Ryan Alexander of Atlanta United came on the People Behind the Tech Podcast to discuss understanding the demands of the team, player profiling and brain training.
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“Understanding how the physical demands and fitness is going to be interpreted on the field as it is going to relate to the technical and tactical execution of a certain style of play.”
Alexander, the Director of Sports Science at Atlanta United, was speaking to John Portch and Joe Lemire on the People Behind the Tech podcast ahead of the new MLS season, which began in late February.
He also spoke about the club’s groundbreaking work with i-Brain Tech, a neurofitness training aid that has transformed their skills and cognitive training and led to players having “higher levels of conversations with their technical coaches”.
Elsewhere, Alexander explored:
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The sports scientist behind recent British and Irish Lions tours discusses the real value of finding the right tech and the balance between domain expertise and leadership.
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The question is posed by Brian Cunniffe of the UK Sports Institute [UKSI], who is Joe Lemire and John Portch’s first guest on The People Behind the Tech podcast for 2024.
Brian, a performance lead at the UKSI who works primarily in canoeing and who also served as the British and Irish Lions’ sports scientist on tours of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, is discussing the power in gamifying training, particularly for younger athletes.
“There’s a slight irony in there but how do we bring it back to the stuff that matters, not just for players but for staff as well?” he continues.
“How do we help coaches on a journey to understand not just the stuff that players have completed but maybe some of the decisions that we need to take on a journey and learn from that so that we’re not replicating or duplicating and can be more efficient with our time?”
Elsewhere, Brian delves into:
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Dr Nicola Brown of St Mary’s University explores an unregulated market where anything can be labelled as a sports bra.
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“We know that half of schoolgirls drop out of sport because of their breasts,” she added. “One in three adults see the breasts as a barrier to participation. Then we also have that performance aspect. We know that if we change breast support, because the breasts will move during activity, that it will change how an athlete moves, it will influence their confidence, it can change their breathing, it can change their muscle activity.”
In September 2023, Brown was speaking as part of a panel discussion on the physiology of the female athlete at Leaders Meet: Driving Step Change in Female High Performance at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium. She spoke alongside pelvic health physiotherapist Emma Brockwell and Dr Amal Hassan, who serves as Women’s Team Doctor at rugby club Harlequins.
“We know that the majority of women wear the incorrect size bra, and you can have a great sports bra, but if it doesn’t fit properly then it’s not going to be effective.”
In this article, Brown reflects on the sports bra market and the importance of athlete education when it comes to breast health.
Note: Brown’s responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Sports bras: a confusing marketplace…
The sports bra market has massively increased, which is a fantastic thing, but it does then make it a very confusing marketplace for women. It may be very difficult to find the right sports bra. There’s no such thing as the best sports bra. What might be the best sports bra for me might be very different to someone else and we know that key issues around sports bras are knowledge of the types of sports bra that might be suitable for small breasts versus large breasts; and also the fit of the bra.
Why athletes should not rely on official apparel suppliers alone…
If there’s a very limited choice of products, particularly if you’re working with a team of athletes, it’s unlikely that those products will cater for the entire team. I think we need to be careful about mandating some kind of product that is actually having a negative health implication on an athlete. Anything can market itself as a sports bra. There’s no kind of criteria the bra has to meet. That’s another thing that makes it quite challenging to find the right breast support.
There are three types of sports bra on the market…
Firstly, a compression bra, which is kind of like the crop top that goes over your head with an elastic bottom. They tend to be better for smaller-breasted women. Larger-breasted women will probably be more suited to an encapsulation bra, which encapsulates each breast separately. The third type is a combination or a hybrid bra, which combines elements of the compression and the encapsulation bra. So you have the separate pockets for each breast and then with a compressive layer of material over the top. You might make the assumption that if we combine both types of bra we’ll get the best one but that’s not necessarily the case. It is again about that individual fit or the person.
Why compression bras are so popular…
Depending on the sport they are playing and the activity that they’re doing, an athlete may choose different sports bras for different types of activity, but the key feedback that we get, particularly from athletes working at the very top level, is that they often use a bra that is compressive because they are trying to look as if they don’t have breasts. They want to compress their breast tissue as much as possible because they’re concerned about what they look like and how people will comment on social media or in the crowd, and they want to be able to focus on the game and not be concerned about their appearance, so they will try and make their breasts look as small as possible.
