New Things continued...

I just wanted to build on yesterday's post about the new things going on, since there is a whole lot in the air this fall!

One of the things that makes me so excited about my work with FITSis that we combine our anecdotal experiences with people and athletes with the most up-to-date research in strength and conditioning, rehabilitation, nutrition, and motor learning. This pursuit of the most advanced and effective methods of performance enhancement led us to a relationship with OptoSource. They currently provide some really exciting equipment/technology for anyone that does work in sport performance, rehab, or injury prevention. We had the honour of trialling the OptoJump this weekend at FITS and I must say it was a great success. We first went through all of the testing ourselves, in order to get a feel for the software and the ability to build in any test you wanted into the equipment. Then on Sunday we were able to take a lot of the athletes from Alpine Ontario through a gauntlet of tests/assessments to gather a lot of valuable information. Here are a couple takeaways from this experience...

Synchronization

One of the most powerful functions of the OptoJump is it's ability to give you so many tools at one time. While conducting any given assessment, you get real-time video from two cameras (frontal and sagittal) that are synched with the data. This allow you to go back through the results and at any given point to see the metrics of their movement and have two different visual angles to compare with the numbers. You can also calculate joint angles as well.

Flexibility

The hardware and software are only as useful as the test itself, since you want to make sure you are learning more about something that's actually important. With this in mind, it is really awesome that you can design any assessment you want to use within the OptoJump and allow the equipment to quantify results on the fly. Pick your sport, if you are testing athletes, and you you feel there are certain characteristics or movements that indicative of performance level or injury risk, then the chances are you can quantify it on the OptoJump.

Here are a couple videos I took of the OptoJump in action at FITS...

Lastly, we here at REP are starting to expand our reach with the content that we provide. We will now post articles on EVERYDAY JORDAN, a phenomenal blog written by a good friend about the opposite sex (no matter which sex you are!) and relationships...and pretty much how we live these days...I suggest you check it out...