What are the most important metrics to improve physical performance and prevent injury?
I asked this question to two people working ardently on the answer. Austin Ardrey is CEO at Runnin Ref and the most dedicated referee fitness person I’ve met in my life. Tom Homa is a Sports Scientist at STATSports, a company that produces fitness trackers for athletes and officials. It’s a fast growing area of study, historically dominated by academic articles in peer reviewed journals. Austin and Tom have taken a different approach, balancing science with easy application.
It’s not just about nerding-out over cool data points (although I admit this is tremendously fun). They’re looking for better ways to train referees and prevent injury. In discussing which data points could prove most impactful for a basketball official, here’s the list they came up with:
KEY MOVEMENT METRICS
It’s important to note there are MANY more measures to track and analyze. But this serves as a window into an area of knowledge that until now has seemed too opaque, too cumbersome to track, or too expensive.
Austin and Tom are out to change all that, and we’re here to help. It’s one thing to know these metrics, but using them to inform your training and recovery approach is what really matters. That’s the goal at RefMasters.
Below is a brief conversation with Austin and Tom in advance of today’s session “Assessing Your Movement”. We’ll do a follow up next month after RefMasters Camp. I hope you’ll join us for both.
Until then, go forth and RUN THE GAME.
-Sony Tiwari, Co-Founder and CEO-
Interview with Austin Ardrey (Runnin Ref) and Tom Homa (STATSports)
SONY: It’s been a few months since you started this project to use data in referee fitness training and recovery. Tell me about the origin of your partnership?
AUSTIN: We met a couple months ago with the Tennessee soccer referee program, which to my knowledge are the first non-professional referees to use GPS units and an athlete monitoring system. Tom and I have had many conversations about how to interpret the metrics to help soccer officials be better on the pitch. Now that we've started to explore more sports like basketball, we’re dialing in on different metrics. We want to see if the data backs up what we're seeing and how we can improve the way that basketball officials are preparing for their season.
SONY: I'm really excited about this because at RefMasters, just like at Runnin Ref, we're trying to bring technology and data that has previously been reserved for the highest professional levels. Tom, my understanding is that STATSports has been working a lot with athletes, but the partnerships with referees is a little newer?
TOM: As far as we're aware, the Tennessee soccer referees are the first non-professional group of referees to use these trackers. People always talk about player load management. But you rarely hear anything about the referees and if they trained properly. Are they fit enough? Are they recovered? There's a lot of room for growth here and learning how we can impact different sports positively.
SONY: Now that you've been working with sports officials for a few months, what are some of the early insights you're having? What are some of the data points you're finding to be really helpful for referees?
TOM: We've got a lot of different metrics with the STATSports GPS trackers, which can be overwhelming to see all at once. Among the most relevant ones for referees are high intensity distance, accelerations and decelerations. That incorporates high speed running as well. We also have sprints and sprint distance.
SONY: So Austin, what are you seeing with these metrics Tom mentioned and how are you able to use them with referees?
AUSTIN: A lot of officials just think that they run but there’s a lot more to it. Tom mentioned high intensity distance, accelerations and decelerations. They all correlate together, and the coolest thing that we're seeing is how often sports officials are stopping and starting. If I'm not prepared for 50 decelerations within a game, not only am I going to be more fatigued, but also I'm setting myself up for risk of injury. So this data is telling us how to better prepare for high-performance and how we can prevent injury.
SONY: I haven't seen anything like the session we’re doing together. We've got James Williams and Kane Fitzgerald, two NBA Finals referees, assessing the mechanics from a referee's perspective. We've got you, Austin, looking at the fitness angle. And Tom has the sports scientist perspective of the data. Who is this session for?
AUSTIN: This session is for officials open to anything that can get them to a higher level and really challenge their thoughts from a movement perspective. But you’ve got to be open-minded enough to the idea that data could help you in a new way.
SONY: We're excited to start using these GPS trackers and accompanying app from STATSport with officials at our upcoming RefMasters Camp. Tom, what are you really hoping for people to get out of this session?
TOM: That people understand how much more they can push themselves to be better at their current level, and then try to catapult themselves into a higher level. GPS data is kind of like managing your own finances and budget. If you really want to grow your wealth, you’re tracking things and understanding where the money is coming and going on a weekly and monthly basis. It's the same thing here with your fitness data. If you really want to push yourself to be the best, you've got to understand the data and where there’s room for improvement. When you see it reflected in your metrics, that's what's gonna help push you forward.
Court Views Pod
Check out the podcast where elite hoops training and Rule IQ meet! In this episode:
The crew revisits The NBA Finals and the Lakers coaching hire.
Milton and James disagree about PJ Washington's push in the back, but agree Payton Pritchard did not travel on his half-court buzzer beater.
Milton breaks down a play never seen before.
James gives to flowers to a young player's footwork.
A very special guest calls and corrects Sony on a call.
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