Richard Graves (00:01.688)
Well Jamie Hepner, I am delighted to have you on this week's edition of the Science for Sport podcast. I know privately it's something we've been discussing for a year or more and finally we've made it happen so welcome along.

Jamie (00:13.494)
Yeah, thanks Richard. That's a pleasure.

Richard Graves (00:15.694)
Now, we sit as we record this on the verge of a brand new campaign in the National Football League. There's big things happening this season. I know you're about to pack your bags and head off to Melbourne as the NFL stages its first ever regular season game in Australia. A sold out Melbourne cricket ground is going to be transformed as the Ramers and 49ers go head to head on Thursday, Friday, the 10th and 11th of

September, depending on what time zone you're in. So before we get into all of that, let's start with your role. Your official title is Director of Applied Sports Science, Football Performance at Catapult. Break it down for our listeners. What is Applied Sports Science when we start talking about it? What does it actually mean? And in modern day football, how has your role changed as the sheer volume of data grows exponentially that's available to athletes and organisations?

Jamie (01:12.482)
That's a good question. Yeah, I so thanks for having me, first and foremost. Excited to be here. We have talked about it for a little while and and had a number of conversations just about football, which I've thoroughly enjoyed. So I've been at Catapult going on twelve years.

And my role as a sports scientist is, you know, effectively at its core, working with our our biggest football customers to to facilitate their utilization of the data in in into whatever that, you know, the I guess their their need is at the time. and it has evolved, as you said, over the twelve years and I'll touch on that. But and then, you know, the the the kind of exterior parts of my role are leveraging that back for catapult, you know, y and and and to make us, you know, the biggest

presence in in football from from a sports technology standpoint which we certainly are you know so it's it's it's it's been amazing to be a part of the journey I was I think I was like the 10th US employee at catapult or whatever like tiny little office back then and and so it's been amazing. I'd relocated from Australia for the job and yeah that the rest is history so but you know it it has changed and and

I would say you know, part of that is the evolution of the technology. okay, like, you know, the things are gotten better at measuring and we add pieces around the periphery. And that does I I think that is almost secondary to the appetite and understanding of of the people doing it, right? Like so like it doesn't matter it's kinda like F1 like a car or whatever. The car is always gonna be bottlenecked by the driver's ability. Like so you know, like I can't drive the same fast car as far

fast as a really good driver can. You know, and and that so that's kind of a little bit of how I think about the evolution of of what we do and or more importantly how our information is utilized. And so I think that's also been part of our success, right? As like across that evolution

Jamie (03:12.544)
You can't be saying like here's this stuff, use it. It's gotta be, what do you guys need? Like what what's the issue? What are we trying to solve for? you know, a and we've continued to do that. And I think that's been the core kind of or certainly as I've I've advocated for it internally at Catapult and certainly Catapult has listened a lot, you know, like we we've I've been a you know big part of talking to our exec team and all that sort of stuff around because this is what's happening in football right now, like a and and we've done an excellent job of being responsive to

To what w being on the front edge of what is needed. And that comes from our relationships and and and high presence in football.

Richard Graves (03:50.802)
And that's the crux of the matter. In fact, in any walk of life, isn't it? It's not just what you can put out there and offer somebody, it's whether it actually translates into a tangible improvement. So I suppose the million dollar question is with this advancement in sports science and the tech out there, are organizations getting better now at understanding their athletes or

are they occasionally getting lost in numbers and data?

Jamie (04:21.792)
Well, less and less l less and less are they getting lost. you know, certainly twelve years ago when I started it was elementary and it's understanding teams knew enough to know what they didn't know and go down that path. Now if you don't have a a solid kind of whether it's platform or you know, I like the anecdote of ask ask good questions, get good answers, ask bad questions, get bad answers. So like at least knowing what you want to understand and and start to, you know, explore through the information.

If you don't have some of that

you you you're behind. You know, whether it's from a recruiting standpoint in college, whether it's an injury avail player availability in the NFL, whether it's just from a a practice load standpoint. I mean, you know, Kurt Signetti coming out and talking about his, you know, kind of unique practice approach over the last two years. It's not just limited to the pros. It's it's college football as well. And and they have superstars, you know, and that they can win. Get get there for all of these games. and certainly say

Saban was a big, you advocate of that approach certainly later in his career, which I did a number of, you know, trips down there on that on that topic. So yeah, it's it's become a a competitive disadvantage to just be agnostic about it, right? Like you have to be somewhere on it.

