Omniathlete

by Antonio Robustelli, MSc CSCS Since the launch of the NordBord, Vald's first product to enter the professional sport market, the Brisbane-based company has grown exponentially by quickly becoming a leading athlete testing systems provider as well as one of the most innovative sports technology companies in professional and high-level sport today. Even if sports technology is a big opportunity and one of the single most important challenges in sport performance, very few s

Whenever i talk about foot pressure mapping technology during my courses or keynote lectures at international conferences, i always got surprised by the deficits in knowledge and understanding of the differences between force and pressure measurements. I often receive questions that actually sounds a little bit obvious to me but i will try to clean up the topic in terms of both technology and biomechanics. Force vs Pressure or Force + Pressure? When talking about force and

For almost 20 years I have been helping people overcome pain with manual therapy and using exercise to help them improve functional capacity. I have found it very easy to perform manipulation, tooling, needling, taping (among other modalities) to help alleviate pain. But as a clinician I have the responsibility to include active therapy (exercise) whenever possible. My belief is manual therapy is the bridge to help people be more active and exercise more. The difficult part f

Once you’ve designed your elite player profile and completed the assessment process with your athletes, it’s time to use the data to drive your decision making. The priority should always be managing injury risk, and this data is extremely valuable to identify your high risk athletes. These are athletes who performed below the minimum standard on a number of assessments, and should be managed differently than your athletes who performed above the minimum standard. I have crea

Every death is too early to occur. The various deaths of professional athletes, that have occurred in recent years, unfortunately start a series of debates on professional sport as well as worrying discussions. Meetings and good intentions still doesn't lead to any results or positive outcomes and funeral ceremonies are trapped in the meaningfulness. Recently, Fiorentina's captain Davide Astori and 18-year-old French football player Thomas Rodriguez died as a result of an hea

In any high performance environment the goal is clear, minimize the risk of injury and maximize athletic development. If you lay in bed at night and honestly tell yourself you’ve done everything in your control to protect your athletes health, then you certainly have an assessment process in place. Most sports have technical, tactical, and physiological (I suppose we could add psychological here, but we won’t for now) requirements. If you don’t work with elite level athletes,

The hip (femoroacetabular) joint is arguably the most important joint in the human body as it relates to biomechanics of athletic performance. In every sport in the world, one hip joint may be called upon to perform quick, powerful and oftentimes violent movements while the other hip provides the necessary coordinated stability around which these movements can occur. There are 29 different muscles that are working in synergy to create effective movements around the hip joint.

For an optimal understanding of how inertial machines work, the first important step to take is to have a clear knowledge of the basic physics principles behind the concept of inertial training. This is fundamental since not having a basic knowledge in physics will lead us to erroneous conclusions as well as doing wrong comparisons between different types of equipments. Inertial (or flywheel ) machines work under the principle of the accelerated Uniform Circular Motion, which

The Hamstring Management series continues with the fifth episode in which i had the pleasure of discussing with Andreas Beck, currently holding the role of the Head of Strength & Conditioning at Borussia Dortmund. AR: Andreas, thank you for being part of this hamstring management series. Can you explain how your role has evolved over time and how you actually manage all the aspects related to performance and rehab at Borussia Dortmund? Andreas Beck: I'm working in professi

For the fourth episode of the Hamstring Management series i'm happy to introduce Gustavo Pérez Solano, which is currently the Head Fitness Coach at River Plate 2nd Team. I have known Gustavo for several years, he is one of the smartest and respected professionals in football in Argentina and he has worked with all the best Argentinian players the River Plate has been producing for the past 20 years. AR: Gustavo, you've been working with River Plate for a long time now. Can

After baseball and football we are going to look at what happens into professional basketball with one of the most successful teams in recent years in Europe. I have the pleasure to introduce Kostas Chatzichristos, currently Director of Performance at CSKA Moscow, for the third episode of the hamstring management series. AR: Kostas, you've been working with the CSKA Moscow for 4 years now. Can you explain how your role has evolved over time and how you actually manage all th

After the first successful article/interview of the hamstring management series with Ken Crenshaw of Arizona Diamondbacks, it's time to introduce the second episode with the great Darcy Norman, currently Director of Performance at AS Roma. I'm very honoured to have Darcy as a guest of this series as his concepts are always a great stimulus for discussion. © AS Roma AR: Darcy, you've been working in professional football for a long time now. Can you explain how your role has

It is a great honour for me to host this interview with Prof. Jai Prakash Verma on our Omniathlete blog. We met about three months ago in Sofia (Bulgaria) where we were both invited as a keynote speakers at the National Sports Academy during the International Scientific Congress of Applied Sports Sciences dedicated to the 75th Anniversary of the National Sports Academy "Vassil Levski". Prof. Verma from India is a leading expert in sport statistics as well as research design a