FlyKitt has been adopted by US Soccer and numerous players traveling to and from Europe during international breaks. It uses algorithms to prescribe a protocol of supplements, blue light-blocking glasses and recommendations on meal and sleep timing to mitigate jet lag from international travel.
Main image: courtesy of FlyKitt
That product, built from the data collection and personal coaching services of what was known as Fount, worked so effectively — better than 90% success rate — that its sales quintupled in a six-month period last year. At that point, CEO Andrew Herr decided to focus more intently on helping people travel, and along with CTO Clayton Kim, developed FlyKitt Fit, an app-based AI tool that generates custom exercise plans for travelers.
With FlyKitt Fit, a user can take photos of a hotel gym — or any fitness center — and the app will automatically identify the available machinery. Someone then needs to enter exercise goals, time available and current muscle soreness, and then FlyKitt Fit will generate a workout program.
“One of the big conclusions from our work was that travel was a top three challenge to people’s health, and no one was addressing it,” Herr said. “With that rapid growth, we just saw the opportunity to really use all of the accumulated data and knowledge to build products to go after travel, and so what we’re doing is we’re building the toolkit to solve every part of the health challenges of travel.”
Over time, FlyKitt Fit will include more domestic travel aid and be more deeply intertwined with the jet lag product with inputs based on one’s circadian adjustment and optimal exertion based on recent rest. “We’re moving towards integrating this more into the FlyKitt program, but right now it’s really focused on getting you the best workout you can get when you’re on the road,” Herr said.
The genesis of FlyKitt originates from Herr’s time as a human performance specialist in the US Army — he was twice honored with a ‘Mad Scientist’ award — and his understanding that flying creates an inflammatory response akin to what divers experience at great depths. Suppressing that underlying inflammation allows circadian rhythms to more easily adjust. The parent company raised a $12 million Series A in 2023.
US Soccer is one of the known sports users of the FlyKitt product, both for team travel to international matches and for shuttling European-based players to and from camps back in the States.
Also on the product roadmap is FlyKitt Food. The tool, which is currently in beta, helps users find healthy meal options while traveling. The technology ingests publicly available menus and can recommend not just a certain restaurant but even a specific dish, complete with modifications such as whether to get the dressing on the side.
“We know from our coaching service both the types of meals that are going to be most effective at powering people when they travel,” Herr said. “It’s a generally healthy protocol, but it’s also really the optimal stuff to be eating when you travel. We know all the food sensitivities and food issues that make it hard not just to find a healthy restaurant, but find a healthy restaurant for you.”
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.
The torpedo bat enhances exit velocity and optimizes swing mechanics. Here its story as told by 16 players, front office executives, batmakers and other insiders.
Main image: Bloomberg via Getty Images
Attached to the message sent to Brad Hillerich, who leads the production of pro products, was a CAD file from an MLB team analyst. It included a 3D-rendered wood baseball bat whose shape was unlike anything either Hillerich had ever seen. Brad called Bobby and they took a look at its bulging barrel and jarring taper.
“Oh, man, it was kind of like looking at a Tesla truck,” Bobby recalled. “[People say] ‘that’s not a truck,’ and we looked at it and said, ‘That’s not a bat.’ But we just said, ‘Listen, these guys are physicists. They’ve done their research, and the least we could do is turn it into a usable product and see what happens with it.’”
A year and a half later, that idea would have a catchy name — the torpedo bat — and a gaudy introduction into the baseball world. Five Yankees started swinging it this season, and they contributed nine home runs in one weekend, including five in one Saturday matinee against the Brewers in which YES Network broadcaster Michael Kay first called attention to the bats.
The cellphones of bat manufacturers were immediately overwhelmed with calls and texts from players and agents, a barrage starting even before the final pitch of that game. The secret was out.
The best ideas are the ones that seem so simple and intuitive in hindsight, and this was no different: increase the mass, and thus the energy and exit velocity at the primary point of contact. Still, by baseball standards, this was a radical innovation in a staid industry that is 150 years old. Its lesson is waiting to be applied across all sports, challenging assumptions and complacency potentially in favor of careful reinvention of even the most basic tools.
