual feels or seems more sensitive than usual.

Reduced job performance – there may be signs that they are not able to perform tasks effectively.

Extreme thinking – an individual may become reliant on food, drugs, alcohol or gambling to cope.

Popovic conducted a second straw poll and, troublingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, attendees indicated that anywhere between 15% and 80% of the colleagues with whom they interact are currently experiencing burnout, in their view.

Preventing burnout strategy #1: navigating the stress cycle

Popovic presented two perspectives on preventing burnout. Firstly, that of Drs Emily and Amelia Nagoski as posited in their 2019 book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. They argue that we should recognise stress as a natural response to challenging situations. There are inevitable stressors and people will experience both physiological and emotional responses.

In Burnout, they suggest that individuals must go through the full cycle of experiencing and articulating stress in their bodies to effectively manage it. By acknowledging and addressing stress, one can navigate through the cycle and emerge on the other side with improved resilience and wellbeing.

As Popovic explained, the Nagoskis recommend:

1. Physical activity: regular exercise helps release stress from the body. Engage in activities like walking, jogging, or yoga.
2. Laughter: create moments of genuine laughter. As Popovic said, belly laughs can be therapeutic.
3. Crying: allow yourself to express emotions through crying. It’s a healthy release.
4. Physical affection: seek and give physical affection. Hugs, handshakes, or even petting a dog can help. The Nagoskis encourage people to build themselves a “bubble of love”.
5. Deep breathing: practise deep, intentional breaths to calm the nervous system. The Nagoskis see the practice of mindfulness as an important component of building emotional resilience. They also advocate for journalling.

In making their case, the Nagoskis highlight the distinction between ‘stressors’ – external situations or circumstances that trigger stress – and ‘stress’ itself, which they refer to as the internalisation of stress within your body. This process encompasses how your body responds to stressors and is a manifestation of the physiological and emotional impact of stress on an individual’s wellbeing.

All in all, the Nagoskis’ perspective is underpinned by a sense of compassion. They encourage people to understand the societal pressures and obstacles that contribute to burnout.

Preventing burnout strategy #2: the demand-control-support model

The second view posited by Popovic was organisational psychologist Dr Adam Grant’s ‘demand-control-support’ model. Grant said:

‘Demand’ involves making structural changes, which includes lightening a person’s load or redistributing tasks. He also feels that an organisation should address overtime and expectations of a person’s availability.

‘Control’ includes empowering people to set their own goals, equipping them with the skills needed to handle difficult situations, and giving them the freedom to work flexibly.

‘Support’ operates at a more systemic level. Leaders should foster an environment where requesting and receiving help is easy and it is, in fact, normal to seek assistance and discuss challenges.

Additionally, Grant emphasises the importance of celebrating small wins and tracking daily progress to help address burnout. He also advocates for redesigning job roles as part of an effort to foster supportive cultures.

Further reading:

Four Ways to Better Balance Winning and Wellbeing

If you are interested in joining the third session of this Performance Support Series with Dr Meg Popovic on Tuesday 30 April, sign up here.

Main Image courtesy of Circular

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

Our Startups series looks at companies and founders who are innovating in the fields of athlete performance, fan engagement, team/league operations and other high-impact areas in sports.

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World’s shortest elevator pitch: “Circular is a pioneering organization in smart ring technology with the mission of revolutionizing personal health by transforming complex data into actionable insights through an innovative and easy-to-wear device.”

Company: Circular

Location: Paris, France

Year founded: 2019

Website/App: www.circular.xyz; Apple app; Google Play app

Funding round to date: “In 2020, Circular began crowdfunding and utilized Kickstarter and Indiegogo. On Kickstarter, over 1,500 investors pledged approximately $380,000. Similarly, on Indiegogo, we raised $405,000 from just around 1,800 backers.”

Who are your investors? “Circular has a team of strategic and medical investors, including professional athletes, renowned doctors, and medical professionals.”

Are you looking for more investment? “Circular will be looking to grow its funding further over the next 18 months.”

Tell us about yourself, co-founder & CEO Amaury Kosman: “I’ve always been captivated by the intricate dance of technology and human well-being. After years of research and development, driven by a desire to enhance daily health management, Circular came to life. It was a melding of personal passion and professional pursuit, aiming to revolutionize how we interact with our own health metrics. My journey to CEO was fueled by this singular vision: to create a seamless, intuitive and deeply personal health monitoring experience. Noticing a gap in the market for user-friendly health-tracking devices, I dedicated years to developing the Circular ring. I realized other devices were not understood by ordinary consumers, not even by top-level athletes. By talking to a lot of health professionals and professional sports coaches and using my own experience and that of consumers, I was able to understand and create a product that would be of a professional standard but could be used by everyone. To solve this issue, I thought that creating wearables that are centered around an AI wellness assistant to humanize and teach consumers how to use the data would be a revolution. It was hard to create the product during COVID, especially after we’d succeeded in gaining the trust of consumers following Kickstarter. We had several production problems and had to bounce back several times. This would have killed a lot of companies of our size, but with our determination we always managed to find solutions. Today, we’re still working 12 hours a day, but we’re seeing the fruits of our labor take shape, and there’s still plenty of room for improvement.”

Who are your co-founders/partners? “Circular’s CTO and co-founder Adiasa Suharno. Circular’s COO and Co-Founder Laurent Bsalis. In total, 15 experienced team members make up a diverse and multicultural group who share the same passion for developing the next generation of wearable devices to improve human capabilities.”

How does your product/platform work? “Circular Ring Slim is the thinnest, lightest and most intuitive smart ring in the world and the first to incorporate haptic navigation and alerts. Paired with Kira+, Circular’s powerful AI wellness assistant, the sleek Circular Ring Slim assesses seven biometrics and 142 derived markers 24/7 to help people sleep better and live healthier lives.”

