Main photo: TOCA Football Inc

By Ethan Joyce

TOCA Football went live with a new user platform near the end of April called MyTOCA. The youth-focused soccer app is a go-to space for players to keep up with their training, but also create a connected experience in the communities at the 37 TOCA Soccer training centers in the US.

“We’ve been collecting more and more data, but there really became this gap, if you will, from a customer’s perspective,” TOCA Founder Eddie Lewis said. “We had a lot of really powerful training data, but we made it really difficult to consume and collect.”

Lewis said a clear goal emerged to make an app that was engaging, but also one that easily displayed the value of TOCA training session. He told SBJ that the entire process to build the MyTOCA app started with a complete teardown of its existing platform, which struggled to collect data. The re-engineered setup creates more personalization for players but also helps TOCA stay more engaged with their soccer trainees outside of the facility walls.

 

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“The ability to take a player, use the data to not only understand where they are — but also understand insights that would be very difficult to see necessarily from the naked eye unless you spent a ton of time with these players, and then attack those strengths and weaknesses from a training perspective — we think is really valuable,” Lewis said. “And not only that, we want to share that progression along the way. At the end of the day, we believe the higher the training, the higher the customer satisfaction and obviously, the longer retention.”

The app has a trophy room for players to look at their accomplishments, as well as a community leaderboard and internal booking feature. Lewis also mentioned that this is the first phase of MyTOCA, setting the stage for more rollouts like a planned TOCA Score metric.

The deployment coincided with the start of the second annual TOCA Skills Showcase, an event rolled out in partnership with the MLS that spans two months in a competition across 22 TOCA Soccer centers. TOCA Football entered a 10-year partnership with the league at the end of 2022. Lewis added that the pairing has created both “validation and certainly credibility in terms of what we’re doing from a training perspective.”

Regarding the opening of the first TOCA Social site in Dallas, Lewis said there’s no specific date to share yet. But the goal to open ahead of the 2026 World Cup remains in an effort to capitalize on the nationwide interest that will build as kickoffs get closer.

“Everyone’s going to be interested in a in a soccer-related story, or understanding what’s going on with soccer in the US,” Lewis said. “And I think if we’re not ready to step into that spotlight during that window, we miss a once-in-a-generational opportunity.”

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.

Main photo: Getty Images

By Joe Lemire

Portland Timbers captain Diego Chará made his 400th MLS appearance, making him the first player in league history to reach that milestone with just one club.

The 39-year-old Colombian ranks in the top-10 in MLS history for games started and minutes played, and as he has gotten older, Chará has made training and recovery more of a priority. He recently became a brand ambassador for Omorpho, which places micro-weights on athletic apparel for training.

An Oregon-based company, Omorpho is a partner of Tracktown USA in Eugene and counts Olympic track and field athletes Michael Johnson and Vashti Cunningham among its other ambassadors. In May, Omorpho also partnered with Orangetheory Fitness.

On his introduction to Omorpho…

Last year I saw one of my teammates, Larrys Mabiala, using one of the G-vests from Omorpho, and I started looking for the shorts. I received a pair of shorts from Omorpho last year and started using them in the preseason. I was talking about the shorts with the fitness coach, and he told me it could be a good opportunity to start using those shorts in preseason. I got used to it, and I really like it because it helps a lot to keep the same fitness level, which is important for me for every game.

Diego Chará joins Olympic track and field athletes Michael Johnson and Vashti Cunningham as ambassadors for Omorpho. (Photo: Getty Images)

On how it feels to wear them…

They have micro-weights so in warmups it really brings that effort. I usually use those short for 30 minutes and warmup session. Once I take them off, I start feeling kind of light and that continues into the practice during the day.

On the effect of wearing them…

I saw they helped me a lot to keep the physical level. Because I play as a midfielder, I have to be a powerful guy, and I feel with the shorts, I find a way to keep the same level in the games as during trainings. At the same time, I noticed the shorts —after using for a period of time — helped me to improve in my bone density. This is trying to prevent injuries, and at the same time that density gives the players [the ability] to do harder loads and work out.

On why he tests new tech…

For me, it’s really important and more in this moment of my career because I just turned 39. It is a little bit harder to keep in the game. And for me using now the technology for Omorpho has been really good, amazing, and that helped me to keep in the game.

Chará, 39, ranks in the top-10 in MLS history for games started and minutes played. (Photo: Getty Images)

What else he has tried…

In my career it is many things right now. It’s not just the technology. It is used getting good health habits — sleeping well, getting diet — and now the team is using the [Oura] ring to [measure] how you sleep and the recovery process. I think that technology helps a lot.

