By Antonio Robustelli, MSc, SCS
The last 15 years have represented an exciting period of innovation in the field of sports medicine and sport science. We have witnessed the increased accessibility of advanced technologies that were previously available only in high-grade research-lab environments and top-level clinics and centers.
Practitioners in sports medicine and sport science have been able to gain a deeper understanding of an athlete’s health and performance by assessing valuable metrics in real time directly on the field of play: wearables, cloud accessibility, and athlete management systems have completely revolutionized the way practitioners provide athletes with proper care and performance support.
However, from my perspective, the most important and relevant innovation has been related to a mind shift toward the athlete’s care and the awareness of the necessity for a multifactorial team that is able to properly manage the complex nature of sports performance.
While wearables and technologies to monitor recovery, sleep, fatigue, and stress levels do represent innovations in and of themselves, to my mind they are the natural result of a more holistic approach to an athlete’s performance and health.
Research has highlighted the importance of the interconnection among different elements (ie, physiology, chemistry, biomechanics, environment, behavior, social life, nutrition, etc.) toward the expression of an individual performance blueprint, and practitioners have become progressively accustomed to the complexity of human beings and the need of a comprehensive approach to sports and health phenomena.
Thus, it’s the positive mind shift toward a synthesis approach versus a traditional analytical approach that has represented the most impactful innovation in the last 15 years.
Antonio Robustelli is a professional sports performance consultant and elite coach from Italy. He is also a member of the LER Editorial Advisory Board and can be reached at An****************@**********te.com.