The Circular Pro ring features changeable shells for easy customization. (Image: Circular)

What problem is your company solving? “Most smart rings are heavy and bulky, while the Circular Ring Slim eliminates both of those problems. By creating a thin and lightweight ring, the Slim can be worn at all times which increases accuracy in sleep and activity analysis. It also solves the problem of complicated and difficult to understand data by simplifying it and making it more comprehensible to the everyday user.”

What does your product cost and who is your target customer? “Circular Ring Slim is priced at $275 and includes access to the app without any subscription fee. Our target customer is an individual who wants to live a healthier life but doesn’t understand the metrics or doesn’t want to understand the metrics. In a survey we conducted, 35% of people who bought Circular’s original smart ring said they did not own another wearable device. Circular is targeting an untapped market of people who are interested in a wearable device but need to be convinced that there is a product that can do the work for them.”

How are you marketing your product? “Circular’s marketing strategy is mainly digital oriented, focusing on the unique strengths and innovative features of the Circular Ring. Circular markets the Circular Ring Slim as an accessible and user-friendly health monitoring devices designed for everyday individuals, not just for professionals or biohackers. Our emphasis is on simplicity and ease of use, ensuring that anyone can understand and benefit from its advanced biometric tracking capabilities.”

How do you scale, and what is your targeted level of growth? “We try to double our volume every year. Currently, we’ve realized only 30% of our ultimate vision, with numerous enhancements and innovative features in the pipeline. In the near future, there will be an app update with new features around wellness and empowerment. Additionally, new medical features as well as products and services are on the horizon. Circular will also make strategic partnerships with wellness-oriented companies and celebrities.”

Who are your competitors, and what makes you different? “Smart rings are an emerging market and there are several competitors. Main competitors are Oura Ring, Movano Ring Evie, Ultrahuman Ring Air, Ringconn and boAt Ring. Samsung and Apple are currently developing smart rings, but there is no credible timeline on the release dates. Circular has many key differentiators both in hardware and software. As mentioned before, it is the slimmest and lightest smart ring among its competitors. It has haptic feedback, which allows the users to get additional features around wellness for example tapping anywhere on the surface to stop vibrations linked to an alarm or timer, guided breathing sessions or vital alerts. In terms of software, most of the major differences are within the Circular app. The app simplifies complex metrics and makes meaningful recommendations through Kira, a personal wellness AI assistant. No other competitor contains an AI feature that provides personalized advice. Circular has also gamified the app, offering users the ability to earn online coins and rewards to unlock new features in the app. Additionally, while most competitors record and track health metrics every five to 30 minutes, Circular records metrics every two minutes, which offers increased granularity in the data.”

What’s the unfair advantage that separates your company? “Circular’s unfair advantage lies in a mix of everything but is in the majority of our Vision and team. Circular has utility and design patents and has trained its own algorithm. We have created and own everything, from hardware to software, and have a dedicated team which makes us very versatile, flexible, and quick in development to reach our vision, which is completely different from the others.”

What milestone have you recently hit or will soon hit? “Launching soon will be our first medical features.”

What are the values that are core to your brand? “The core values of Circular’s brand are accessibility, data privacy and a commitment to advancing personal health through technology. Circular’s goal is to develop and create a multi-feature wearable ring to improve physical and mental performances of the users through unique and intelligent recommendations. The long-term goal is to provide the ultimate accessory that will be essential to the way we sleep, live and work. Circular’s multicultural team believes in the power of assisted technology and wearable devices, but often had the feeling that their true powers have not been unleashed completely. The wish was to create a device that would rather assist users in making good decisions and responding to their body signals in a healthier way rather than just something that would simply tell them how good or bad they are doing. As Circular is also in the fashion industry, the team strives to manufacture a piece of art, not only a technological advancement. The interchangeable outer-shells on the Pro model allow you to adapt the look of your ring to every moment of your life.”

What does success ultimately look like for your company? “Success for Circular is defined by widespread adoption of the Circular Ring Slim, leading to a significant positive impact on users’ health and well-being, and establishing Circular as a key innovator in the personal health technology space.”

What should investors or customers know about you — the person, your life experiences — that shows they can believe in you? “As the driving force behind Circular and my two co-founders, our journey reflects a profound dedication to health technology and innovation. My two co-founders and I started with no initial capital four years ago, and despite these humble beginnings, we have achieved remarkable progress. Launching Circular amidst the COVID-19 pandemic presented extraordinary challenges for a hardware company like ours, yet we overcame numerous obstacles that could have easily derailed our project. Our resilience and unyielding commitment have brought us this far, and there’s still much more we aspire to achieve. Currently, we’ve realized only 30% of our ultimate vision, with numerous enhancements and innovative features in the pipeline. This journey, marked by perseverance, is a testament to my unwavering commitment to transforming personal health technology and I hope this narrative instills confidence in my vision and capability to revolutionize the health tech landscape.”

Which demographics and sports is Circular enjoying its most success within? “Ordinary people who learn wellness prevention and monitoring thanks to Circular. And who find in it a passion/way of life and then explore biohacking further than just Circular to improve their quality of life in the parallels they have chosen to enhance.”

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

By Luke Whitworth

Leaders Performance Institute members have tended to see artificial intelligence as the ‘elephant in the room’.

There is a nervousness borne of misunderstanding AI coupled with an appreciation of the opportunities should you get things right.

Some members have been early adopters, others have engaged later. In any case, this recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable was an ideal forum for identifying potential enablers that stem from the use of AI as well as the questions that remain.