“It makes a lot of sense, but it’s like, why hasn’t anyone thought of it in 100-plus years?” said Yankees outfielder Giancarlo Stanton. “Then you try it, and as long as it’s comfortable in your hands — we’re creatures of habit, so the bat’s got to feel kind of like a glove or an extension of your arm.”
Stanton quietly used a torpedo bat from Marucci while slugging seven postseason homers last fall — and, it turns out, he wasn’t the only one to deliver playoff heroics with such a model. Guardians outfielder Lane Thomas adopted a tapered Old Hickory bat and smashed a grand slam off AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal in ALDS Game 5.
In interviews with 16 players, front office executives, batmakers and other insiders, Sports Business Journal traced the path of the torpedo bat’s innovation and identified the keys for its disruption with lessons that apply across all sports. Its creation was a race not just in research and development — a formula involving both physics and biology — but also, crucially, in adoption.
“You’re talking about wood baseball bats, so at the end of the day, we’re at the mercy of Mother Nature with most everything we do,” said Travis Copley, Old Hickory Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “This is a huge innovation already. It potentially could be even bigger.”
The Louisville Slugger Torpedo Bat (top) compared to a traditional bat shows the difference in the ‘wood budget’. Photo: Getty Images
Now, everyone from industry giants to batmaking boutiques are recognizing the need to do more. Hillerich said Louisville Slugger is “looking at doing more and more research,” and so too will Spoke Bats CEO Scott Pershern, whose founding principle is the use of a modeling engine to personalize each bat (i.e. bespoke, hence the name) and continue to push the boundaries of a product market mired in “institutional inertia.”
“The interesting thing for me,” Pershern said, “is now it has opened up everybody’s minds to what is possible.”
To see where baseball bats — and all stagnant sports equipment is going — it’s instructive to first understand how the sport arrived at this critical tipping point.
—
As an analyst with the Yankees, Aaron Leanhardt asked the players where on the bat they try to strike the ball. Leanhardt is a career-changer — an MIT-educated physicist who conducted NASA-funded research and was a physics professor at Michigan — who said his eureka moment was seeing that the sweet spot the players targeted was not the fattest part of the bat. He recalled to reporters saying, “Well, let’s flip it around. It’s going to look silly, but are we willing to go with it?”
Elsewhere in the AL East, Baltimore Orioles Assistant General Manager Sig Mejdal fielded questions from hitters wondering about the efficacy of bat fitting — that is, the use of advanced data and technology to ensure players are using the best-performing bat for their swing. Mejdal replied, “Sorry, I have no idea,” but he began investigating. Mejdal also has NASA roots, having worked for the agency as a mathematical modeler after earning multiple engineering and operations degrees.
“My background is mechanical engineering, so if you’re a hammer, everything you see is a nail,” said Mejdal, who led a team working on similar designs, including one called a bubble bat. “When you see the bat, it’s impossible not to wonder and not to think about the engineering of it.”
Also operating on a separate strand of development were the Cubs, whose core hitters last year — Cody Bellinger, Ian Happ, Nico Hoerner and Dansby Swanson — all tried variations at least in batting practice. “We had some long discussions with the Cubs this past summer where we talked about tapered-barrel bats a couple different times,” Pershern noted. (The Cubs did not respond to an interview request.)
An exact accounting isn’t possible, given the cloak-and-dagger secrecy of baseball operations, but Louisville Slugger was working with four unspecified teams on the design. Marucci supports eight MLB clubs through its high-tech baseball performance center, though not all were pursuing this shape. Orioles All-Star catcher Adley Rutschman was seen swinging one last year, as was Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor, who finished second in NL MVP voting.
Marucci CEO Kurt Ainsworth said half of his pro players inquired about the bat earlier this month. Louisville Slugger took more than 100 orders.
Giancarlo Stanton smashed seven postseason home runs last year with a torpedo bat and won ALCS MVP honors. Photo: Getty Images
The Yankees will be remembered for spearheading this because they fostered a culture in which the players bought in despite the unorthodox shape. The bat change may be a revolution, but the closest antecedent is in evolution. The Yankees are Charles Darwin, and everyone else is Alfred Russel Wallace, the naturalist who independently formulated the theory of natural selection but had his contributions overwhelmed by Darwin’s fame.