The importance of education and empowerment…
There’s always that fashion aspect that comes into play but I think the most important thing is education about what a good sports bra can do. If we can try to promote the benefits that will come from that then we’ll hopefully have athletes making more informed choices. I think it’s also important not to assume that an athlete will recognise that it’s a problem. It wasn’t until 2015 that it was reported that the breasts are a barrier to activity – and I don’t think something happened in 2015 that meant breasts became a problem – it’s just the first time that anybody asked women. And so a lot of women will just assume that the issues they experience are just part and parcel of what they have to deal with. But if we can raise awareness of the fact that there is a potential solution in the form of well-fitting appropriate breast support then it just opens up their opportunities to try and reduce those negative consequences of the breast function.
Deciding what option is best…
Make sure they try it on before they buy it. The fit is one of the most important things. You can get it professionally fitted in-store, but I think particularly for sports bra fits, there’s no real regulation or training for those fitters, so I’m very much an advocate of empowering the athlete or any individual to know what bra fits them. Then it doesn’t matter what bra they pick, they know what to check and whether it fits them. And when it comes to the sizing, just not assuming that you’re one size and that you’re that size for the rest of your life. I think that’s something that happens. You get fitted with a bra at some stage of your life and then you wear that bra forever more. But different styles of bra, even the different colour of a bra, if you wear a black bra versus a white bra of the same design, just the colour can make that tighter. Your breasts might change size and shape through various stages of life, through stages of a medical cycle, so it’s making sure that you are aware that you need bras that are fitted and that your breasts may change. And more expensive doesn’t always mean better. It’s very much not the case. So it’s finding what works for you. Then, once they put it on, jump around in the changing room, simulate some movements you’d do during that activity, make sure that you feel supported.
The gold standard in breast support services…
At the top level with unlimited resources and expertise to hand, we could do a biomechanical assessment of an athlete’s breast movement doing a sports-specific activity so we can establish the optimal breast support for them and then design a bespoke bra; and then they can exercise in that. We’ve done that with some athletes and they report that they feel more confident in their performance, that they perform better, reduce pain and so on.
Steps that all teams can take…
We should go right down to the lowest level with something as simple as putting a bra fit poster in a changing room or on the back of a toilet door. Some little nudge, that thought about ‘have I checked my bra?’ or ‘have I changed my bra recently?’ ‘Does my bra fit? Something that might spark that conversation to discuss breast health issues more openly. And then in between offering bra fit assessments, if you can get the expertise on hand. Anything from signposting to educational leaflets. There are educational resources and videos and things available to signpost. Obviously we’re not all going to become experts in all of these areas of women’s health overnight and know everything, but we can at least signpost athletes if they do come to us with those issues to the resources they might need.
Where there is more work still to be done…
There’s been a lot of work done on breast support for different population groups and at different life stages, but very limited work done on pregnancy or breast feeding post-partum. So I think work needs to be done in terms of making sure there is the appropriate breast support for athletes to facilitate breast feeding if needed but also to facilitate the return to sport to ensure the breast support they’re wearing is appropriate and to support their needs. And obviously the anatomy of the breasts is going to change substantially during that period. And again, I would promote education about those changes and how team can best support their athletes. Breast injuries: we don’t really know the long-term consequences of breast impacts. That’s another area where we need to be better at collecting that data. We ask athletes about all sorts of other injuries but don’t necessarily ask about breast injuries and they don’t necessarily report it. In rugby, I know there are steps being made within injury surveillance systems to actually start incorporating breast injury data. I think that will be a really important step forward, to try and understand the prevalence, the severity, the mechanisms of those injuries, whether it’s contact with the player, contact with the ball or contact with the ground, but also the consequences of that.
‘The soft skills – I call them essential skills’
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“You have to be out there with the team on a daily basis, you have to have those soft skills – I actually call them essential skills – we have to recognise that we have to make ourselves completely valuable to the team.”
Johnny, who was recently appointed Associate Head Coach of the men’s tennis program at the University of South Carolina’s men’s tennis program, is the third and final guest on this Keiser miniseries, which seeks to understand the world of S&C through a leadership lens.