Where AI is having a positive impact on our programmes

Greater efficiencies – AI can be used to speed up processes and automate insights, such as in the case of scouting reports or player tracking. It can also help streamline workflows. Some members have used ChatGPT to answer specific questions in quickfire time and others have used AI to aid the data visualisation process by presenting datapoints in a clear and concise manner.

Deeper insights – there has long been a wealth of data in sport but often far more limited means of interpreting the numbers. AI can pick up that slack and even potentially unearth insights we haven’t yet considered. AI, used effectively, can support decision-making processes and analyse and synthesise datapoints from different technologies, such as video or wearables.

Enhanced injury prevention and rehabilitation –  AI can support athlete monitoring and overall health monitoring to better inform decision-making around training loads, future scheduling, and athlete development programmes.

A better tactical and on-field understanding – AI can simulate fixtures and help to deliver a better understanding of how to beat opponents with the most effective tactics, which can then be shared with coaching staff as they build a gameplan. There are also implications for the relationship between training and on-field performance and the opportunity to better reflect on the methodologies employed.

The biggest questions around the use of AI

How do we make AI work?

An obvious question, but there’s no consensus. It leads to further lines of enquiry: who do we need to engage to make this work in terms of disciplines, personnel, and how will their perspectives be used to educate the collective? Who are your big AI stakeholders? AI mapping, one member noted, can be a valuable tool. What type of expertise do you need? There is some uncertainty over who might be the best profile of person to help with the internal development of AI use.

How do we set the right foundations?

You don’t want to jump the gun. Have you implemented the correct data privacy and cyber security processes? That will ease your nerves around GDPR and any ethical considerations that may present themselves. How do you intend to educate your athletes and staff around its use? One attendee spoke of the need for a working definition of ‘intelligence’. Clarity is essential for effective interdisciplinary collaboration.

What could AI change?

One of the most common issues is the ‘role replacement v role enhancement’ debate. The skillsets of analysts will evolve as their roles and responsibilities change. One member suggested that the analyst’s role may shift from collation and interpretation to communication. Coaches will need to be provided with data literacy skills too. Teams will also need to be mindful of not losing the subjective human element, which demands human interaction rather than machine learning alone.

How do we measure the quality of data?

How clean is your data? It’s a crucial question to answer when making data-informed decisions. If there are any issues then you will need to get your house in order first. Once you are assured of the quality input it builds confidence in any models or predictors. Additionally, how easy is it to upload datasets on the ‘front end’ that assist your collective decision-making?

By John Portch

When New Zealand lost to France 20-18 in their 2007 Rugby World Cup quarter-final, most observers assumed the defeat marked the end of the road for their Head Coach Graham Henry.

It was the All Blacks’ worst-ever World Cup finish and their unconvincing performances were attributed to arrogance, complacency, poor team selection, and ill-advised tactics, or a combination of all four.

In any case, Henry was held responsible, so there was surprise in some quarters when New Zealand Rugby [NZR] decided to retain his services post-tournament. The controversy was largely forgotten by the time he led the All Blacks to the 2011 Rugby World Cup on home soil.

NZR had bucked their 20-year habit of replacing the All Blacks’ head coach either at the end of each World Cup cycle or as soon as results and performances were deemed unacceptable. ‘Now, they realised, this strategy wasn’t working,’ writes Professor Alex Hill of the episode in his book Centennials: The 12 Habits of Great, Enduring Organisations.

While changing a leader can feel tempting when analysing a poor outcome, in the All Blacks’ case, Hill argues it was their lack of stable stewardship that had hampered the team. ‘If you change your leader every four years then you fail to build a collective memory. You lose out on applying lessons you’ve learnt from one World Cup in the next, and you leave yourself with insufficient time to build up all the knowledge you require’.

Stable stewards – a quarter of your team

Hill, the Co-Founder and Director of the Centre for High Performance, has dedicated more than a decade to researching organisations that have outperformed their peers for more than 100 years – the Centennials at the heart of his book – which include NASA, British Cycling, the Royal College of Art, the Royal Shakespeare Company and, of course, the All Blacks. They won’t all endure all the same problems at the same time, or in the same ways, but Hill has identified 12 habits that denote them all at their best and the ingenious steps they took at key moments to sustain their high performance.

Beyond habits, a character common to all Centennials is the ‘stable steward’: an individual who guards an organisation’s values, purpose and long-term vision. They are embedded throughout a team and, according to research, should make up about a quarter of your people. They facilitate the building of collective knowledge within an environment and carefully manage transitions from one generation to the next.

“You keep thinking ‘I’ve met this person before’,” Hill tells the Leaders Performance Institute of his encounters with stable stewards during research visits to Centennial organisations. “It is often somebody who is quite humble, who is in it for the long term and comfortable working in an environment where the organisation is more important than they are. The stable stewards guide. They are more like parents and set the behaviours, norms, values and principles, the environment.”

In Centennials, Hill points to the fact that most Rugby World Cup-winning coaches have been part of their team’s coaching ticket for at least six years, while a quarter of their players have been regularly selected for the past eight years. ‘Inevitably, stable stewardship and stable team membership tend to go hand in hand. Fresh talent is always needed, but world-beating success demands continuity too,’ he writes.

For the All Blacks, further continuity came in the form of Assistant Head Coach Steve Hansen succeeding Henry in 2012. He led the All Blacks to a second World Cup in 2015. Hill says: “I went through some of the big All Blacks World Cup matches and what’s interesting is that it’s the disruptive experts who often turn a game or do something unusual in a moment that changes everything. So they have a real role, but the stewards are guiding them forwards.”