Most torpedo bats are the product of advanced personalization. Statcast tracking cameras provide a wealth of data on swing speed and path, as well as contact point. The Cubs made Bellinger a custom bat last season, but he didn’t like the way it felt. After an offseason trade, the Yankees made him a new custom bat, which he also didn’t care for. But Bellinger picked up the generic torpedo the Yankees made as a demo for players in 2023 and immediately took to it.
“I swung other bowling pin models, or torpedo bats — I didn’t like them,” Bellinger told SBJ. “This one just feels good in my hands.”
Big leaguers spend decades swinging bats to reach the sport’s highest level, and they take untold batting practice swings before the highly visible performance on the field, so they understandably can be fickle about change. Superstition and word-of-mouth recommendations can go a long way, and the word “feel” is paramount.
Leanhardt talks about a “wood budget,” a certain weight the player can swing, and redistributing wood needs to be done delicately and in balance. Hillerich said these changes are “to maximize the barrel, to maximize the sweet spot and still feel like the exact same bat that they started with.” In some cases, the torpedo bats move enough weight closer to the hands that they can be swung faster, which bears out in early-season Statcast data.
MLB has affirmed that these bats are legal, with the only real geometric stipulation being that the diameter can’t exceed 2.61 inches. Many torpedo bats now have larger barrels than regular bats, and at least some are at that max diameter. (Most torpedo bats are made of birch because it is a lower-density wood than maple; the latter makes it hard to construct a bat that is sturdy enough overall because the handle would have to be tiny to get the weight right.)
The league has a team of inspectors who periodically visit clubhouses to ensure compliance. The leader of that program is Scott Drake, the CEO of wood product inspection firm PFS-TECO, who first saw the torpedo shape in a MLB clubhouse when he saw Stanton’s bat last season. But even that reminded him of a manufacturer’s tour more than a decade ago when he saw maple bats that had “a very similar shape and design”, though those didn’t meet the density for requirements in MLB.
—
Within a week of the new bats’ public introduction at Yankee Stadium, the website of just about every bat manufacturer underwent a rapid update. “Incoming Torpedo,” touted Old Hickory. “The bat everyone is talking about is here,” promised Marucci. “Get the TPD1 Torpedo Bat Today,” exclaimed Louisville Slugger.
“I love that people are talking about baseball, and my role here is growing the game of baseball,” Marucci’s Ainsworth said. “This is great for our game, all the way down.”
“All the kids now want it,” said Éric Gagné, the former Cy Young-winning closer who is now primary owner of B45 Baseball. The company’s GM, Marie-Pier Gosselin, said it’s been nimble in meeting demand — “We had the wood available to make them rather quickly” — and continuing a tradition of innovation. The Québec-based company was the first to use birch in bats two decades ago, a short time after Barry Bonds and Sam Bats popularized maple.
Consumer demand was immediate, buoyed in part by the catchy torpedo name that has overtaken bowling pin, bubble and tapered barrel for obvious marketing reasons. Louisville Slugger noted that it is even thinking about new ways to shape the barrel of its metal bats. Without the underlying data informing a personalized bat shape, some experts aren’t convinced amateur players will be able to fully maximize its potential. Similarly, Ainsworth noted, younger hitters are less apt to hit the ball off the sweet spot, so the taper at the end of the bat might actually offset some gains.
Experts are clear that the benefits are real, but moderate, likely an increase of a couple miles per hour in exit velocity when connected on the sweet spot. Every mph of EV usually leads to another 5 feet or so of distance, which can quickly turn warning-track flyouts into first-row home runs. As an added benefit, some predict that the tapered barrel tip might turn poor contact (weak grounders or popups) into foul tips that keep the hitter at the plate.
Even Yankees Manager Aaron Boone said it’s more gains on the margin and helping players incrementally. The Orioles’ Mejdal noted that “this isn’t for every hitter.” Chuck Schupp, a 40-year industry veteran with Louisville Slugger, Marucci and now Chandler Bats, said he fielded 100 inquiries that first weekend, but cautioned everyone, “You’ve still got to hit the ball in the sweet spot — it doesn’t matter what the bat looks like. I just don’t think this is going to be an ‘a-ha’ moment to make a guy a better player.”