On what he’d tell a younger version of himself about career longevity…

It’s no secret formula, but I think the effort, the discipline, has been crucial in my career. Giving that effort and at the same time be mentally strong that helped to get a long career.

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.

Main photo: Getty Images

By Joe Lemire

After a recent practice, sprinter Gabby Thomas was shaking her head while recounting her block starts, describing them as “arguably some of the worst in track and field.” She is, of course, a five-time Olympic medalist and reigning champion in the 200 meters, so she knows how that sounds.

“Obviously, it’s fine,” Thomas added, “but it really frustrates me because I am a perfectionist, and I want to get better.”

Training used to be done by feel, with some help from video. Now, however, USA Track & Field — in collaboration with the USOPC and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) — is able to offer its athletes a markerless motion capture tool called VAMA (Video Automatic Motion Analysis) to analyze athletes’ biomechanics, both at the start and at top speed. Small changes can have big impacts at the boundaries of performance, especially in short sprints.

VAMA has become part of many American sprinters’ weekly routines over the past few years and, by the USOPC’s estimate, directly contributed to nine Olympic medals in Paris — not only by Thomas, but also by men’s 100-meter medalists Noah Lyles and Fred Kerley, women’s long jump winner Tara Davis-Woodhall and more.

Spearheading VAMA’s implementation is Tyler Noble, USATF’s lead sport science and data analyst, who visited Thomas at her final training session before heading to the Paris Olympics. At the time, Thomas said her starts had been “a little wonky.” Noble can use an off-the-shelf GoPro camera that costs about $200 and shoots at 240 frames per second, then run the video through the VAMA algorithms and receive biomechanical feedback.

Noble and Thomas’ coach, Tonja Buford-Bailey, focused on her stride length and the number of steps it took her to reach 10 meters, a measurable cue that helped Thomas focus on performing.

“I always welcome new data, and when you’re trying to be the best and get better by such small margins, all of that counts,” Thomas said. “Working with Tyler and their program is so helpful, because I can see in real time what I’m actually doing, and then take that feedback and make corrections immediately.”

Among the metrics VAMA — a finalist for Best in Athlete Performance Technology at the Sports Business Awards: Tech — is able to collect are joint angles, ground contact times and vertical force production. Essentially every elite American sprinter has undergone at least one assessment, helping build a library to improve the algorithms and the understanding of what matters.

“Because we use VAMA, we’ve got this very rich data set of our best starters, and so we can actually model where the first seven steps for any athlete should really be relative to, say, their height or their leg length,” Noble said. “We take a holistic approach to the demands of the race, given the constraints of the athletes, and then try to model the perfect plan. VAMA plays a huge role in that, because you’ve got to be able to get to those insights quickly.”

The technological origins of VAMA reside in diving — where Phil Cheetham, former USOPC Director of Sport Technology and innovation, first applied motion capture with the SwRI — and also in the expertise of Ralph Mann, a former world record-holding hurdler who later earned his PhD and pioneered biomechanical analysis in sprinting.

Noble described Mann, who passed away at age 75 in January, as “the grandfather of USATF sports science” and added, “He had this beautiful, unique blend of PhD book smarts with ‘I won a silver medal at the Olympic Games.’ He could speak the science and coach the athlete.”

USATF used Mann’s CompuSport technology for years, but during the pandemic, budgets were decimated. Needing an alternative, it repurposed VAMA from diving to running. The analysis helps inform the conversations that “each coach-athlete pairing needs,” Noble said.

USOPC Performance Innovation Lead Elliot Schwartz praised Noble’s combined expertise in data analytics and sport sciences — not to mention that he’s a former college runner — to steer the project. Noble travels regularly to visit coaches and runners, but they can also upload videos for VAMA analysis on their own.

“Having an analysis tool like VAMA means that, one, you get much more accurate measurements, but also you can support so many more athletes,” Schwartz said. “A big part of what this technology is doing is it’s really democratizing who receives performance support.”

Sometimes that support can be a little inadvertent. Noble had two cameras set up to capture data on Olympic silver medal-winning hurdler Daniel Roberts prior to the Games. In the background, long jumper Davis-Woodhall had an absolutely perfect jump that her coach, Travis Geopfert, measured at 7.17 meters, a couple of inches longer than her eventual gold medal-winning distance in Paris.

By a “lucky circumstance,” Noble said, the last eight steps of her approach to the jump were captured by the second GoPro camera. That enabled him to share her step lengths and pattern as a final reinforcement of what Davis-Woodhall should do in competition.