However, much like New Zealand Rugby in the decades before 2007, he believes organisations routinely fail to understand that balance.

Disruptive experts – the majority of your team

The stable stewards are fundamental, but sports, as Hill explains, need their disruptive experts too, whether they work part-time or hold other jobs. They are, as he writes in Centennials, ‘the grit in the Oyster that produces the pearl.’

He illustrates this point for the Leaders Performance Institute with another metaphor used in his book: “They are more like teenagers and their role is to tell you that you are rubbish, you’re out of date, you need to get with it, and that can be very challenging. But they tend to come and go. They have a very disruptive role whereas the stewards are more a part of the fabric.”

Some organisations, it could be argued, have suffered from too little disruption. Peter Keen, the former Sporting Director at British Cycling, told Hill of the transformation that occurred when the team opened itself up to outsider expertise. ‘Our biggest breakthroughs always came when we worked with brilliant people from outside who looked at our problem in a completely different way,’ said Keen in Centennials.

The team, who had been treading water in the late-1980s, started working with an aerodynamicist and a test driver from Lotus Cars as well as a psychologist from Tottenham Hotspur. None of these individuals had a background in elite cycling but their input led to innovations in bike and helmet design, the way riders sat on their saddle, and in psychological preparation.

As British Olympic gold medal-winning rider Chris Boardman told Hill, this approach is ‘the perfect mix of expertise and ignorance that can bring about giant leaps of innovation’. British Cycling claimed the nation’s first gold medal in 70 years in 1992 (Boardman’s) and Great Britain has topped the cycling medals table at the 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020 Games. The organisation has endured its challenges down the years, but the incremental advances borne from ‘constant analysis, experimentation and enquiry’ continue to this day.

“What you realise is that although from the outside these organisations look incredibly stable, there is a disruptive element within them,” says Hill, who also considers himself a disruptor. However, “you do have to work alongside each other, so you have to be comfortable knowing that if you’re going into an environment wanting to shake things up, there will be tension and you won’t be able to do everything that you want to do. But ultimately, it’s the radical and the traditional that works together going forward.”

Radically traditional

It was the Royal College of Arts who coined the term ‘radically traditional’ and it applies to all Centennial organisations. ‘Out of this balance emerges the energy that propels them forward and a stability that ensures no one loses sight of what each Centennial is there to achieve or forgets what has led to success in the past,’ Hill writes in Centennials.

On one hand, that means recruiting brilliant individuals. Hill tells the Leaders Performance Institute: “Great institutions go broad in terms of where they look. As soon as they’re not working with the best in the world then they’re going to lose their edge.”

On the other hand, it also means finding the people who create the best team. Hill refers to the success of Norwegian polar expeditions of the early 20th Century. The most common factor in all those successful crews? “It was the cook,” he says, referring to the affable Adolf Lindstrøm. ‘He [Lindstrøm] has rendered greater and more valuable services to the Norwegian polar expeditions than any other man,’ wrote Roald Amundsen in his diary in 1911, which was the year he led the first successful expedition to the South Pole.

“What he did,” says Hill of Lindstrøm, “was sit down with everyone at the end of the day, nourish them with food and also with conversation and laughter. He listened and provided that supportive element. It’s a bit like Ringo Starr in the Beatles. He wasn’t the most creative, he wasn’t pushing things forward, but he kept the group together.

So you’re not just recruiting for exceptional talent, you’re also recruiting for people who have a real team role.”

Create the best environment and new recruits – whether they turn out to be stable stewards or disruptive experts – can thrive. “The British Olympic teams have a simple but useful phrase: ‘performance equals talent times environment’. How do we get the best people and then how do we create the best environment? You realise that the best environments are based on safety and people feeling safe to be themselves. How do we create a diverse team? Then how do we create a space where everyone can contribute fully and is fully engaged?”

The stable stewards will help to create that space, then disruptive experts can decide where they believe they can give the best of themselves.

“I think it’s working out the environment where you think you can create the most impact that’s important.”

Alex Hill’s Centennials: The 12 Habits of Great, Enduring Organisations is now available in paperback from Cornerstone Press / Penguin Random House

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

You can’t have a discussion about sports technology today without including athletes in that conversation. Their partnerships, investments and endorsements help fuel the space – they have emerged as major stakeholders in the sports tech ecosystem. The Athlete’s Voice series highlights the athletes leading the way and the projects and products they’re putting their influence behind.

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While most of the country rested on Presidents Day, Anthony Alfredo drove 800 miles at Daytona International Speedway, completing the Cup Series and Xfinity Series double. He finished 27th in his second career Daytona 500 while crossing in 24th place of the United Rentals 300.

Alfredo, a 24-year-old native of Ridgefield, Connecticut, competes full time in the Xfinity Series as the driver of the Our Motorsports No 5 and makes appearances in the Cup Series behind the wheel of the Beard Motorsports No 62 car. (Both are Chevys.) Alfredo spent the 2021 season entirely on the Cup Series, leading parts of three races and securing one top-10. On the Xfinity circuit, he has 15 career top-10s, three top-5s and one pole.

The most recent addition to Alfredo’s sponsorship portfolio is Pison, makers of AI-powered neural sensors that track nervous system and brain function through skin measurements. The Boston-based, MIT-spinoff began as a tool to aid those suffering from ALS [amyotrophic lateral sclerosis]. That same core ENG technology — electroneurography, which reads neuromuscular signals — is now a part of its new performance product, Pison Ready, which was launched in conjunction with Alfredo’s participation in the Daytona 500.

