Partnership is paying off for Olympic athletes

SALT LAKE CITY — When it comes to the collaboration between United States Ski & Snowboard and Intermountain Healthcare, the mission is pretty simple. New sports science techniques are being used “to give athletes every possible competitive advantage” in the upcoming Winter Olympics.

Intermountain TOSH (The Orthopedic Specialty Hospital in Murray) has designed and developed best practices when it comes to recovering from injuries and/or improving performances.

Josh Bullock, the athletic development coordinator for U.S. Ski & Snowboard, said no one else around the world is doing anything close to it,

“By combining movement data with targeted training prescriptions and explicit coaching, we’re helping athletes avoid injuries, return from injury quicker with a greater success rate and improve performance,” Bullock said.

Throughout the three-year partnership, Intermountain TOSH’s state-of-the-art lab tests the movement of athletes and identifies where weakness issues or points exist. The data is used to design a plan to enhance high-level performance.

Implementing new ways for top-tier athletes to train is just part of the process. Regular patients also benefit from the partnership.

“Our return to sport model consists of state-of-the-art biomechanical and strength assessments and provides regular feedback about an athlete to our physicians, therapists and trainers,” said Bill McDermott, a clinical biomechanist at Intermountain TOSH. “During this partnership we’ve expanded our testing and training of athletes to ensure they’re not only ready to return to sport safely, but they’re also at their peak level of competing.”

In the lab, a high-speed 3D motion capture is used. Sensors are attached to an athlete and force sensors on the floor also analyze movement. Highly sensitive cameras also look for deficiencies.

Hannah Soar, a mogul skier headed to the Olympics, has recovered from an ankle injury four years ago. She credits the integrated process of coaching and world-class evaluation for helping her improve.

“After my first evaluation, the sport science team at TOSH discovered I was favoring one side and didn’t know it. This is the first year I haven’t felt any residual effects from that injury,” Soar said. “Seeing the huge amount of data combined with new training ensures my body is working efficiently, because in this sport, winners are decided by milliseconds.”

Athletic development coaches used the information to design specific workouts for Soar, who discovered that one leg was weaker than the other and that certain muscles weren’t firing right

“In the past, many of our workouts were more team-oriented,” Soar said. “But our coaches have designed these personalized plans which have been invaluable to our preparation.”