Alabama Football on Cutting Edge of Technology
To be National Champions on the field, you need a National Champion staff behind the scenes
When it comes to high performance, unfortunately, there’s a high risk of injuries.
That’s where the Alabama athletic training staff comes in with cutting edge technology to get the players back on the field as soon as possible.
“Technology, especially here at The University of Alabama, allows us to do our job absolutely the best that we possibly could. We are fortunate to have some of the best technology, whatever it is, you name it, that you could possibly have at an athletic facility,” said Director of Football Rehabilitation Jeremy Gsell.
Gsell has been with the Alabama football program for 14 years. And he’s seen a lot of advancement when it comes to how they use technology.
“In a short amount of time, technology has changed tremendously and it continues to evolve. And that’s what going to happen in any medical field,” said Gsell.
Each of the players wears one a device on his chest. It collects all of his data and stores it.
The device has a GPS and can tell how fast the player is running. It can also tell when a player is back to his full potential.
“With this data, you can say with certainty, this guy is 80 percent, this guy is at 90 percent when you are looking at this particular parameter,” said Athletic Performance Analyst Clay Keith.
“Then also from a fatigue standpoint, we are also monitoring their performance metrics. So looking at how well they are cutting, how fast are they moving, and we have a normal range that they are supposed to be at that we can have a feel for. And if they start to dip below that, we are also going to throw a yellow flag up and say, ‘hey this guy might be in a fatigued state,'” said Keith.
When it comes to rehabilitation, a blood flow restriction device is something the athletic trainers have been using for the past few years.
It’s basically a medical grade tourniquet adapted for rehab.
“What that does, the tourniquet limits the amount of blood flow coming into the leg and completely cuts the blood flow out of the leg. And by doing that, we trick the brain into thinking that it has to do things that it has to do when its working out with a lot of weight,” said Gsell.
Just this past year, The University of Alabama came up with the portable sideline tent.
It was invented by Alabama Director of Sports Medicine Jeff Allen, along with the engineering department.
“A lot of times when we are taking someone in the tent it’s probably the worst day of their life. It could potentially be a catastrophic injury, or at best, an injury that’s going to limit their entire season. And they don’t want a bunch of people watching what’s going on on camera or a bunch of people watching from the stands,” said Gsell.
One more rehab tool implemented this past year– and perhaps the most fun for the players– virtual reality.
“The way that we do it is try to get these guys out of the environment that they are in, they are in this facility with the walls and the ceiling, nothing ever changes. So there is a lot of growing research in rehab if you can get them to think about other things and get them out of the environment or get them to focus at being at other places, that they benefit from it and the rehab goes that much faster,” said Gsell.
The players are able to pick any place in the world using Google Earth, whether it’s their own street where they live, the Grand Canyon, or the Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
“Just takes their brain to a different place. It turns it off from thinking about ‘my knee, my knee, my knee or my ankle’ and focusing on where they’re at and what they are doing. Something to have a little fun with,” said Gsell.
It’s all a part of the process that keeps the Alabama football program running strong.