But, as Old Hickory’s Copley noted, the torpedo may serve as the catalyst for a broader “ideology of redesigning bats.” Just as the 2003 book “Moneyball” spawned the entire baseball analytics industry by making clubs reconsider all forms of player evaluation — and not just the initial realizations about metrics, such as on-base percentage — so, too, might torpedo bats precipitate deeper reevaluations of bats and other sports equipment.
Lane Thomas hit a huge homer for Cleveland with a torpedo bat. Photo: Getty Images
Wood bats are a relatively small but crowded market, with 41 MLB-approved suppliers. Pro models typically retail to consumers for $100 to $200 apiece. “You have the big-name companies, but aside from them, they’re all pretty boutique companies, so obviously it’s hard to have a very big R&D department,” Gosselin said. R&D dollars are typically slated more for the larger amateur market — and colleges, high schools and Little Leagues all swing metal.
Prior wood bat innovations in the past decade have centered on the knob at the end of the bat. Some players began preferring larger puck-sized knobs. Axe Bats pioneered a new sloped handle design. But the area is rife with opportunity.
“I personally feel like there is a bat that can be designed for each player, and we believe that you shouldn’t be using the same bat versus each pitcher anyway,” Ainsworth said. “In golf, you don’t use the same club for every shot.”
An early Marucci investor, former Phillies star Chase Utley, actually tried this prior to the 2009 World Series, ordering a bat with a different shape and length to face the infamous cutter thrown by Yankees Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera. He grounded into a double play his one chance to use it.
Brewers infield prospect Eric Brown Jr., a former first-round pick now in Class AA, ordered a tapered-barrel bat from Spoke late last summer because it felt lighter — “like a toothpick” — as the long season wound down. Brown had previously suffered a hand injury from getting jammed so often, leading Pershern to move the hard knot of the wood closer to his hands.
“Since the knot is moved down the barrel, I don’t feel that I’m getting jammed,” Brown said. “Essentially, it makes the bat harder.”
The torpedo bat’s shape isn’t as polygonal as Tesla’s Cybertruck, and its future seems brighter, despite Hillerich’s first impression. Whereas the president of an automotive design consultancy recently described the Cybertruck to Forbes as “a huge swing and a huge miss,” the torpedo bat seems poised to be exactly the opposite.
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.
Hippos Exoskeleton’s AI-powered solution is akin to a car airbag and has drawn interest from the Premier League, Olympic sports and beyond.
Main image: Hippos Exoskeleton
Hippos Exoskeleton has created prototypes, raised $642,000 and tested its technology with athletes such as American world skiing champion Alex Schlopy and at the Brixton TopCats basketball club. The company is now accepting pre-orders for its yet-to-launch consumer product while drawing interest from elite sports organizations such as UK Athletics, Crystal Palace’s academy and the Chinese Olympic Association.
Its AI-powered knee brace has multiple sensors, a flexible printed circuit board and micro-gas canister to inflate the airbags, all while weighing less than four ounces [13g]. Hippos CEO Kylin Shaw said it can inflate the airbag in 30 milliseconds while ligaments can tear in 60 milliseconds.
“The core technology we invented is not only on the hardware side, but also on the software side: the AI, the data processing capability and the ability to use our AI model, which we designed by ourselves, to personalize the triggering threshold for every single individual, athletes, soldiers, patients,” Shaw said.
Among the early backers is Dr James Brown, the lead sports medicine doctor for UK Athletics, who wrote to SBJ that “a knee sleeve equipped with technology that can predict and prevent harmful movements can significantly reduce the risk of injury, thus avoiding the physical, emotional, and financial costs associated with injury recovery.” Brown added that the device has minimal impact on natural movement and provides the “psychological reassurance” that often translates into better performances.
Shaw and his co-founder, CTO Bhavy Metakar, are 20-year-olds who recently dropped out of university to pursue the startup. Both had injuries in their amateur athletic careers with the 6’5” [1.95m] Shaw tearing his ACL at age 17 and ending what he said was recruitment from a Division I program. He instead went overseas to study at the London School of Economics and played in the British Universities and Colleges Sport.