On his introduction to Pison…

A cousin of mine does commercial real estate in Boston, Steele Divitto, with the Steele Group, a fellow sponsor of ours, and he introduced me to them. They actually were at the summer Daytona race last year as well, some of the co-founders and employees. I got to know them pretty well and learn about their technology. It was just different than most other products out there. For me, I take pride in only being affiliated with brands I believe in. When I learned about their technology, and how it could actually improve lives out there and potentially save lives in the healthcare industry, I thought it was really cool, and I wanted to figure out a way to partner up with them, whether it was on the track or off the track.

Fortunately, we had the opportunity to get together, and we’re doing some cool stuff on social media this year. They’re going to ride along on my B-Post as an associate sponsor all year long, and my gloves have their device printed on them. And we’re going to be giving away my race-worn gloves a handful times throughout the season, starting with my Daytona 500 gloves, which is pretty awesome.

On wearing the tech…

So I actually used a very early-stage device for testing, I would say late last year, and then now that their newer consumer product has been released, I’ve had it on for a few weeks and been able to get familiar with the app, the device itself, some of the cool features. The full version, when it comes out, is going to do a whole lot more as well, so I’m really excited for that.

Currently, I can test my mental agility, my focus and my reaction time at any point in the day, anywhere I’m at, from the comfort of my mobile device. It is really neat because you see a lot of athletes and other people train with cognitive function tools — whether they’re those dots on the wall and all this stuff — but that’s super inconvenient and you can’t get that everywhere. But to have this on my wrist, I was sitting in the airport the other day running a couple of tests. I could run them in the morning, I could run them before I get into the car to qualify — and it must have worked because I made the [Daytona] 500 on time.

On what he’s learned about himself…

My reaction time is super-fast, which I guess is kind of expected for probably most drivers. Now it’s like a game to me to always see if I could beat that [best score]. But more importantly, I can just check my mental readiness when I wake up in the morning — usually I can tell if I’m going to have a faster or slower time based on how I’m feeling. But sometimes I surprise myself, maybe I don’t necessarily feel 100%. Or I’m a little wore out or tired, but my cognitive function is still operating at peak capability.

Other than that, there is a focus test that is really cool, because a go/no-go. So this device, the flashes on the reaction time test, and basically you have to react to that as fast as possible. But with the go/no-go, you have two different colored lights. There’s one that you want to react to and one you stay static — you don’t react to. So that one has caught me off guard. It’s surprising how challenging that is because you’re still trying to go for the time, obviously, of being as quick as possible when you see the white light. But when you see the orange light, instinct is like, you see a light and you want to react, but you got to remember that’s the no-go light.

It can seem like a game at times because it’s so addicting, but in all reality, it’s improving my mental focus, my capability, and preparing me to go about my day but more importantly strap into a racecar and have to make split-second decisions at 200 miles an hour.

On his prior exploration of cognitive training…

I have a fair amount of experience with some of the other tools out there, just from trainers I’ve worked with and teams I’ve been associated with. But this has had the same effect for me, way more conveniently, because like I said, I could do it anywhere throughout the day. I think the important thing is implementing it into our training routine as professional athletes or race car drivers.

Say I’m doing reps with weights and then I’m super-setting that with the rowing machine. In-between sets, when I’m super worn out, instead of just sitting there taking a minute or two break, I’m doing my reaction time [on Pison] — and that is a challenge because you’re physically wore out, and you don’t really feel like paying attention to something like that. But in the racecar when it’s 130 degrees, and you’re uncomfortable, you’re tired, sore, whatever it is, you still have to be operating at your peak, at least that’s what it takes to be a winner.

When I ride my bike, I can almost break it up into a race, like stage one, stage two, checkered flag. So what I mean by that is, if I go ride 30 miles, maybe every 10 miles, I check my reaction time and my focus real quick and just see, how the further end of the ride I get, and the more wore out, I can see how my reaction time changes. Maybe it slows down, maybe it doesn’t. If it does, how can I improve that? I think doing it more consistently in my routine, is where you see that. So I have user other technology out there, like I said before, and I think a lot of people do implement it into their training routine, but this is so much more convenient. And you could do it anywhere, not just in the gym.

On his use of other wearables…

No, not anymore. I used to. I have quite a bit of experience with a lot of the other technology out there, but this is truly revolutionary, as I like to say, because there’s some amazing things going on in other industries — healthcare industry, [the United States] Department of Defense, and then obviously, professional athletes.

One thing we haven’t really talked about is why it is important to the average person. Someone might say, ‘Well, I’m not a NASCAR driver, I don’t need this.’ But I think for as humans, it’s important we all operate at our peak functionality at work, no matter what you’re doing, as a family member, maybe you’re a parent, whatever the case may be. You see how many people are out there wearing other devices or wearables that track their heart rate, their sleep. And the sleep isn’t even accurate, to be completely honest, from what’s out there. But people don’t know that.

On Pison’s upcoming circadian rhythm prediction functionality…

It’s coming soon, and that’s what I’m most excited about — that, the sleep and much more. So right now, it’s more cognitive function and preparation. But very soon, in a couple of weeks, I’m going to have my device and start testing. But I think summer is where anyone will be able to get their hands on this device and improve the quality of their life.

On whether he’s learned what makes him most ready for race day…

Yeah, 100%. And that’s kind of a fun thing: we were messing around yesterday with how Death Wish coffee could potentially improve your reaction time and your focus with the caffeine content. Or right now, even, I’m sipping on a Celsius energy drink on the track, seeing how that [impacts me]. I could do a test before and after that — that’d be interesting to see.

That’s what I’m most excited about when that the rest of the technology comes out here shortly. Right now I could say, ‘OK maybe I didn’t sleep that well. My reaction time was slow this morning.’ Or maybe I didn’t feel like I slept well, but it is good. But to eventually have that sleep data soon, I could directly correlate that information and validate these predictions I already have about myself.

