Sports imPULSE

Moji - Now This Is Smart Icing!

Athletes know that icing is one of the easiest and most effective ways to reduce inflammation and pain.  The Moji Knee enhances this process by attaching a proprietary, reusable cooling pack to a contoured compression wrap enabling the delivery of 20 minutes of targeted icing AND allows you to maintain mobility.  It is best described as a smart bomb for knee icing. It’s purpose driven, technologically advanced, extremely targeted, and brutally effective.

"The Moji Knee design is the outcome of an unprecedented two year-long collaboration with top Sports Medicine Doctors, World-Class Athletes, Physical Therapists, Trainers and Engineers.” It shows…

The compression wrap, made of four way stretch Polartec Power Dry 9110, wicks away any moisture to keep your knee dry, and the wrap maintains great pressure without cutting off circulation. The cooling cell is covered in Dri-Lex fabric apparently super-absorbent to again minimize wetness. There is a proprietary gel is designed to stay cool for a minimum of 20 minutes and be pliable right out of the freezer.

This could be summarized in one word:  (N)ice

iHydrate - A Unique Way to Avoid Dehydration

What is one of the biggest challenges at athlete faces?  Proper hydration would certainly be up on that list.  Personally, as a former soccer player and currently a long distance runner, I know first hand what happens when at athlete is dehydrated.  Now with school beginning, and a good part of the country still facing rather warm temperatures, how can young athletes and/or their parents stay in front of the hydration challenge?  Meet iHydrate.

iHydrate is a new iPhone application that:

• provides the heat index--the apparent temperature on the basis of the current temperature and relative humidity at the user's current location;

• displays the level of heat-illness risk under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) heat index;

• allows parents, coaches and athletic trainers to schedule hydration reminders for before, during and after sports; and

• helps facilitate the replacement of fluids lost during sports based on urine color and/or amount of weight lost.

Additionally, the application includes a helpful reference section, including basic information on dehydration and heat-illness prevention, signs, symptoms and treatment, and the Pre-Season Heat-Acclimatization Guidelines recently issued by the American College of Sports Medicine and seven other medical groups.

Now if it can help me run my next marathon in under 3:45, I'll be really happy...

Helmet Chip Could Prevent Heatstroke

According to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina, about four high school football players die each year from heat-related illnesses. Since 1955, there have been 117 heatstroke fatalities in football. Last year, six football-related heatstroke deaths were reported, four at the high school level — the most reported since 1972.

In June, the National Athletic Trainers Association recommended that high school football two-a-days be banned during the first five days of practice. The NATA reasoned that the athletes needed to get acclimated to the heat.

This is where HotHead Sports' heat-sensing football helmet makes a very big difference.

The system, called Heat Observation Technology (HOT), is based on a small electric thermometer called a thermistor. It's a spoon-size device made of various metals whose electrical resistance varies with temperature shifts. The thermistor is inserted under the forehead pad of a standard helmet.

The device measures the temperature of a player's temporal artery, then uses a built-in radio to transmit temperatures between 99.9 and 110 every 10 seconds to a PDA monitored by a coach or trainer. If a player's temperature rises above normal, an audible warning alert goes off.

This summer HotHead Sports began introducing their product to high schools and colleges across the country. They plan to begin mass marketing the product next spring.

I think this makes a lot of sense.  Any technology that can prevent unnecessary injury, or worse, is always valuable.

Sports Technology Has Come To Athletic Tape

Go longer and harder with ROCKTAPE.  That's the slogan for this performance enhancing product and it actually makes sense.  ROCKTAPE power taping technology is an interesting product beginning to get traction in the fitness and recovery market.  Used heavily in cycling and recently featured in the US Jr. National Cycling Championships, ROCKTAPE is similar to other kinesiology tapes that appeared in the Summer Olympics, but its unique patent-pending “Power Plow” pattern, tighter weave and stickier adhesive claims to make it more appropriate for high impact and endurance sports.

How Does It Work?
Unlike traditional athletic tape which binds and doesn’t stretch, ROCKTAPE is engineered to mimic the human skin. This stretchiness is the secret.  ROCKTAPE stretches up to 190% of its original length but can easily ’snap-back’ or recover. This is what gives it the performance advantage over other tapes.

Whether used for muscle repair, stability management, recovery or enhanced performance, this could be a valuable component in any athlete’s toolkit.

I haven't used it yet, but would love to hear from anyone who has.

Wii Fit: Rehab For Wounded Vets

 Wii Fit  is taking another great step helping wounded warriors, a new physical therapy treatment program at The Naval Health Clinic in Charleston, SC, includes activities on the Nintendo Wii Fit. Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Wise, physical therapy department head, said the interactive games will help wounded warriors address mobility and balance problems.  For example, the balance board on a Wii Fit shows exactly where a participant’s center of gravity lies, thus the benefit to soldiers who are severely injured or have lost a limb.

It's not surprising and I look forward to other success stories.

Slowing Down To Speed Up - Individualized Training Programs Yield New Ways To Improve

In 1985, the 7-Eleven professional cycling team was a brand-new, untested team. And they were struggling. Their training focused mainly on volume, riding long and hard without a specific plan or goal. Then came Massimo Testa, M.D., a sports medicine physician who specialized in structured, individualized training programs. It was a pivotal moment in American pro cycling, and a pivotal moment in the young doctor's career.