Metakar was studying at University College London when Shaw entered a lecture in search of an engineer to help him pursue his idea. Following the lead of the automotive industry and a Swedish company, Hövding, that made a cycling helmet with an airbag, Shaw sought to provide the same protection for joints.
Metakar made a crude device in his room as a proof of concept and then sought to understand the market need while adding that it has to look and feel good to gain adoption from most athletes.
“You don’t see many products that people wear for injury prevention because, unless you’ve been injured, you don’t really think about that,” Metakar said, adding it changes when there’s a medical history. “People who had been injured, they said, they would literally do anything not to get re-injured.”
The twofold innovation is the hardware that provides the structural support and the software that will trigger the airbag, intervening only at a potentially injurious moment.
“The first question was, before we make an airbag, we need to detect an injury,” Metakar said. “How do we measure, or how do we know that a person’s injured? How do we how do we tell the difference between someone getting injured versus them running really fast?”
They now believe that the technology can account for different knee structures and knee muscle strengths, with hopes of expanding to other joints and potentially to other smart materials.
“Our vision is an exoskeleton company, and the mission is to help humanity to move in a way where physical injuries cannot be happening,” Shaw said.
As for the company’s name, he explained that it is partly a reference to the Hippocratic oath that all doctors take but also the animal, which in East African culture can symbolize strength, health and rebirth.
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.
In the final session of ESSA’s ‘The Future of Sport’ virtual roundtable series, Dr Alex Roberts of the Queensland Academy of Sport and former All Blacks Manager Darren Shand discuss talent identification, development and management. ‘Fit’ is less valued in World Cup-winning dressing room than you might think.
An article brought to you by
“It is only a really small part,” said Dr Alex Roberts. “We need to make sure we’re putting those strong development environments around athletes because it doesn’t matter if we pick 100 per cent of the right athletes if we’re not putting them in the right environment.”
Roberts, the Talent Identification & Development Lead at the Queensland Academy of Sport [QAS], is speaking at the third and final session of ‘The Future of Performance Sport’, a three-part Virtual Roundtable series brought to you by the Leaders Performance Institute and Exercise & Sports Science Australia. The focus for the concluding conversation was talent identification, development and management.
She was joined on the virtual stage by Darren Shand, the former Manager of the New Zealand All Blacks, who offered perspectives from the senior end.
Firstly, Roberts outlined talent identification and development at QAS.
QAS offers opportunities, but not guarantees
Above all else, you must provide young athletes with a good experience, which QAS seeks to do through its YouFor2032 talent identification programme. Their goal is to discover and develop athletes with the potential to achieve medal success at the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Brisbane. At the time of writing, approximately 6,000 young Queenslanders have entered the programme.
“We can’t guarantee that athletes are going to succeed,” said Roberts, “but we want to make sure that they’ve got every opportunity to find the sport that they could be successful in, and that they have the appropriate education and development that will allow them to succeed.”
They have adopted the ‘principle of sports orientation’
Youngsters’ skills will be assessed to enable placement in a sport they may not have tried. “We see if their skills, their backgrounds, their traits, might fit a different sport,” said Roberts. Once assigned to a sport, the athlete will enter a three-month confirmation phase where they will learn the fundamental skills and get to know their coaches.
The physical is the starting point
Without the right physical characteristics mindset counts for little. “If you’re 160cm [5′ 2″] tall, you’re probably not going to be a rower, no matter how badly you want it,” said Roberts. “We match physical traits to where people are genetically predisposed to have more success.”
QAS also looks for elite behaviours
During the three-month confirmation phase, QAS will look for evidence of the behavioural patterns that denote elite performers (“We look at things like: do they show up on time? Do they put the effort into their warm up and cool down? Do they bring a water bottle?”). QAS does not, however, undertake formal psychological profiling at any stage. “As far as we know, the evidence isn’t there to support specific psychological profiles for long-term success in sport, particularly within the age groups we’re working with.”
