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ESPN Magazine: Athlete monitoring in the NBA

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In a league where teams often play back-to-back nights in different cities requiring late, post-game travel, sufficient sleep is hard to come by and fatigue, in due time, can take its toll.

Accordingly, last season the tech-savvy Dallas Mavericks became the first NBA team to partner with Fatigue Science, followed by the Brooklyn Nets, with additional teams joining for the upcoming 2014-2015 season. Using the Readiband system, the Mavs monitor players’ sleep and fatigue to help ensure they are ready come game time.

The Mavericks’ training staff recently spoke with ESPN regarding the team’s use of technology to monitor its players.

“If you told an athlete you had a treatment that would reduce the chemicals associated with stress, that would naturally increase human growth hormone, that enhances recovery rate, that improves performance, they would all do it. Sleep does all of those things,” said Mavericks’ Head Athletic Trainer, Casey Smith.

This is exactly what Stanford School of Medicine researcher, Cheri Mah, demonstrated in 2011 study on the impacts of sleep extension to athletic performance. The study, published in the journal of Sleep, examined 11 varsity men’s basketball team players and found that increasing sleep to 10 hours a night decreased injury risk and improved players’ reaction time, sprint times, and free-throw percentage.

“Once guys get a feeling for performing at a higher level,” says Jeremy Holsopple, the team’s Athletic Performance Director, “it’s a big difference from feeling like s—. Which they didn’t even think was feeling like s—.”

Holsopple says that “teams lose 10 to 15 games a year because players aren’t even remotely close to physical and mental freshness,” which undoubtedly is something the Mavericks want to mitigate this season.

Read the full article here, or pick up October 27’s copy of ESPN The Magazine NBA Preview Issue.

SportTechie.com: Analyzing the sleep patterns of the Dallas Mavericks

SportTechie.com reporter, Bryan Douglass, recently interviewed Fatigue Science founder, Pat Byrne, about our technology and it’s application in professional sports and human performance optimization:

The start of the NBA season has basketball fans smiling, but the rise of tech in support of better basketball has NBA owners smiling more. The influence of tech is growing, and we’ve seen more than a few headlines over the weeks leading into the 2013-14 season to prove the relationship is growing.

One of the more recent headlines comes from Dallas, where owner Mark Cuban – renowned supporter of the geek business model – has hired Fatigue Science to work with Dirk Nowitzki and the rest of the Mavericks. Founded in 2007, Fatigue Science offers services focused on “fatigue-related risk management and human performance optimization.” NBA players endure one of the most grueling schedules in professional sports, and Cuban, cognizant of the challenges his players face, is looking for a better way.

Read the full article

Are fatigued referees hurting your favourite team’s shot at a championship?

The life of a professional referee in the NHL, NBA or world premiere soccer may sound glamorous and fun (the travel! the games!) but the reality is, their schedules can be even more demanding than those of the athletes themselves and may contribute to game refereeing errors and stress.

In 2008 Mike Leggo wrote about a week in the life of an NHL referee. On day one, he leaves his home on the West Coast for a next day game in Washington. “The trip is a demanding four games in five days,” he says, “encompassing Washington, Montreal, Philadelphia, and Columbus…Six nights, seven flights, two countries, thousands of air miles…all in a week in the life of an NHL referee”.

Hockeybuzz.com blog recently interviewed NHL referee, Paul Devorski: “There’s actually quite a bit of travel,” Paul confirms, “It’s hard to do, but they try to travel you around so you get to see every team X amount of times, so that keeps you busy. Our road trips are anywhere from a week to 10 days.” He enjoys the actual experience of game officiating, but admits “Honesty, the travel gets wear and tear on you.”

Fatiguing schedules aren’t just a problem for referees in the NHL. The NBA’s Pat Fraher told RefereeMindset.com that the life of an NBA ref is busy: “Travel is hectic…a different city every 2 days for about 25 days a month.” Last year Dallas Maverick’s owner, Mark Cuban, pointed out that the “stressful travel schedule of the condensed season” might have contributed to the “poor quality of officiating”.  And in UK Premiership soccer, West Ham United manager, Sam Allardyce, stressed that their “referees are travelling all over the country and out in Europe” for the duration of their seasons. He has famously blamed referee fatigue for decision errors during games, “Fatigue is everything in terms of decision making,” he said back in December, “Once it kicks in you lose the ability to make those decisions correctly…They need to ease the load on the referees we have.”

