Anterior Cruciate Ligament or ACL injury sends 150,000 athletes to the sidelines each year, according to the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine.
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“I’d gone through all the physical therapy sessions my insurance would pay for but I couldn’t shuffle or run the way I had before the injury,” said volleyball player Danielle Reyes who suffered ACL injury when she jumped up to set a volleyball during a game but landed at an odd angle, tearing the primary ligament in her knee.
So, she turned to ViPerform, a biomechanical analysis technology by the Australian-based movement sensor technology company dorsaVi that is used by professional sports teams – like the five-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots.
ViPerform measures an athlete’s movements so trainers and coaches can assess injury risk and tailor treatment programs, reports The Denver Post.
Loren Landow, the director of Steadman Hawkins Sports Performance in Englewood and the training guru to many Broncos and other NFL players, has been testing ViPerform to boost his clients’ performance, monitor their recovery and reduce their risk of injury. Landow’s clinic was the first in the United States to adopt ViPerform.
Sensors in the ViPerform sends data wirelessly to a computer in real-time and gets synced with high-definition video to demonstrate how the measurements correlate with the movements.
In short, it can instantly show what the naked eye can’t. It shows the stability of the players’ knees that recently underwent surgery, reveal how much force a player puts on one leg compared to the other and how much is a player at risk of getting injured. But, the question is “then what?”
“A lot of people start putting them on guys and they’re like, ‘Oh, cool, we got these numbers,’” Landow said. “But until you actually plug those numbers in and do something with it, it’s just a bell and whistle.”
ViPerform is being used by two NFL teams – the New Orleans Saints and Cleveland Browns — as well as the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets and New York Knicks, and Major League Soccer’s Toronto FC.
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Landow put the data to work for the past 18 months. The six assessment modules allow him to see where an athlete is weakest, then build or alter a training program to address deficiencies.
The ViPerform system costs $8,100 per year.
