It’s technology that has the Maryland Terrapins on the cutting edge of sports performance. It’s a relatively new markerless movement assessment platform from sports tech company PhysiMax.
“An athlete can just step in front of the camera and they will get an assessment right away of how their body moves and then that provides us to provide corrective exercise programs, programming before the season, out of the season for injury prevention and also for return to play after surgeries,” said Terps Associate Athletic Director for Sports Performance David Klossner.
“Typically what would happen is you would be in a laboratory and you’d have markers all over your joints and your body. What this system does is it uses a gaming camera to assess the 3-D environment around an athlete,” added Dr. Klossner. “With that information, it’s tied to a high-performance computer that then looks at the performance of an athlete as they are moving and looks automatically at their joints.”
After a successful test run with a handful of Terps teams over the past two years, the university is ready to introduce the program throughout its entire athletic department. The school’s women’s volleyball team has been using it for a couple years with stunning results.
“We’ve had zero non-contact knee injuries on our team, zero non-contact ankle injuries on our team,” said Terps Volleyball Head Strength and Conditioning Coach Christian Hartford.
Hartford says women’s volleyball teams usually average about one or two of those per season.
“It’s really, really reassuring to know that I’m being trained the right way and that everything we do is for the benefit to us, and us individually, now that we have this new technology,” said Terps outside hitter Gia Milana.
“Athletes are getting more information about themselves to make individual decisions. Coaches get more information about their team and their readiness to participate, their ability to perform at their peak level,” said Dr. Klossner. “That’s just exciting for everybody.”
Towson University has also brought PhysiMax onboard. The Tigers started using it with their student athletes just last week.
The PhysiMax program could soon be helping kids in our local communities. The company is working with University of Maryland to introduce the technology for high school athletes to use as well.
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