How Florida State Used Science on Football Player Workouts

8/10/2019 How Florida State Used Science on Football Player Workouts

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How Florida State Used Science onFootball Player Workouts

Posted bycmorrison Sep 1, 2014 inMuscle and Fitness,Training|0 comments

BY NOAH DAVIS Mens FitnessRashad Greene, a 6-foot, 180-pound speedster from Albany, GA, may very well end his collegiate career asthe greatest wide receiver in the history of Florida State University football. No humble feat, of course. FSU is aperennial powerhouse and gridiron talent factory that in recent years has churned out top NFL receivers likeKelvin Benjamina first-round draft pick this yearas well as big names like Peter Warrick, Laveranues

Coles, and three-time Pro Bowler Anquan Boldin.

In 2013, Greene caught 76 balls, the second-highest total ever in a single Seminoles season, and snaggednine receptions for 147 yards in the 2014 national championship game against Auburn. The Seminoles won.This season, Greene is primed to break FSUs all-time records for total receiving yards, career receptions, andreceiving touchdownsthe first two are records that have stood since 1968.But, for all his accolades, promise, and well-earned swagger around FSUs practice field, today the 21-year-oldnursing major with the quiet temperament is just another player whos slacking his way through a workout.

And theres no way he can hide it.
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Greene, along with the rest of the Seminoles skill guysspeedy wide receivers and defensive backsisgoing through a series of grueling conditioning sprints on the turf at FSUs new $15 million indoor facility, nearthe end of the teams spring practices in Tallahassee. Vic Viloria, a stout former linebacker whos now theteams head strength and conditioning coach, oversees the drill. Instead of focusing solely on the players,however, his staffers are glued to an array of computer monitors that display a constantly updating stream ofcolorful numbers, bar graphs, and pie charts. Some of the numbers indicate that Greene might be dogging it alittle.

The information comes from a sensor about half the size of an iPhone 4, which Greenealong with everyother playerwears on his back under the uniform, held in place by a triangle-shape sports bow secured atthe neck and under the armpits.

Developed by an Australian sports science company, Catapult, the sensor tracks more than 100 metrics,including distance, speed, acceleration, deceleration, and heart rate. It also monitors change in direction using3-D accelerometers, 3-D magnetometers (essentially digital compasses), 3-D gyroscopes, a GNSS antenna forGPS, and a processor with a memory unit. As it collects data, the sensor transmits numbers wirelessly to thecoaches sideline command center. There the computers use algorithms that factor in the players vitals andother biographical info, then elegantly format the information into readableand actionablegraphs andcharts.

At Florida State, the data is sacred. This is a football program that finished in the top 5 of the Associated Presspoll every year from 1987 to 2000, routinely steamrolling its opposition in the Atlantic Coast Conference. But itstruggled through a slump in the 2000s, in the twilight of the tenure of long-running head coach BobbyBowden. Recently, though, the team has surged back to prominence under new head coach Jimbo Fisher, alongtime Bowden acolyte who took over the top job in 2010. The data never lies, argues Fisher, who credits itfor helping guide the Seminoles back to their rightful place atop the world of college football. Its helping memanage the team in terms of where we want to peak during the year, he says, speaking at the pace of ahyperactive child.

On the practice field, Viloria notices that Greene is slowing up a few yards before the end of each sprint. In thepast, Viloria wouldve had only his eyes and intuition for such a split-second observation, but now the sensors

offer figures to back it up.

Greene, like the rest of his teammates, knows not to question the data; so when Viloria shakes his head andtells him the last sprint didnt counthe slacked off in the final stretchGreene doesnt argue or hang his headin complaint. He merely lines up and does another 100-yard gasser, running full-bore to the very end.He looks over at Viloria, whose readout confirms the effort. Greene hits the showers as the coach smiles,another training session altered slightly but significantly, another national championship a fraction closer.Welcome to the new age of football, where real-time information influences a head coachs practice decisionson a daily basis, and every athlete gets an individualized training program intended to maximize potential andreduce injury. And the Seminoles, headed by the irrepressible Fisher, are leading the way.FSU football was the first major college football program to really adopt the Catapult technology, says Ethan

Owens, a sports scientist for the company. We created it, but they had to figure out how to take it anduse it tobenefit FSU football.

The Seminoles became Catapults first U.S. client in 2011, a year after Fisher took over the team. Viloria andhis then assistants, Erik Korem and Joe Danos, pitched him on the Catapult devices after seeing them inaction at a practice of an Australian rules football team, the Greater Western Sydney Giants.