Testa and Eric Heiden, winner of 5 Olympic Gold Medals in Speed Skating, teamed up to create a cutting-edge, individualized program for the members of Team 7-Eleven. Their efforts were met with incredible results. Team 7-Eleven took the European cycling world by storm, winning stages in the Giro d' Italia and the Tour de France. Lance Armstrong soon joined the team, and the rest is history.

This year, Eric Heiden and Massimo Testa, along with author Deane Musolf, the former editor-in-chief of Rock & Ice magazine, have released a book, Faster, Better, Stronger, that gives individualized training suggestions for athletes of all levels, from beginners to professionals. The book encapsulates the authors' years of medical research as well as their personal experiences at world championships, bike tours, and the Olympic Games.

Faster, Better, Stronger intends to teach readers how to create a specialized 12-week training program that incorporates cardiovascular exercise, strength training, and flexibility and agility exercises. The program begins with tests that readers can take to assess their own fitness levels.

The results of these tests help individuals find a starting point from which they can begin (or improve) their training.

HOT System Provides Early Warning Against Heat Stroke For Football Players

According to USA Football, more than 21 million Americans - from pee wee to the NFL - will play football this year. Overheating, especially among programs in the South, is an area of long-time concern for coaches, parents, and athletic trainers. Heat-related injuries have caused the deaths of 25 athletes since 2000. As you can imagine, getting an accurate temperature of an athlete on the playing field does present challenges.

Schutt Sports and HotHead Technologies have developed the first-ever helmet fitted with a temperature sensing device that can identify athletes who are overheating before they require bags of fluid - and before the heat does irreparable damage to their bodies. A dime-sized sensor in the forehead pad of the helmet relays accurate body temperature readings of every player on the field to a PDA on the sidelines that is monitored by an athletic trainer.

The H.O.T. System™ can now act as an early warning detection system for heat stroke and other heat-related injuries, giving athletic trainers, coaches and doctors a distinct advantage in their battle with heat.

New Apparel Technology Protects Athletes From Injury

Is college basketball more physical than the pro game?  It certainly depends on who is playing and an argument can be made for both sides.  But one thing is certain both college and pro players wear HEXPAD® to protect themselves. 

 HEXPAD is at the center of an emerging new product category called protective apparel. HEXPAD® allows today’s players to drive the lane faster, bang in the paint harder and bounce right back to their feet after a hard foul.

McDavid Sports Medicine, based outside of Chicago, developed HEXPAD® almost five years ago and today most players playing at an elite level say it’s almost as important a piece of equipment as their basketball shoes.

HEXPAD® is a series of hexagonal shaped protective pads which are permanently bonded into the fabric of compression shirts and shorts. The tops, bottoms, elbow, shin and shooters sleeves are lightweight, breathable and conform to and move with the body for the ultimate in performance and range of motion.

Although HEXPAD® got it's start with basketball, athletes in other sports are beginning to see the benefits as well.

Technology That Helps Heal Injuries Faster

I've been reading about this new treatment of injury called ARPWave.  It's a recovery program that is claiming it can "fix" athletes in a third of the time it takes using typical physical therapy.  Part of fixing these athletes makes use of a machine that sends electrical currents into the muscles.

ARPwave stands for Accelerated Recovery Performance. The program claims to get to the root of an injury, help cure that injury 30 percent faster than any physical therapy, and get people back into the shape they once were.

About the size of a VCR, the ARP machine has various cords and switches protruding from it. The cords, which have round patches at the ends, are placed strategically on certain “hot spots.”  They will send electric shockwaves that cause at athlete's muscles to pulsate. It simulates a workout the athlete might get in a normal workout, just without putting the strain on the body inself.

The goal of the ARPwave program is to allow athletes to recover from injury, and at the same time, get back to their old “in-shape” self. The program does that by putting the muscle under the same stress athletes face doing a normal workout. But because they can’t work out due to their injury,the ARP machine does it for them, putting the muscles in high-risk situations, so the body can respond to the stress. Another goal is to make sure an athlete doesn’t lose muscle while recovering from an injury.  Once injured, it’s a constant uphill battle for top athletes to get back to the top of their game.

The folks at ARPwave might just provide the answer to these concerns. And it’s not just the concerns of top athletes. Alhough the NFL, NHL and MLB have incorporated ARPwave, the program is designed to heal anyone with an injury.

But will it help my golf slice.....

Technology Changing The Treatment Of High School Athletic Injuries

The Andrews Institute in Pensacola, FL is at the forefront of an up-and-coming medical advancement that could change the way our local high school athletes deal with injuries.

It's called Sports Musculoskeletal Ultrasound. The hefty chunk of syllables equals a promising bottom line — the technology will save high school athletes and their families time and money.

Here's how it works. An injured athlete would come to the sideline/dugout and the team's athletic trainer would take this small transducer (about the size of a computer mouse) and place it on the injured area.

The trainer would perform an ultrasound test on the injured area, then immediately upload that image onto a laptop computer and send it to a physician. From anywhere in the world, that physician could make an immediate diagnosis. The ultrasound has the ability show injuries to tendons, ligaments, muscles and most fractures.

The goal is being able to provide an immediate answer.  This saves the injured athlete time and money by providing a prescription, a recommendation or treatment right away.

As we all know injuries can be speed bumps in the career of an athlete.  Any time saved to accelerate rehab is vital.