He is both an S&C and a tennis coach out on the court and, in his dual role, is in no doubt about what it takes to develop the essential skills of which he speaks.
He adds: “That might mean going out there for extended periods of time, watching practices, going above and beyond and staying later after an S&C session because a guy needs to work on their hip mobility a little bit more as opposed to just shutting the practice down.”
Also during this episode, we discuss:
Previous episode:
Emily Hall – Queensland Rugby League
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‘Sometimes it is the strength coach that has to bring the energy to a session’
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“You have to be able to read your athletes and know your athletes,” says the Strength & Conditioning Coach, who works with various women’s teams at Queensland Rugby League, including the U19s.
“[You need to] have those relationships with your athletes so you can say the right thing or make the right call in those situations,” she tells this Keiser Series Podcast.
In episode two of this series, we speak to Hall, a proud Wiradjuri woman, about topics including:
Previous episode:
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The program’s Director of Football Performance Nutrition discusses the dietetic practices of the back-to-back national college champion.
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“He used that next year to really focus on nutrition,” she tells Joe Lemire and John Portch. “[He] got down and dropped his body fat percentage by 7%, lost 45lbs [20.4kg], and he was a first-round draft pick.
“He just did such a good job at buying in and it made him a faster, more explosive person. He never lost any muscle mass, which meant he was really focusing in on eating enough of just the right things so that we were able to retain that muscle and focus on losing that fat.”
Collier’s pride is palpable, particularly as a native of Athens, Georgia, and long-term Bulldogs fan. “It’s so much fun to see them buy-in and then say ‘C, I feel so much better in practice’. ‘C, I didn’t know I could have this much energy’. It’s probably the most rewarding part of my job.”
In this edition of The People Behind the Tech podcast, Collier lifts the lid on her work as the Director of Football Performance Nutrition at the Georgia Bulldogs, who retained the NCAA national championship in January.
During the course of the conversation, we covered:
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Here are 10 factors that can increase the effectiveness of your recovery practices.
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Those two are inseparable as far as Skylar Richards is concerned. He says: “As technology has improved, to allow us to have interventions to help the best they can off the field, that has really given us the ability to look into what’s effective, what’s efficient, and how we can individualise those sorts of treatments to make sure we’re as optimal as possible.”
In Early August, Richards who is an Athletic Trainer with the US Soccer Federation, spoke at a KYMIRA Webinar titled ‘The Evolution of Athlete Recovery’ where he was joined by Mark Pavlik, the Head Coach of the Penn State men’s volleyball team, and session moderator Johnny Parkes, the Lead National Coach at the United States Tennis Association.
“So much in sports science and medicine, we worry not so much about the medicine side of things as much as the optimisation,” Richards continues. “And so really keeping people as healthy as possible is the focus with recovery but also then the art of how to do that consistently within their regime.”
Here, we discuss 10 factors raised during the webinar to consider when seeking to establish optimal, consistent recovery practices with your athletes.
Do you need to prioritise passive or active modalities? Your athletes’ culture of recovery – practices and habits – should tell you. In his time at FC Dallas between 2012 and 2019, Richards noted differences between his younger players, who were happy to visit the recovery lab while they watched tape, and those players in their mid-30s who had families and, frankly, far less time and cognitive capacity. “Those become the tricky puzzles to figure out,” he says. “How can I help them recover in their lives and support them in that? That can be the difference between applying an active modality versus a passive one, a wearable or something like that. It helps them to do it all the time no matter what life throws at them.”
Whatever an athlete’s preferred combination of recovery modalities, there is an important question to ask. “What gives you the biggest dosage of all those things put together in one package, which is easy to manage and to be consistent?” says Richards. “You don’t want them to burn out having to think about stuff all the time.”
A veteran may have a busy life but, as a cohort of largely self-driven individuals, Richards can work with soccer players to “scratch that itch” around self-improvement. “Something that I’ve found I can do well with my older athletes: I’ll say ‘why don’t we try to instal a recovery room at your house? It gives you an hour away from the kids and the craziness to go in, watch some videos, and now read a book. Whatever you need to do justify it as your job’.” Now, the athlete has a consistent pattern of recovery and doesn’t feel the need to, say, go on an evening run that may well clear their minds but has a detrimental effect on their physiology. “We scratch the same itch by helping you rather than sacrificing something.”