Catapult was founded in 2001 by engineers Shaun Holthouse (now the companys CEO) and Igor van deGriendt. The duo developed a unique athlete-tracking microtechnology, and eventually found themselvesworking with several Aussie pro football teams.


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Viloria and Korem, fascinated by what they learned from watching the Catapult system in action, brought theidea back to their head coach. Fisher, always searching for an edge in the hypercompetitive world of elitecollege football, approved the program.

The first year, FSU used 30 GPS sensors for the entire team. Initially, Viloria says, the data was little morethan noise, what with the small sample size and the fact that the Australian sports scientists who designedCatapult didnt know what stats to cull for an American football team. Each sport, they argue, comes with sport-specific movements and conditioning drills that produce wear and tear on the body in different ways. But as

FSU gathered more dataadding additional sensors each year, topping out at 80 this season (at the cost ofmore than $100,000 a year)they began to develop profiles for different types of players. Previously, Viloriacould only theorize that a series of sprints or route-running drills would have a different effect on Greene (6,178 pounds) than on Benjamin (65, 234 pounds).If I take two guys with different body types out on the field,well, ****the same workload is going to be a lot more stress on one than on the other, Viloria says. Weknew it before, we just couldnt prove it.

So last year, the much heavier Benjamin ran shorter conditioning sprints (90 yards) than the lithe Greene (a ful100 yards). Big offensive linemen, meanwhile, went 60 yards. Each individual player can only sprint for solong, Viloria says. Beyond that, its no longer speed. Its not cardio or endurance either, because theyreexceeding the heart-rate zone you want them to be in. At the end of the day, if you get rid of that, you get rid of

a lot of potential injury.

Viloria now establishes benchmarks at the beginning of the season for each playersimilar to a weight roommax-out figurethat can be followed all year. Its been a total culture change, he says. Everyone used to runthe same distance. But in the weight room, we wouldnt ask a 190-pound guy to lift what a 300-pound guy lifts.That would just be stupid. The only reason we know that is because we get baseline numbers. We do thesame with the sensors on the field.

The data also provides a way to cut through the obstacles of player personality and stubbornness. Forexample, if Greene can sprint at 20 miles per hour for 100 yards without slowing down, the coaching staff cantell him to run at 80% for a training session and observe if hes following through or not.It takes all theguesswork out of it, Fisher says. Some guys dont show how tired they are. Others do. This lets me have

correct data so I can make direct decisions. We know over a period of time where each guy performs his bestat the end of the week, so we can adjust each practice specifically for him. Players arent cattle. You cant trainthem all the same. They all have different parts.

The Catapult sensors arent your average Garminsor Jawbones, either, delivering only basic information likeheart rate and speed. The system relies on proprietary algorithms that vacuum up several metrics in real timeand assemble them in easily digestible ways. The most important metric for FSU, for instance, is the all-encompassing PlayerLoad variable, which takes into account sagittal, frontal, and transverse planes ofmotionbasically, movement in every directionas well as other factors like age, weight, high-intensityrunning, time spent walking versus running versus sprinting, and the number of accelerations anddecelerations.

PlayerLoad crunches the numbers to provide a single figure that represents how hard a players working.Call it the Holy Grail number, the figure that turns all this fancy verbiage into football talk, says Viloria.Based on those PlayerLoad numbers, Fisher, Viloria, and the rest of the staff may keep a practice going, end ita couple minutes early if the entire group is overworked, or instruct individual players to take a rest if theirworkload gets too far over their benchmark.

When practice ends, Fisher studies a printout detailing the workload of every single FSU player who wasmicd upteam lingo for wearing a sensor. If the team was supposed to go 80% but went 85%, hell dial backthe next day to give his troops some rest by increasing repetitions but lowering the intensity, or reducing theamount of physical contact between players. This, he says, keeps players in football condition while


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simultaneously giving their bodies and muscles a bit of a rest so they can peak in time for the games. For allthe data programs success, Fisher was initially skeptical about the role of data in monitoring and maximizingcardiovascular fitness.

It really was hard for me to adapt, because its against everything Ive ever been taught in sports, he says. Infootball, he points out, players are supposed to go 100% all the time. Anything else runs counter to the sportsreligionthat melodramatic, Rudy-esque belief that players should always be pushing themselves, painfully,to some metaphysical limit in hopes of improvement. But, according to Fisher and Catapult scientists, that

mindset is not only rapidly becoming obsolete, but has possibly been dangerous all along.