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

By Luke Whitworth

How do you measure the intangibles of your coach development programmes in order to demonstrate their impact and effectiveness?

The challenge facing members of the Leaders Performance Institute is one of consistently showing a tangible return on investment in this space.

This pinch point provided the basis of a recent Leaders Virtual Roundtable that enabled members to share their experiences with coach development practices; what has worked for them, elements that are showing promise, and ideas that warrant further discussion.

Below, we detail their main considerations and their attempts to answer that question of impact and effectiveness.

Factors to consider

• Do you fully understand the outcome you’re trying to achieve? If there is clarity then coach development can be explored from a variety of different perspectives. That could be coach development at a systemic level where you are measuring return on investment within a programme or sport. It could also be learning interventions for the individual. Whatever the focus, it’s important to have clarity.
• What are you actually measuring and how do you define ‘success’? Is it the growth of the coach or performance outcomes? As noted at the table, if you are too focused on performance outputs and performance it can mask what has and has not happened.
• Is your coach development work role-relevant? This question is pitched at the systemic level, with one member explaining that they are engaged in research that seeks to answer the question: ‘what is coaching expertise?’ It is important to understand how coaches can be supported both as an individual and within the context of their environment.
• Is there alignment between team performance and individual development? The table recognised the complexity around the needs of athletes and coaches which, in turn, makes it challenging to track and monitor impact effectively.
• What steps have you taken to help your coaches build self-awareness? Elements of the Australian Olympic system’s approach to coach development are built on establishing new ways of understanding ‘self’ and self-awareness.
• What does it mean to be a high performance coach? In the Australian Olympic system, athletes, staff and high performance managers were brought together to answer this very question as part of a research project. The purpose was to better understand what coaches need to be successful and then provide a coach development framework to more accurately track progress.

How are you currently measuring impact?

While the table offered differing methods, there was a consensus that the challenge of measuring the impact of coach development practices persists.

Storytelling: a counterpoint to data

One environment shared they are using mixed methods and a range of tools, structures and forms to gather information. The attendee also emphasised the importance of storytelling and the creation of narratives, which have been a big piece of understanding the impact. One of the frameworks they are utilising is the values creation framework, which comes out of the social learning space. The aim is to connect this to a ‘values’ story, created by the coach, that will complement other quantitative and qualitative sources of information. Another sport shared that they are focusing on stories of impact. They are still finding it challenging to show this clearly through numbers, but stories of shifts in behaviour or the practice of asking for feedback from others on how they feel as part of the environment the coach has created, have proven useful.

The athlete (and other staff): the missing part of the puzzle

The table looked at coaching impact through the lens of athlete – they are, after all, the beneficiaries of this coaching work. One member commented that athletes can often be a missing part of this puzzle. Similarly, it is important to collate input from others in the environment around the coach’s development journey. Solicit feedback from other staff members on the developmental differences they are seeing in the coach.

A coach’s needs analysis

Other simple methods for measurement include capturing, assessing and measuring against a coach’s needs analysis. Needs analyses often present baseline data to track across time. As part of your needs analysis, there is also an opportunity to understand what makes a particular coach tick. One environment took this idea forward by creating an ‘impact report’, which allowed them to reflect on the needs and what was delivered through subsequent interventions; identifying which had the most impact on the individual. This also provided excellent insight into how to continue to personalise learning opportunities. Another environment shared how they had trialled the use of pre- and post-mortems on specific areas of a coach’s development.

Mic’d up

In a more technical intervention, it has become common practice for coaches to be mic’d up or videoed as part of their development. The next phase being considered is the mic’ing up of the athletes to better understand what they are doing with the learning and coaching they are receiving.

Measuring confidence levels

Another environment shared how they have started to measure a confidence level pre-programme and then used feedback from different people to see where the individual is at during and post-programme. Interestingly, the coaches in this environment tend to feel confident on a topic pre-programme, then, as they get into the programme, that confidence dips as they begin to critically self-reflect, but then it builds back up through developmental support.

Future thinking

Is there a trick we are missing when measuring coach development?

Traditionally, the focus is on the individual, but coaches in elite sport seldom work in isolation. It is important to continue to take into consideration the wants and needs of the environment as well as the individual coach.

Therefore, is the next phase of coach development a better understanding of how we coach and develop teams and then working to establish what team development looks like when everyone is working collectively and effectively?

By John Portch with additional reporting by Joe Lemire

• Does your physical work complement the technical, tactical and mental demands of your team?

• Athlete motivations naturally ebb and flow. Monitor those motivations and work with them.

• You can take safer risks when you understand an athlete’s training range.

The Leaders Performance Institute and SBJ Tech caught up with Ryan Alexander, the Director of Sports Science, at Atlanta United, ahead of the new season.

The pre-season period has evolved in Alexander’s seven years at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

“The landscape has changed immensely,” he told The People Behind the Tech podcast. “It comes significantly with a great demand of collaboration, especially when we have such a multicultural roster.”

Atlanta can call upon players from Europe, Central and South America and, when those players return to their homelands or go on international duty, Alexander and his colleagues maintain communication at suitable moments.

“The mastery of a topic of a given field, of a specialisation, comes down to how well you can explain it and meet your audience at their level,” he said, adding, “My ability to connect with you and for you to understand the importance of that information and how it relates to performance: that’s where the communication is.”

Here, we explore Alexander’s efforts to gain “a more accurate interpretation of what performance is [as] that’s where we’re able to assist in the technical and tactical elements of how a coach views a player.”