The success of Richards’ approach with his veterans has enabled them to take that message to the rest of the team. “Getting them to talk about that approach to the younger players really helps them to buy-in,” he says. With men’s volleyball at Penn State, it sits with Pavlik and his colleagues to educate the archetypal 18-year-old who “doesn’t know what they don’t know yet from a recovery standpoint”. He says: “They’re coming off of club or high school practices at most three times a week, they’re living at home with mum and dad when they wander into our gym, it’s my job to ensure that the educational points that we’re trying to drive home so they can have a longstanding, successful collegiate career, and those that continue to move on through the professional ranks and international ranks with men’s volleyball have something in their background.”
That aforementioned education is best delivered by a friend. In that regard, Pavlik ensures that his student-athletes are surrounded by smart and passionate people who make an effort to build relationships. “We do a pretty good job of getting these people around my team early in their career and, let’s face it, the adage of ‘the team doesn’t care what you know until they know that you care’ [is true],” he says. “When you have these types of experts having relationships with our players; coming to practice, just being around the water cooler during water breaks, being able to just say ‘how’s it going?’ Then when the guys are in a position to listen to what the expert is saying they’re no longer experts – they’re friends, they’re buddies.”
Are there opportunities for you around game day? “It’s always been crazy to me that we control every other variable with athletes all the time, but the one day we completely flip the schedule is game day,” says Richards. “Those older guys love those moments of recovery on the road. For them, it’s less chaotic, it’s easier to focus. So much so that we’ve had a lot of success with having players to stay at a hotel the night before a home game or have that option, so that they can get into that rhythm and we change those practice times to the same as game times so they can get that day before the game rhythm into their bodies and their minds.” The benefits are palpable. “Allowing them to get into that rhythm early on, sleep, get out of that chaos, get their recovery mode early and have time to do any modalities that they want is crucial.”
Customisation is important and, at Penn State, it goes beyond age (i.e. an athlete at 18 versus an athlete at 23). “We look at the age and the experience of the athlete, then we take a look at what their on-court responsibilities are,” says Pavlik. “Some max jump much more often than others on the court during the match or practices. There are going to be some that have to get up the floor a lot more than other guys. What we try to do here is make sure with our training staff and med staff that we understand what we’re asking them to go through.” For Richards, it involves asking better questions. “What is the question for that athlete that we can solve the best? All physiology is too much of a blanket statement,” he says. “Is it overall energy? Is it mental fatigue? Is it truly physical fatigue? Is it something masking as another [marker]? And how can we hit those?”
As moderator Johnny Parkes says, “With all these physical modalities we can use, I think we sometimes forget about the things we can control the most, which is our level of sleep recovery, hygiene and the effect of resetting the body for the next day.” For Richards, good sleep can be an outcome of a holistic approach to recovery. “That’s when you get the most synergistic effect out of all of them,” he says while asking, “Can we create that cycle of measurements to enhance individualisation and effectiveness?” He once again cites the idea of players staying in hotels the night before a game. “It really ties this together in a practical way in terms of ‘let’s get you good sleep in an environment I can go in early and control, make sure the sleep hygiene is there, giving you the time to implement those things well and then tie-in any other recovery modalities you want at the same time’.”
According to Richards, both younger and older athletes are interested in the gamification of recovery, but in different ways. “Younger players thrive for the most part on comparing what they’re doing and being effective versus their peers,” he says. “For an older athlete, I’ve found they’ve passed that point in their life, they’ve been saturated by that already and what you come to is the gamification comes from comparing them to themselves. Can they get a high score? Can they see what’s most effective for them? What patterns help them to be the most consistent over time? Scoring that on a streak becomes the better motivator for them.”
What don’t teams consider as much as they should in recovery and how do we overcome them? “Anything is better than nothing,” says Richards. “We have a huge market for recovery tools and methodologies but I haven’t seen a huge move towards a blend of that. That’s where I’ve been pushing a lot of companies on their research. Can we let the monitoring devices drive the intervention; the duration, the velocity, the frequency and occurrence? Can we use measuring sticks to drive it for individuals; its appropriateness, effectiveness and sufficiency on an individual level? Until we do that I don’t think we’re doing the best we can do to figure out the puzzle, which is an athletic body.”