“That was just a quick, off-the-cuff [analysis] that would have been very difficult and time-consuming to do in the past,” Noble said.

Lyles and Kerley won gold and silver in the Olympic 100, but their predictive modeling needed to take into account that Lyles, at 5-foot-11, is four inches shorter than the 6-3 Kerley. When Noble assessed them shortly before the Games, he knew Kerley would reach 10 meters first, but Lyles would get there while moving at a faster speed. Given each race strategy, Noble projected Lyles as a slight favorite — and indeed he won in a photo finish, edging Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson by five-thousandths of a second and Kerley by two-hundredths.

“There’s not much you can really tweak or change a week before the 100 final,” Noble said, “but you can go up and you can show Noah the iPad, or you show Fred the iPad, and say, ‘Look, you are ready to go.’”

VAMA technology helped the U.S. win nine medals at the Paris Olympics by USOPC estimates (Photo: USPOC).

We take a holistic approach to the demands of the race, given the constraints of the athletes, and then try to model the perfect plan. VAMA plays a huge role in that, because you’ve got to be able to get to those insights quickly.

Tyler Noble, USATF lead sport science and data analyst

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

“We don’t particularly have a great decision-making process for tech,” said one practitioner during a recent Leaders virtual roundtable.

“So there’s not really intentional innovation and evolution. It’s a lot of accidental innovation, whether it’s a needs-based or a gap-based scenario.”

In one fell swoop, a practitioner with experience of the British Olympic and Paralympic system highlighted the problem faced by many in sport when it comes to technology.

Sport finds itself at a crossroads in a rapidly evolving technological landscape. The tools and innovations that promise to redefine athlete development, coaching, and organisational efficiency are more powerful and complex than ever. So how do we build the infrastructure to harness the power and reduce the complexity?

“There’s some things that we’ve rolled out across all of the programmes and all of the sports,” added the aforementioned practitioner, “but then there’s also like little scatter gun or ripple effect areas. So somebody will introduce something, and somebody else says, ‘oh, that’s quite good. Can we do that in our sport?’”

For an hour, members of the Leaders Performance Institute discussed the processes and structures that let them keep their finger on the pulse of advancing technology, while also candidly admitting where they need to implement change to stay ahead of the game.

What are the challenges?

At the beginning of May, we published our Trend Report entitled ‘The Winning Formula for the Future of Performance Sport’.

The report delves into the barriers that prevent organisations adopting new technologies and is informed by more than 200 individuals from nearly 40 sports. While cost was predictably high on the list, three other challenges emerged as equally, if not more, critical.

1. Technological literacy and integration. Many organisations struggle not with acquiring new tools, but with understanding how to use them effectively and how to integrate them into existing systems. This lack of clarity often leads to fragmented tech inventory and underused platforms.

2. The constraints of organisational structure and personnel. Without dedicated roles or departments focused on innovation, the responsibility for technology adoption often falls between the cracks. Some participants noted the absence of roles akin to chief technology officers (CTOs) or directors of innovation. Such positions are standard in other industries but are few and far between in elite sport.

3. Leadership buy-in. This was perhaps the most fundamental factor. The disconnect between senior decision-makers and technical staff is a recurring theme. While the latter may understand the potential of a new tool, the former may lack the context or confidence to support its adoption. This misalignment can stall progress and foster frustrations across departments.

Is your approach more evidence-based or exploratory?

Encouragingly, the Trend Survey that preceded and informed the report revealed that over 60 percent of organisations are guided by scientific research and evidence when adopting new tools. However, nearly 40 percent admitted to relying more on trial-and-error or informal experimentation.

This divide reflects a broader tension in performance sport: the need to balance rigorous, evidence-based decision-making with the agility to test and iterate. Some organisations lean into frameworks, while others embrace a more exploratory mindset. Both approaches have merit, but the consensus was clear in that there is a need for greater intentionality across the board.

The challenge of integration

Integration, the group agreed, must be a priority, not just in terms of software, but in aligning workflows, data streams, and communication channels. It was perhaps the most resonant theme of the discussion.

As one participant put it, “We’re creating a complete mess with our tech stack.” Many organisations have accumulated a patchwork of tools. These are valuable in isolation but collectively inefficient and difficult to manage.

The problem isn’t just technical but strategic. Without a clear plan for how technologies should work together, organisations risk duplicating efforts, missing insights, and overwhelming staff.