Understand the competition demands

Alexander explained that his work is governed by the physical, technical and tactical demands of the team, with the physical facilitating the technical and tactical. It is, as he said, a “broad, holistic approach” that takes its lead from Head Coach Gonzalo Pineda. “What will it take to actually prepare them to be able to execute?” he continued. Tech and data will only take you so far. “It can’t just be that we monitor everything at all times. We can’t overwhelm the players with the technology. We want to provide them with the correct data so that they are informed and making the best decisions for themselves, as well as the leaders of the club, and how we are able to combine all of those things to put a consistent high-level performance on the field every time the whistle blows.”

Work with an athlete’s motivations

Monitor athlete motivation because it will enable you to plan accordingly. “Everybody has a ‘why’,” said Alexander, adding that it is natural for motivation to ebb and flow across a draining MLS season. “It’s important for us to understand, from a training process standpoint, times when we are going to intentionally taper within the intensity of our training because we know the motivation, and what has been taken from them, throughout that time of year trying to implement less cognitively demanding exercises.” Therefore, “the demand on problem-solving within an individual exercise or training session is going to be lower because we have to time them, at the right moment through that micro cycle, to switch on in the game.”

Find the balance in risk taking

Risk-taking is ingrained in preparation and performance. “It is important to find a player’s “range”, said Alexander, adding: “We’re always going to look to analyse what we’ve been successful with, [establishing] the foundation of what the player has performed well in this specific environment against a certain style of player opposition [for example] and then looking back at how they’ve been communicating and what they’ve presented with on a daily basis to the training ground versus on match day. If we can see trends in a consistency of all those different areas then we become much more confident in the expectation of performance.” Any risks can be offset “if we perform and train consistently within your range that has you performing at a high level, at a high rate, successful in all these different scenarios and environments.”

Take onboard athlete feedback

What do you do when you see an athlete visibly lose interest in a session? Athlete feedback is crucial. “We can’t say ‘we’re the only ones providing the solutions here and you guys are the execution so be quiet’ – that will never be the messaging from us,” said Alexander. “Miss the mark and there will be reflections in a group setting [and] in an individual setting.” Atlanta’s players have a voice, Alexander and his colleagues will bring their own passion and energy to a session and “that’s how we maintain mutual respect to the value each brings within the training process.”

Listen to the full interview with Ryan Alexander:

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Main Image: Bat Around

A Data & Innovation article brought to you by

By Joe Lemire

Our Startups series looks at companies and founders who are innovating in the fields of athlete performance, fan engagement, team/league operations and other high-impact areas in sports.

* * * * *

World’s shortest elevator pitch: “Bat Around is gamifying baseball batting practice.”

Company: Bat Around

Location: New York, N.Y.

Year founded: 2020

Website/App: https://www.letsbataround.com | Apple Store app | Google Play app

Funding round to date: “We are self-funded at this point. Pre-revenue.”

Who are your investors? “The main investor is single-sourced, Steve Zelin of PJT Partners in New York.”

Are you looking for more investment? “Yes.”

Tell us about yourself, CEO Matt Farrell: “I’m a career-long sports marketer with about 30 years working in the sports business. I mainly have worked for leagues and governing bodies – Golf Channel, USA Swimming, the U.S. Olympics and Paralympic Committee, as well as Warner Bros. in the early days of the internet. I started a consulting business in 2020 during the pandemic, and I started out as a contractor working for what is now Bat Around, and that eventually led to this role.”

Who are your co-founders/partners? “Steve Zelin, he’s a partner and the head of restructuring and special situations group at PJT Partners. Ken Byck, he was a co-owner of one of the largest fantasy baseball vacation companies licensed by MLB. Robert Lipps, 20 years of investment banking experience. Clint Hurdle, former manager of the Rockies and Pirates, 1,269 career wins as a manager, National League Manager of the Year in 2013 with the Pirates. He’s really the vision and the soul behind what is Bat Around.”

How does your platform work? “If you think about any type of simulator, most notably in the golf industry, hit the ball and watch the animation take place on the screen – that is essentially what we are for baseball. We’ve created a game out of that. We took a technical player development tool of swing analytics, swing outcome and turned that into a game. We call it “sportainment.” It’s a mixture of sports and entertainment. Hitting the ball with live, on-screen results.”

What problem is your company solving? “When we started this, we saw two things that weren’t necessarily headed in the same path but we thought they could. One is we saw the baseball/softball industry have a lot of really strong player development tools that were very technical, but few that really gamified the experience. That was happening at the same time we certainly saw the explosion of Topgolf, golf simulators generally and, believe it or not, even some activities like axe throwing that were getting people active in something they didn’t really think they could do or they didn’t think the game was available to them. We felt like that was a convergence of where we wanted to be.”

What does your product cost and who is your target customer? “Right now, we’re distributing the product free to batting cages that have a HitTrax system. That’s a product very prevalent in the batting cage world. We’re going to support that with sponsorships and partnerships, but starting this out to grow the user base and get as many people playing this game as possible as we start on this HitTrax platform. We have two target audiences. The first being baseball/softball batting cages with a HitTrax system. The second is more in the entertainment space of baseball stadium concourses, family fun centers or even entertainment locations.”

How are you marketing your product? “It’s a little bit of a combination. We have 12 former MLB players with 29,000 combined hits that are advisors on the project, and they are a great source of introductions, content and giving validation to what the product is all about. We’ve done an on-site activation for two weeks at the College World Series in the summer of 2023. We just finished in (early January) at a baseball conference in Dallas for coaches. We did a demonstration and were invited to be part of the MLB Winter Meetings in a tech innovation expo. We’re really starting to use experiential activations and digital marketing to spread the world about how you can get this in an area near you.”