Social support underpins the QAS approach
Social support is particularly important when athletes progress to the more intense 12-month development phase. It is a critical element of balancing challenge and support. Roberts said: “When we do our athlete development camps, we bring all of the athletes from all the sports in at once, so they can get cross-sport friendships. They can see what other sports look like. They can see that it’s not just them that are going through this. They’ve got that in-built support network that they can lean on.”
Additionally, “if we’re picking an athlete in Cairns for beach volleyball, we will take a few athletes to make sure that there’s a training squad up there; that they’ve got some other friends that are learning the same sport, that are progressing through the same system.”
The role of sports scientists
The sports scientists of QAS serve as educators, not only of coaches on state or national programmes, but further down to the grassroots. For young athletes it is, as Roberts said, about “early education; not waiting until they are moving through the system”. As for coaches, “they are the ones who are face to face with these athletes at every stage of their development.” Therefore she and her colleagues will work with coaches at different levels of the pathway and make sure that “they have that clear and consistent messaging, making sure that they understand what it looks like for the athletes, making sure that they understand the value of athlete wellbeing.”
The YouFor2032 app
As Roberts explained, the YouFor2032 app is helping QAS to find talent across the state of Queensland. Youngsters can download the app and test themselves in a home setting, with in-built AI enabling them to do it alone. Roberts said: “You don’t need an expert to hold the phone and get the angles right. You don’t need someone to sit down and analyse the joint movements. It does all of that for us.” Results are sent to QAS, who then begin the initial screening.
The app means fewer missed athletes during regional visits. “If you miss out, it used to mean you had to wait until next year,” added Roberts. “The app is going to remove a lot of those barriers for people.”
It was then Shand’s turn to provide an insight into the All Blacks’ double Rugby World Cup-winning environment, of which he was part for 18 years.
The All Blacks detest the term ‘fit’
The All Blacks’ maxim ‘you join us, we don’t join you’ is as true today as it has ever been. Yes, the team prizes hard work, self-driven individuals, and a willingness to learn – these help to set the standards that all players must meet – but there is also room for individuality.
“One of the things that annoys me in environments is when people say ‘we just want to get people that fit in’. I detest that,” said Shand. “I’m not after fit. I want people that are going to add.” He believes that diversity of personality and the very idea of complex individuals are something to be embraced.
“Saying you want someone to fit is a cop-out. You’re not really aiming high enough. You’re certainly not aiming at the world-class level,” he continued. “I reflect back on some of the players that we had whose high end was unbelievable, but their bottom end was a real nightmare, but they just added so much richness to the guys that perhaps sat in the middle. Across team sports, particularly that richness and what they can offer in terms of growth, outweighs what can happen at the bottom end.”
They create a home on the road
The All Blacks spent much of their time on tour, including at four overseas Rugby World Cups during Shand’s tenure. They quickly realised the performance benefit to making camps in France, Britain or Japan feel as much like home as possible, which meant including families at opportune moments. The penny dropped for Shand at a training session on the eve of a World Cup quarter-final in Cardiff.
“We finished the session and all the kids ran out into the field, and I just looked at it, and I just saw something I hadn’t really noticed before: the connection and the energy. I said to myself: ‘this is why they play’.”
Non-playing All Blacks are heavily involved
The All Blacks value their non-playing squad members and, once selection decisions have been clearly and respectfully explained, ensure their continued involvement throughout a game week.
“It’s an opportunity for them to coach,” said Shand. “So there might be three of them playing for the same position, but only two play, with the third becoming a coach. We often get our greatest learnings when we coach. It’s an opportunity to share the leadership without the pressure; how can I lead some of the things off field to take the pressure off those preparing to go on field?
“It’s also an opportunity to be the opposition and to learn and help our guys prepare because, at the end of the day, you’re never going to outperform your preparation. So the preparation has to be your best.”
In the future
Athletes will…
Enjoy longer careers. “It’s great to see that your age is not as much of a barrier anymore, that we’re not burning athletes out as early. They’re not getting injured and having to retire early,” said Roberts.
Not specialise as early. “In most of our sports we’re starting to see athletes have that much longer trajectory, which means we can wait to specialise.”
