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CITEworld: How wearables helped dramatically reduce injuries for the Seattle Sounders

CITEworld recently featured the Seattle Sounders’ use of wearable tech, including Fatigue Science and the Readiband.

The Sounders have been using wearables to optimize training, minimize injury risks, and reduce recovery times. Their efforts seem to be working, as the number of days players were out for muscle-related injuries has been cut down by over half, from 498 days in 2012 to 214 days this season, states the article.

Dave Tenney, the Sounders’ sport science and performance manager, has vouched for sleep as a performance indicator, saying that the team’s “best players sleep nine to 10 hours a night.”

“Tenney creates graphs where he plots players’ sleep time along with their reaction time. In one graph that compared two players, there was a very clear correlation between reaction time and sleep, with reaction time dipping for the player who was working on less sleep. In fact, reaction time was slow for two days after one of the players was out one night particularly late.”

The Seattle Sounders lead Major League Soccer with 60 points, 64.5% point percentage, and have already clinched a playoff berth. With another successful season drawing to a close, it seems getting a proper night’s rest could be one of the soccer club’s secrets to success.

Fatigue Science + Seattle Sounders FC Sports Science Weekend

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Hosted by David Tenney this June, the Seattle Sounders FC will bring in some of the brightest minds in sports science and performance training for the 2014 Sports Science Weekend. Invited speakers will join Sounders FC coaching staff in sharing the latest methodologies in soccer training, strength & conditioning, performance analysis, and recovery methods.

Joining the line up of sports scientists, technicals coaches and performance managers is Fatigue Science’s sleep and performance expert, Pat Byrne.

“It’s great to have the opportunity to speak about sleep, fatigue and performance in a room full of athletic coaches.” Pat says,  “Sleep is a huge part of the human performance model, and as pro teams engage with new scientific approaches to optimize their athletes’ performance – sleep science should, and will, be a component of that. I’m looking forward to sharing our insight and experience on the subject with this group.”

Sports Science Weekend will be held June 12-14, 2014. For more information, including the full line up of presenters, visit SoundersFC.com.

[Photo from SoundersFC.com]

Seattle Sounders FC: Sounders add Fatigue Science to their “arsenal of technologies”

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The Seattle Sounders FC have returned to Virginia Mason Athletic Center for their annual pre-season ‘beep test’. The beep test is how Manager of Performance and Sports Science David Tenney obtains a measurement of the player’s fitness levels heading into the pre-season.

Included in the SoundersFC.com report on the players annual pre-season fitness test is their work with Fatigue Science for the 2014 season.

SoundersFC.com reports:

“Tenney works tirelessly to remain on the cutting edge of the field of sports science. This year, that has meant the addition of Fatigue Science to his arsenal of technologies [so] players can monitor their sleep patterns…”

…”It’s about creating awareness in the athletes that how well you slept three or four days ago is going to have an impact on how you perform today.” Tenney tells SoundersFC.com.

Read more about David Tenney’s work with the Sounders at SoundersFC.com

Seattle Sounders bringing sleep analytics to the MLS with Fatigue Science

At their recent annual general meeting, the Seattle Sounders (MLS) team management announced that their focus in preparing for the upcoming season would include sport science.  In that effort, the Seattle Sounders have become the first team in the MLS to acquire Fatigue Science’s analytic technology for their players.

Joining a growing list of professional sport teams seeking to quantify the effects of sleep on their athletes’ performance, the Sounders are looking to enter the 2014 MLS season with a competitive edge by using Fatigue Science’s sleep data and analytics to coach their players to optimized game time performance.

As a West-coast team facing 34 games over the course of the season, 17 of them on the road, the opportunity to manage player fatigue levels using scientifically-validated technology is one that the team’s Head Fitness Coach, David Tenney, was quick to embrace:

“We are extremely happy  to announce the addition of Fatigue Science to our athlete monitoring system in the 2014 season.” says Sounders Head Fitness Coach, David Tenney. “The Sounders believe the technology will bring us the added insight into the recovery abilities of our athletes during the gruelling MLS season. We look forward to using Fatigue Science — the Readibands and FAST )Fatigue Avoidance Scheduling Tool) software to help optimize travel plans and training times. Sleep is the most critical piece of the recovery process post-game, and I haven’t seen a product out there that quantifies sleep patterns and quality better than Fatigue Science.”

The Sounders will be wearing Fatigue Science Readibands, a wrist-worn device that tracks micro-movements of the wrist to measure the quantity, quality and timing of sleep and predict performance levels using patented fatigue-modelling algorithms. Players and team training staff will review individual and aggregate sleep profiles of the team then, leveraging the power of Fatigue Science’s performance modelling algorithms and FAST (Fatigue Avoidance Scheduling Tool) software, use the data to plan for optimized game-time readiness.

“We’ve been working with other teams in the NHL, NFL, NBA, and around the world, to help manage player fatigue and optimize performance so it’s great to have our first MLS team on board with the technology”, Fatigue Science’s co-founder and fatigue expert Pat Byrne says, “David Tenney is leading the way with the Seattle Sounders in the MLS to embrace a more analytical approach to managing the team training and game preparation. We couldn’t be happier to be working with them.”

The Seattle Sounders’ 2014 season kicks off on Saturday, March 8th against 2013 MLS cup champions Sporting Kansas City.