Oct 11, 2017Tracking Throws
Purdue’s football team has started using arm sleeves, more often worn by baseball pitchers, in order to keep track of the number of throws made by their quarterbacks. According to Gold & Black, Domenic Reno, senior associate director of strength and conditioning at Purdue, first tried motusQB’s technology this summer on David Blough, before expanding it to the other quarterbacks.
He said the data would be useful for helping players train and finding the causes for players’ injuries.
“The biggest thing for me right now is with the quarterbacks, it allows me to, once I track it that practice, I’m able to sync it, collect the data, and when we go train that next day, I’m able to adjust their workouts based on how much volume they did,” Reno said. “So let’s just say one of the guys throws 120 balls and another of your guys throws 70. I know the guy who throws 120 balls has a little bit more stress on his shoulder and his elbow, then I’m going to back down from that lift if we’re doing upper body. The other guy, I can either keep what we’re doing or I can progress a little. So it’s injury prevention.”
Reno said that while the players were initially hesitant, they soon became fascinated with the data, and also saw it as useful.
“Elijah (Sindelar) is a big baseball guy, so he understands it completely,” Reno said. “ David is so dialed into his body and what he does that he’s very in tune with this whole data system, the data we’re collecting. The guys are interested to see (the data).”
Reno said he’s willing to consider any ideas that could help his players.
“We’ve got nine quarterbacks,” Reno said. “If there are nine different things to help each one, then I’ll do nine different things. Each quarterback has his own game. As a strength coach, you have to be able to find out what kind of game they play and try to enhance that.”