Putting the foundations in place

There are two main approaches to meeting the challenge of technology integration:

1. Create a dedicated team or department

This is the approach of one football club in the Persian Gulf, where the performance department has established a centralised Data, Technology & Innovation team. The team, which sits at the heart of the organisation, seeks to bridge the performance, medical, coaching, and academy departments. “The team is responsible for creating the dashboards or the visuals that go from one team to the other,” said a sports scientist from the club in question. “Then the performance team has control of what is shown and the coaches can guide how it is shown.” By centralising decision-making and aligning data outputs with the club’s strategic goals, the team has broken down silos and improved cross-department collaboration.

2. Forge academic partnerships

Some environments are turning to academic partnerships to fill resource gaps. One English football club on the call is working with a local university to audit its data systems and develop a long-term strategy, including internships that bring in fresh expertise while building internal capacity. “I would just jump in on that and absolutely preach it,” said the participant from said club. “We’ve had success with our local university – I was from our local university – and we’ve had numerous interns that became full-time members of staff.”

Critical success factors

While much of the conversation focused on systems and structures, several participants emphasised the importance of culture and communication as critical to the success of these processes. One high performance manager noted that their organisation is “risk-averse” when it comes to new tech, not because of a lack of interest, but because of a desire to protect core business functions. “If there’s anything we can use to get all the noise out of other people’s way so they can actually do the day-to-day job better, then we’re normally onboard with that.”

Another pointed out the generational divide in digital fluency. Younger staff are digital natives and eager to adopt new tools. Older staff, by contrast, may be more cautious or feel overwhelmed. Bridging this gap requires not just training, but empathy and thoughtful change management.

Additionally, performance sport may need to rethink its leadership structures. In other industries, CTOs and innovation directors play a critical role in aligning technology with strategy. In sport, these roles are rare but increasingly necessary.

Without someone to “own” the innovation agenda, organisations risk falling into reactive patterns and chasing shiny new tools without a clear sense of purpose. As one contributor put it, “We need someone who can sit above the noise and guide us forward.”

Less can be more

The overall message was clear: technology should serve performance not distract from it.

With so many tools available, the temptation is to do more yet the real opportunity often lies in doing less, but more effectively. As one participant aptly put it, “We don’t have all the answers – but we know the questions we need to ask”.

One participant captured the collective imagination in describing their club’s establishment of a “tasting garden” where new technologies are trialled in a controlled environment before being scaled.

Another emphasised the importance of using existing tools to their full potential before adding new ones.

Now read the report

The Winning Formula for the Future of Performance Sport

Main image: courtesy of FlyKitt

By Joe Lemire

FlyKitt 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.

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.

Main image: Bloomberg via Getty Images

By Joe Lemire

Bobby Hillerich is a fifth-generation batmaker who has led manufacturing of Louisville Sluggers for the past quarter-century, but he was not prepared for the email that arrived in his brother’s inbox in November 2023.

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.

Main image: Hippos Exoskeleton

By Joe Lemire

Few injuries are as debilitating and career-altering as an ACL tear, which is why a San Francisco-based startup is developing a product to protect the knee with a rapidly inflating air bag.

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.

Main image: MW Athletix

By Joe Lemire

Former Baltimore Ravens safety Marcus Williams has built MW Athletix, a tech-laden performance training center in Corona, California.

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.

 

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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.

Main image: Minicircle

By Joe Lemire

Ryan Rossner starred as a kicker at Stephen F Austin before taking two years to pursue an NFL career, signing as an undrafted free agent with the Atlanta Falcons.

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.

 

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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.

Main image: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images

By Joe Lemire

Ndamukong Suh was among the most feared defenders of the 2010s. A three-time All-Pro and five-time Pro Bowler, the Nebraska engineering school graduate and Heisman Trophy finalist in 2009 had 71.5 career NFL sacks while playing for five teams, including multiple seasons with the Lions, Dolphins and Buccaneers with whom he won Super Bowl LV. He never missed a game due to injury in 13 seasons.

Suh, now 38, last played in 2022 and was part of the Sky Sports broadcast team for last month’s Super Bowl. He has invested in more than 30 companies, including Oura, through his family office, House of Spears Management. (Ndamukong means “House of Spears” in the Cameroonian language of Ngemba.) Suh also operates a real estate development company in Portland, Ore.

During SBJ Tech Week, Suh participated in a panel entitled “Tech and Talent: AI’s Impact on Athlete Training and Performance.”