You wouldnt drive a car in a race without a dashboard, so why do we do that with our athletes? says GaryMcCoy, Catapults senior applied sports scientist in the U.S. He argues that we all have different-size enginesthat can operate at full speed for only so longand no two are the same.

Fishers opinions on the benefits of data changed as he saw its effects. In 2013, when the teams data-monitoring program was in full swing, the Seminoles began the season ranked 12th in the USA Today polland never stopped winning. They won nine straight games by at least 27 points, including four against rankedopponents. FSU finished a perfect 140, defeating Auburn 3431 in the national championship game on adominating drive during which they looked as fresh as they had in the first quarter.

We were able to peak damn near every week because we had all the data coming back, Viloria says.The team also dramatically reduced injuries. Soft-tissue injuriesmuscle, ligament, and tendon issues thatarise from overstretching, lack of strength, and, most important, fatigueare down 88% over the past twoseasons, primarily because FSU is limiting overtraining.

Most soft-tissue injuries are preventable, says sports scientist Michael Regan. Were giving them a tool tomeasure the movement of their athletes, and, therefore, their fatigue and load. By building up benchmark data,youre understanding the risk of soft-tissue injuries and can be proactive in reducing them. Not a single playermissed a game in 2013 due to one. Thats a remarkable statistic for such a high-level NCAA football program.(The University of Florida, meanwhile, suffered 10 season-ending injuries during the same stretch.)

Conditioning drills are safer as well. Weve been able to stop five or six heatstroke situations by monitoringplayers heart rates during practice, Fisher says. Wed go grab a guy, get him cooled down, then get him backout there. Viloria, the man overseeing the cardio training, put it even more simply. I dont have to wait until theguy passes out to sit him down, he says.

Its an about-face for Viloria. The first year, when the data didnt really make sense, I was the typicalbonehead. I began to think that I didnt need the ****ing computer to tell me how to do my job. The secondyear, I thought it was OK. Now, I really feel bad for the teams that dont have it. Its gonna extend careersandsave kids lives.

Catapult has also been a boon for recruiting. Fisher uses the data-monitoring program not only as a selling

point for the university, but also as a means of better preparing players for a pro career. He argues that thedata will help deliver them to the sports highest level in the best possible shape.

In 2011, Kelvin Benjamin arrived at FSU as the eighth-best high school wide receiver in the country, accordingto *****s.com. And though he caught 30 passes in 2012, the coaching staff felt he was relying on his physicalgifts during games, content to glide through training sessions. Given his massive size and quickness, heshould have dominated. Viloria believes that providing real-time feedback to Benjamin helped convince himthat he needed to work harder on the practice field.

Theres no more arguing, says Viloria. I dont have to be the typical strength coach. I give them a numberand show them where they should be. It gives them some ownership. Its their body.


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Other teams are catching on. Oregon and LSU use Catapults trackers for their programs, though they havenowhere near FSUs 80 sensors. The University of Kentuckys football team hired away former Viloria assistantErik Korem to run its GPS program, while Viloria disciples Joe Danos and Alex Hampton now work as strengthand conditioning coaches with the NFLs New York Giants and Jacksonville Jaguars, respectively. In total,Catapult has contracts with 19 college programs and 14 NFL teams.

Catapult doesnt offer a consumer product yet. Thats coming in the future, according to CEO Shaun

Holthouse. He believes that it will lead a new wave of wearable, high-performance devices that not onlymeasure your outputs but also run them through algorithms and help do your thinking for you. For example, ifyoure a long-distance runner, youll have your own version of the PlayerLoad variable, which will incorporateyour heart rate, weight, and age, and be able to tell you if youre slacking or going too hard. The same willapply to all kinds of endurance activities.

You could compare it to Formula 1, where great high-end technology is developed and proven at the elitelevel, then over time makes it down to production cars, Holthouse says. The great thing about our technologyis its strong scientific pedigree and the fact that it has such a demonstrable performance benefit for the worldsmost elite athletes. Its very different from bottom-up devices like Fitbit and the Nike+ FuelBand, which arefocused more on sedentary lifestyles and obesity problems.

Fisher agrees. Winning isnt about going 100% all the time, he says; its about peaking at the right time.The last two years are when weve really been able to use it, he says, and were 26 and 2. Injuries are down.Weve had two ACC championships and a national championship.

And, hell tell, FSU is just getting started.

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How Florida State Used Science on Football Player Workouts