Take further ownership of their career trajectory, striking a balance between individual and team goals. Practitioners must “keep bringing the frame back to what do we need on Saturday and how do we best embrace that,” said Shand.
Practitioners will need to…
Further adapt to athletes’ needs. “I see it more in the work I’m doing now with sports, that real drive for life beyond sport, particularly as influencers,” said Shand. “It’s just trying to find the right marriage and the right method for letting people do that, but also realising that when they come back inside the walls and they fit with the behaviours and non-negotiables that we want.”
What to read next
In this edition of SBJ Tech’s Athlete’s Voice, the former Baltimore Ravens safety discusses how his new performance center will help to transform gym culture.
Main image: MW Athletix
A native of nearby Eastvale, Williams starred at the University of Utah before the New Orleans Saints drafted him in the second round of the 2017 NFL Draft. The 28-year-old signed with the Ravens prior to the 2022 season. He has 20 career interceptions and has averaged 59 tackles per season.
On why he wanted to build a fitness center…
My first camp that I ever [worked] was Bobby Wagner’s camp at Colony High School. So I went there to help with his camp and help build a legacy for what he was doing. And then it sparked something in me that I want to do the same thing, giving back to the community, giving back to where I came from.
Ultimately, I created a camp. Then after that, I was like, Okay, I want to really help these athletes, young and professional, get to their goals, not just athletically — because athletics is going to come easy for athletes — but it’s all about the mindset, the mentality, the discipline, things that you learn in sport that will help you be a better person. I created this so that we are able to have this culture surrounding these athletes that helps them outside of sport because sport doesn’t last forever.
MW Athletix features a 7,800-square-foot exclusive private training environment, 35-yard indoor turf field, massage therapy and recovery services. Image: MW Athletix.
On how he built it…
It was a long design phase. It took us about two years to get this project up and running, but we took our time. We made sure that we detailed every single detail. I think we have the best bathrooms: It’s definitely spa-like. You go in there and you’re like, ‘Do I actually want to leave these bathrooms?’ You have the cold tubs, which are very essential in the recovery process, by Odin. And then we have our weight room — it’s amazing. We’re powered by REP equipment. They have all the tools and gadgets that you need to be able to get the ultimate workout.
And then we have our speed treadmills. These speed treadmills are our pride and joy. We use these treadmills to get these athletes, whatever sport it is, to get them moving in the right direction, moving fast. So these treadmills will get you fast, and it will turn your systems on pretty quick. We have 30 yards of turf, so every athlete can get in there and use their cleats or shoes — it is the same turf that they have at SoFi stadium. Then we have a multi-purpose room. We have massage therapy in there. We’re going to have Normatec boots. We’re going to have a little seating area where the parents can sit down, or people can sit and eat their lunch.
View this post on Instagram
On his vision for the gym culture…
I wanted to create a place where it feels like a team, where people come in and they’re like, ‘OK, I know I’m a part of this team. I’m part of this culture.’ And I wanted to make it almost as a dynasty you come in and it’s where the greats train, where the great athletes come from, where the team is always winning and the team is always working and motivating to be the best that they can. And of course you have to make sure everything is locked in and safe, so that everybody feels welcome.
On a key coaching mentor…
My college [position] coach, Morgan Scalley, took me under his wing. He showed me the ropes of taking that step into being a man. He had me since I was 17 years old, and I still talk to him pretty often. He taught me to never lose your edge, do things the right way, be accountable and make sure you do everything you have to do to be successful. Just never give up and never back down.
Marcus Williams founded MW Athletix to combine advanced training methods with community support. Image: MW Athletix.
On the tech and data he uses in training…
I don’t really use the Whoops or anything like that, just my Apple Watch. Now that I have this facility, I have the InBody scans, and I have the force plate so that we can see the type of outputs that we’re getting, and then we’re going to have the weight-monitoring system [velocity-based training, VBT] so when the bar is moving, we’re going to be able to track how fast it’s moving because everything is about speed.
On starting his own business…
I’ve always been an entrepreneur. Since I was in ninth grade, I was selling candy out of my backpack. That’s how I was making money in high school, trying to make sure I could provide and help out my parents by not asking for anything. I was able to do that little small business, which is kind of an entrepreneur-style thing, and then I was working at snack bars and things like that. But I’ve always been smart with my money. Taking this next step into a bigger entrepreneur role is definitely good for me because I’ve saved all of my money since I’ve been in the league.