Professional sport teams are starting to take a more analytical look at the ways that training and travel schedules affect their athletes’ fatigue and game time effectiveness, but who is addressing those of the referees when the wrong call can make the difference in a team’s league standing?

Our own Pat Byrne recently spoke to Vancouver’s Team 1040 radio about fatigue management and professional sports, acknowledging the frustrations that team management and players must face when the wrong calls change their game momentum, “You’re doing all the training, you’re doing all the coaching, you’re doing everything you possibly can and then you get a tired official making a dumb mistake…you miss a hand ball, you miss a penalty and you lose a game….It’s fixable” he says.

NBC Sports: Mavericks getting scientific about sleep, fatigue and game performance

From NBC Sports’ Pro Basketball Talk Blog, Kurt Helin writes:

For a lot of NBA players, sleep is something they fit in around everything else. Especially younger players. They tend to stay up late, get a few hours sleep, go through practice/shoot around, get an afternoon nap then be ready for the game (or whatever is on tap) that night.

By the time that guys are in the league a while, you hear them talk about altering their schedules to make sure they are getting enough sleep because they see it impacts their performance on the court.

Now the Dallas Mavericks are trying to quantify that improvement…

NBA.com: Mavs first to dive into sleep analysis

NBA.com’s Jeff Caplan was the first to break the news that NBA champions, Dallas Mavericks, have recruited the services of Fatigue Science to help with player fatigue analysis and performance optimization:

In the next few days, the Dallas Mavericks will become the first team in the NBA to have their players wear black, digital wristwatches…

The watches will tell when the players are sleeping, and for how long and how deeply they’re doing so. The collected data will quantify how fatigue from training, competing, travel, time-zone adjustments and other variables affect multiple aspects of game-day performance such as reaction time and readiness. The goal is for the Mavericks’ coaches and trainers to pinpoint the causes of fatigue, both team-wide and individually, and adjust travel schedules and training regimens to ensure players get proper sleep.

It’s not just telling guys to get their eight hours of shut-eye, but rather scientifically guiding them.

Read the full piece

Factoring sleep into game performance a ‘slam dunk’ for Dallas Mavericks

We are pleased to announce that 2011 NBA Champions, Dallas Mavericks, will be using our game-changing technology to help manage player fatigue and performance during the hectic NBA season.

“Athletes and trainers understand that timing and consistency of workouts, practice, and nutritional intake is important to the players game performance” says Fatigue Science Founder and VP, Pat Byrne, “they also know sleep is important, but previously they have not had the ability to  measure sleep and fatigue – our technology can not only do that, but analyze the data and provide validated solutions to optimize the teams performance.”

The technology, currently used by the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks as well as other professional teams in the NFL, MLS and Olympics, includes Fatigue Science’s Readibands – a virtually indestructible band that can track micro movements in the wrist to measure sleep and activity, and F.A.S.T. (Fatigue Avoidance Scheduling Tool) – which analyzes data collected from the wristbands to create a customized fatigue avoidance solution. Using the data collected, scientifically-based recommendations will be made for player travel, training and rest period scheduling to mitigate fatigue and maximize reaction time and effectiveness during game play.

ESPN recently reported on some challenges in the Mavericks’ away game schedule this season: “Five of the Mavs’ final seven games are on the road, including a four-game-in-six-night stretch that starts against the two L.A. teams.” It’s the effects of these tough scheduling terms that teams try to mitigate when they look for ways to deal with player fatigue. “Sleep is only one  variable, but perhaps the most important,” Pat Byrne says, “Teams can ensure their players have the opportunity to maximize their performance at game time. Even just 10% loss of effectiveness can make a difference between winning or losing.”

Pat traveled to Dallas this past (Canadian) Thanksgiving weekend to train the players and management on the use of the technology. Sports fans and tech watchers can start trying to spot the Readiband on the Mavericks line up in the coming weeks.