Image: Marc Bryan-Brown

On the datapoints he tracked during his career…

The most consistent one that we’ve always done was, waking up first thing in the morning, I’d use a simple Google Sheet: How do you feel? One to 10. Where’s your energy level? There were four or five questions. That was probably the most consistent, and then we had so many other pieces of sleep data, whether it comes from Oura or, back in the day, we had other programs that we use. Ultimately, it’s a combination of looking at all this.

I’ve always been wired, especially from an athletic perspective, [where] I don’t really care how I feel. I have a job that I want to go and do an accomplish, and so I’m going to push myself through that. And if I chose to go get drunk the night before, I know I have to get up, and I’m going to have to muster through some things because I did that to myself. Vice versa, if I woke up and I just wasn’t feeling well, because traveling, or whatever it is, there’s ways to manipulate the body and manipulate the mind so you can reach your ultimate goals at the end of the day. It’s a combination of knowing when to pull back and when to push forward.

On the growth of data and tech…

Back in 2010 when I started, which is ages ago, it was kind of archaic, but to where we’re at now in 2025, there’s been a transformation. As athletes, we find different nuances and ways to find ways to get that 1% or half a percent to take us to the next level. And so I was always going into the lab. I was fortunate enough to have an amazing performance director I still work with to this day.

And then I had the great lab on the campus of Nike where I got to sit there underneath Phil Knight’s beautiful campus and everything that he has out with innovation. Back then it was the Mia Hamm Building, but now it’s LeBron James Building. So in there every summer finding new ways to tweak and learn different nuances that can advance my playing career.

On not overloading on tech…

Tools are key to have, but we also have to have that human interaction as well. It’s very important. That’s why I mentioned Keith D’Amelio, who’s my Performance Director. To have that human interaction and being able to say, “I can look and feel and see the things that you’re doing and I can teach you about the data.” Because I’m so focused on my craft and what I’m trying to do and accomplish and be the most dominant, but at the same time, I also need to learn those different new aspects of these new data points that are coming out. Some of them may not be relevant to me and that’s okay, but how do we decipher which ones are the best ones for me and which ones are not going to be the best ones for me.

On his interest in engineering…

I was born and raised into it. My father was a mechanical engineer. So as a young kid, as early as probably, second, third, fourth grade, I was riding around in this truck. He owned his own business, and so I was always with him, especially in the summers, when I wasn’t in school. It became a way for me to, one, be exposed to the industry and then falling in love with it, but then also as a kid, wanting toys and bikes and all different stuff — that became a job. Sweeping job sites and carrying duct work and all these particular pieces, and as I got bigger and stronger, I could lift heavy equipment and do that and things like that. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I was. So it was something I just easily fell in love with, [being] my dad, being on his hip, being able to watch and do everything, and just seeing it as something cool.

 

 

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On his studies at Nebraska…

I was a construction manager, so a broader view where, basically, I have the understanding of mechanical, electrical, plumbing, all the different trades that go into developing a building because I have to manage all of it. I have to know enough to be dangerous.

On how he’s put that to use…

I have built apartments, commercial buildings, so I’ve definitely put my degree to use. I have a development company back home in Portland that I do a majority of that through, and then I’ve built single family homes, not for myself, but for others and just different developments with different partners. I first learned by starting to do it, especially when I was in Detroit my first five years playing for the Lions. There was a guy named Gary Shiffman — he runs and started Sun Communities, which is a big publicly traded company centered around manufacturing homes. And so I learned a lot from him. We still work together to this day.

On his investing mentors, Warren Buffet and Joe Moglia…

We share an alma mater, Nebraska, so I first met [Buffet] when I was playing football there and going to school. He was honorary captain my senior year. And so they randomly came to me and were like, ‘You’re one of our top players. We’d love for you to meet him and walk out with you to the coin toss. Do you know who he is?’ And I was like, ‘Of course I know who he is. You’d have to be under a rock if you didn’t.’

So I really started reading up on him, understanding everything that he did. And then, funny enough, there was a defensive assistant that I didn’t really know until later on in my senior year, a guy named Joe Moglia, who was a big finance guy — he was CEO of TD Ameritrade — so everybody knew him as football coach, a silent assistant coach, but nobody really knew why he left in a black car every Thursday night to go to New York. And I had the balls to ask him. So we built a bond, and he became a close mentor of mine, especially after leaving college and even to this day.

On his investments…

I have a broad spectrum — the hospitality space, real estate and tech, depending on what type of technology it is and if I can add value to it and also if it’s just functionally things that I use. Especially on the sports side of things, like Oura Ring. Hyperice — I sold a business to them over the last couple of years for new technology for them to integrate into their organization with Normatec. I’ve been an advisor since the inception.

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.