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.
Former NFL hopeful Ryan Rossner turned his attention to science, particularly longevity and gene therapy science
Main image: Minicircle
When he didn’t break through, he returned to school and went on to earn a PhD in molecular aging, studying under University of Washington professors Brian Kennedy and Matt Kaeberlein and pursuing research with Scott Leiser.
Now 42, Rossner is the Director of Longevity at Minicircle, a gene therapy startup in Austin, where he recently met SBJ and spoke about his career.
On his college experience…
I studied philosophy and political science, and I took football very seriously. I 100% wanted an NFL career. I wanted to make enough money to have financial freedom, but the NFL was very hard, and I was probably not mature enough to grind it out at that point.
On returning to school…
I took two years, bounced around the NFL, went right back to school [to complete my degree]. The NFL was that pressure cooker — I learned so many performance and discipline skills. I finished with straight As in school for the first time. I finished in philosophy and poli sci. But while pursuing football, I had the chance to read a lot, and I got exposed to popular science books about the exponential progress of technology through history. This grabbed me like nothing had before. I was like science is the answer to all these philosophical questions. And I can do science forever. It’s inexhaustible. So I got my BA and moved to Seattle to do science.
On his academic interest…
I focused on longevity, probably for two reasons: one, one of the formative events in my life was to watch my mom go through cancer. That’s why I got into philosophy. I wanted to understand why that happened. Philosophy doesn’t really answer that, but science empowers us to change that, specifically molecular biology. The other reason was all the exciting technological developments of the future, we get to experience them more if we’re around — longevity is like the big limiter.
On the start of his research…
I started working under this post-doc, Scott Leiser. He’s a former college football player, and we were studying how low oxygen exposure can increase lifespan in lab animals. Athletes train at altitudes, and then some of the mechanisms that are turned on by low oxygen are also turned on by fasting, which is like the foundational longevity intervention. So I started defining some of those mechanisms that were shared by low-oxygen, low-calorie longevity interventions.
On scientific breakthroughs versus football glory…
Ecstatic — nothing is better than discovering new scientific stuff. It’s the coolest feeling imaginable. At our rivals’ homecoming, [I hit] a clock-expiring, 54-yard field goal to silence the crowd. That was also cool. But science is like you’re seeing the secrets of the universe.
View this post on Instagram
On his next career step…
The Air Force recruited me a few months before I ended my PhD to work on the DARPA biostasis project, which is basically drug-induced human hibernation. I could not pass that up — super interesting. We really were studying extreme metabolism, which applies a lot to sports. So I went and did that in on Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio for six months post-doc.
On lessons he’s learned and how he’d train differently for football now…
A million. I would train slower and smarter, just roll things out slow. I was always in a rush. I wanted to be Superman in six weeks, so [I had] a lot of overuse injuries. I would have drilled more when I got to the NFL. They made me start drilling instead of just kicking, and that was the first time I became really, really consistent at mid-distance kicks. And then, to be honest, I would have partied less.
On his work now…
This gene therapy basically increases fat free mass, decreases body fat, rewinds cellular epigenetic age, and our method of delivering it is what’s specific to us. So we adopted an irrationally neglected gene therapy mode called plasmid gene therapy. It’s simpler, safer, maybe a little less powerful than viral gene therapy, but our goal is to make something simple and accessible and safe.
On clarifying popular misconceptions…
Longevity science and gene therapy science, in particular, are very real. A lot of people think of them as sci-fi still — they are very real. We figured out how aging works, mostly in the 90s and early 2000s to a great degree. It’s worth learning about.
The other thing is, for athletes, and really just for anybody, data collection is really undervalued. You can have your whole genome sequenced for $400, and most people don’t know that’s possible. And then people are like, what am I going to do with that? You have the rest of your life to figure that out? You can get all 3 billion digits of code that you run on. This is like seeing behind the matrix. Get your code, get all the data you can on yourself to inform your health decisions.
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.
