By Logan Hanson
FightingIllini.com

Observing an early morning spring practice out of the windows of the Illinois football complex, Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach John Ferranto periodically glances down at the laptop in front of him. Although Ferranto is typically used to helping the Illini student-athletes in the weight room, for these spring practices his newest responsibility could help the Illini football team improve into the future. On this laptop, Ferranto is monitoring a live feed of data from a new technology being implemented by the Illinois football team called Catapult.

Catapult is a wearable technology that can track the performance of athletes throughout a practice, workout, drill or any other physical activity. By wearing a harness, jokingly called "bros", under their pads to hold a small device, practice performances are able to be tracked by Ferranto and the rest of the strength and conditioning staff in real time. Catapult allows the staff to break down performances from the entire practice or portions of practice, such as drill and individual work, as well as look into the performances of specific position groups or even individuals.

Assistant strength and conditioning coach John Ferranto monitors player data during a spring practice.   

"We want to make sure that this is something that can help us monitor [our] goals for our guys," said Head Football Strength and Conditioning Coach Lou Hernandez, "It can help us determine if they need to do more, or help us realize if they need to do less. Basically, it's a really big tool for us to helping our guys stay on the field longer throughout the season."

One of the significant traits that Catapult measures is what is called a workload. Workload is the combination of factors such as speed, distance, acceleration and others that tells how much work an individual has put for that portion of time, according to Hernandez. This is also extremely significant for the athletic training staff, who are most concerned with keeping the players healthy.

"One of the biggest things that we can do is start to monitor guys in terms of an overload factor," said Head Football Athletic Trainer Jeremy Busch, "If we're seeing guys where they're getting fatigued and their metrics start to change, they are at a higher risk for injuries."

Injury risk is what the team hopes to monitor the most with the help of Catapult. Through the new technology, coaches and the training staff will be able to tell when to adjust practices or workouts so that players may achieve their greatest potential without overworking themselves.

"Eventually, once we can get a baseline of data we can compare against, we can look at that and say, 'this guy may be at a range where he is at a greater risk for injuries, so let's reduce his workload and work capacity for practice,'" Busch said.

The spring ball practices are currently being used as a sort of "trial" for the team's Catapult technology system, Hernandez said. The team has implemented 44 units into the practices and are working on building a dataset to get a full understanding of a player in terms of their goals and abilities. It is the hope that with this technology, the team will see greater improvement on the field into the future, while also limiting injuries and maximizing player performance.

The players wear a tracker inside a harness under their pads during practice to track workload factors like speed, distance, acceleration, and more. 

"I think this can be a game-changer in many respects where we can increase our student-athlete's performance on a daily basis on the strength and conditioning side, from the sports medicine side, as well as from the football practice and preparation side," Busch said. "If we can reduce their injury and fatigue rates and increase their overall athletic performance, then yes, I think it can be a factor that hopefully can translate to changes in the program in a positive way."

At the end of the day, the biggest advantage to the Catapult system is getting the best out of the players. Although the technology can monitor a lot of different measures and statistics to the most minuscule of details on any student-athlete throughout the duration of their work, the important thing is using these metrics to help the players to reach their full potential.

"For me, it's all about making the players the best they can be on the field," Ferranto said. "If this is something that we can implement and use, I'm all for it."