How do you scale, and what is your targeted level of growth? “The good news about scale with the product being software is it’s really a one-click download to get the product onto your HitTrax system. We came out of our beta mode of three pilot cages in January to release the product. We see starting and building authenticity in the baseball/softball world first, but we really see growth coming in entertainment venues and restaurants. We have signed our first agreement with an MLB team and will be on their concourse as a fan activity starting this season. We will announce the team in the coming weeks.”

Who are your competitors, and what makes you different? “In many ways, we’re at the beginning of this sport and entertainment mixture within baseball and softball. The golf world is very well advanced in this, but baseball/softball has not been as much. Our competitors come in other sources of entertainment for people. Within the baseball world, it’s re-educating people how to take player development tools and turn them into a game. HitTrax is a great example of that. In the future, there are a ton of great player development technology tools in baseball – Diamond Kinetics, Blast Motion, Rapsodo, TrackMan. Really, we just see the universe of gamification in baseball having so much opportunity.”

What’s the unfair advantage that separates your company? “What we think is the special sauce to our game is we’ve created our own specific metric that actually measures your success of the game, it’s called your Bat Around Metric or your BAM Score. Obviously, baseball is a very statistics-driven sport. What we’ve done is taken different strategic hitting skills, strategy of the game, hitting a line drive, moving the ball around the field, moving runners and we’ve taken your overall success rate of all of these different hitting skills, not just hitting the ball hard, which is an over-focused area right now of just exit velocity and how hard you can hit the ball. What we’ve done is taken all of these hitting skills and rolled them into one successful number, where you’re a power hitter and I’m a singles hitter, we can actually score well in this game and maybe just perform well on different skills, roll that up into your BAM, which I describe as a decathlon of hitting. From there, just the other soft advantages are first mover in the gamification space, the advisors we have on the project, like Clint Hurdle, and being that early adopter in the space.”

What milestone have you recently hit or will soon hit? “We just came out of our Beta mode and we are now in 18 cages and adding new ones each day. Our major milestone, our coming-out party as a product, was really this past College World Series in Omaha. Having the feather in the cap of being invited by MLB to display at the Winter Meetings was huge for us as a young company. Another is this MLB team concourse.”

What are the values that are core to your brand? “We have a mission and our guiding principles of the game. Our mission statement is connect with the ball and others, meaning we want you to hit but we want it to be a social activity. That’s the simplicity of our mission, connect with the ball and others. Then, we have three guiding principles. One is everybody hits, which essentially means making the game, swinging a bat, accessible for anyone and everyone. The second guiding principle is what we call baseball with more BAM, which means there’s a fun element to this and also a scoring element that can actually help us – think of a handicap in golf – that can allow us to play different skills with each other. The third, really inspired by Clint Hurdle, is innovation built on tradition. We want to take old school hitting strategy and elements of the game of baseball but have it be packaged with modern technology, and in many ways trick people into learning the strategy of the game and strategy of hitting, versus just trying to hit bombs all day.”

What does success ultimately look like for your company? “It’s making the game of baseball and softball more accessible than ever before. Many people, such as myself, the game retired us. The game retired me at 19-years-old. Outside of adult leagues, I didn’t really feel as if there was much of an outlet for me to play. Now, we’re trying to re-open the door. We want to give the game back to people to enjoy, no matter what their skill level is. I feel like going back to our mission of making that a connected experience of the ball and with others, whether it be a restaurant or a professional stadium concourse or being able to play the game in your garage if you want – make the game more accessible again.”

What should investors or customers know about you — the person, your life experiences — that shows they can believe in you? “The depth and breadth of my experience working in sports and sports business, but not just that, but I’ve always worked for challenger brands in sports. It’s one thing to be a marketer and promote some of the biggest NFL, NBA, MLB teams. My career has been about building brands with Olympic sports, non-traditional golf events. It’s really the love of sports and sports business with being, of knowing the grind of building a brand and especially a challenger brand.”

How much does adding the gaming element of this more appealing across different sects of baseball fans? “In this case, I will make a loose connection to Topgolf and our game. What I love about both is if I stood out on a golf course or stood at home plate and hit a ball, the massive amount of real estate that is comes into reality really quick. When I can be in a more confined setting, then see the animation play out on the screen and see the defenders play my ball, score points, even if I hit a weak ground ball I’m still scoring some experiential points and there’s the phenomenon of seeing some numbers tally, whether they’re small or large, there’s a rush to that. And seeing some success. The same way in Topgolf, if I shank a shot, I can still hit a target and there’s some fun in it. It’s not the same in Bat Around, but we’re showing you constant feedback of you earned 50 experiential points for this hit, you earned 300 points for that hit, so we can give you instant feedback and keep the integrity of competing with someone but have some small wins along the way.”

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

A Data & Innovation podcast brought to you in collaboration with

“Everything is based upon the game for us,” said Ryan Alexander.

“Understanding how the physical demands and fitness is going to be interpreted on the field as it is going to relate to the technical and tactical execution of a certain style of play.”

Alexander, the Director of Sports Science at Atlanta United, was speaking to John Portch and Joe Lemire on the People Behind the Tech podcast ahead of the new MLS season, which began in late February.

He also spoke about the club’s groundbreaking work with i-Brain Tech, a neurofitness training aid that has transformed their skills and cognitive training and led to players having “higher levels of conversations with their technical coaches”.

Elsewhere, Alexander explored:

• Finding the level of confidence in the data to challenge or support [9:30];
• Knowing when to take calculated risks with players [18:00];
• How i-Brain has been integrated into the players’ training plans [27:00];
• His efforts to meet players and coaches at their ‘level’ when it comes to data [35:30].

Joe Lemire LinkedIn | X

John Portch LinkedIn | X

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