Richard Graves (05:40.428)
Yeah, and as we've discussed on this podcast over the last 12 months, one of the technologies that is now being utilized both in the collegiate system and the NFL, it's had one of the greatest impacts, is Catapult's own Vector8 system. For those of our listeners and viewers across our YouTube channel that haven't listened or seen those episodes, first of all, just remind us exactly what Vector8 is and what the premise of that tech is. And with the evolution of

tracking technology. What is that now allowing performance teams generally to see and do that wasn't available previously?

Jamie (06:20.598)
Well look, i i it's if for those that don't know, f Vector8 is our flagship player tracking ecosystem. it flows into the next generation of cloud analysis, which at its core, you know, is far more robust and efficient. So you get all your all your information f at a far quicker straight to cloud data delivery turnaround time.

And then we have a bit better of everything, you know, upgraded hardware side of things, right? So like we have a much better signal to GPS tracking. We have a new body wave antenna that has a much greater ability to track the exact position of the athlete through local positioning system, that clear sky indoor tracking system. and then, you know, probably most notably

you know, I I c consider it the darling of of of the you know, the the main event, right, of Vector8 is our advanced analytical you know, additions. And and leading the charge on that is our ability to automate player participation, alpha football. You know, a specific ability to say, all right, through this integration with your video system, we can automatically say when the reps occurred and who was in those reps for practice.

So now you can watch film based on like show me all the cut-ups of this guy, which used to take like six hours for for someone to literally click every player, every twenty-two, for the hundred reps that we saw in practice, to click through Now it's, you know, five minutes. and then, you know, on the performance side it makes the trip both ways. you can set you can look at the performance information based around the context of the the

the strategic side of things. So show me the high speed yards for all of our inside run plays only, right? show me the, you know, the differentiation of load between the corners and the wide receivers on our pass plays over forty yards. You know, so like you having this you know, strategic context, you know,

Jamie (08:35.356)
I think is is something that l going back to our earlier points that that our best teams have been asking for for for a a while and and it's really, really critical.

Richard Graves (08:45.387)
Yeah, and to that end, it's something that we discussed with a member of the sports science team at the Houston Texans six or seven weeks ago as they were preparing to return for preseason. Matt Gebert joined us on the Science for Sport podcast. And he was talking about player tracking systems, what they allow you to see, acceleration, deceleration, high activity loads, workload, amongst many other things.

I guess the key question is how do you then turn that data into something that's meaningful for the athlete, the sports science team and the coaching staff that's working with

Jamie (09:23.52)
Yeah. Well, you know, d it how long you got? we we can start with a few on here. You know, so all right. Well it starts like I said before, like ask bad questions, bad get bad answers, ask good ones, get good ones. so so like if we were to be better, right? Like what w how would we be better? Right? Like what is our biggest, you know, roadblock or limitation to to

The next step of where we're at. Well, let's say that we know, and where's the low-hanging fruit? Like, where would we start if we knew those points? Okay, well, we know that having player availability is key, right? Let's say, like, the of the injuries that do occur, which ones are preventable, let's say soft tissue ones. Okay, within that premise, you know, of soft tissue injuries that do occur, if you were to prevent some or all of those,

you know, how would you? Meaning like what what is the likely cause of some of those? Well we know that, you know, the things that increase the risk are certainly high elements of fatigue, coupled with a high amount of intensity, right? So like I'm I'm very tired, I can't then control either my posture or or I don't have enough, you know, eccentric force through, you know, muscles, etc, etc, to then r resist the mechanics that that that yield the injury. Okay, now I know

So we're breaking that down. Like, well, how do I look at the data to tell me when that's gonna happen? And that's not all that hard, right? Like, so we make some dashboard, like, and and some live delivery of this information of when that's gonna happen. and then even like at the advanced end, like write some machine learning to say, like, this happens over and over and over, let's intervene when this happens. So it has to be complex like that, it cannot be simple like when.

I do too when I do lots I get injured, right? Because practicing is important, right? Like the the the goal is not to not be injured, the goal is to have limited injuries and win football games. And to win football games we've got to practice. So like there there's there's some like research out there to say, okay, well play loads highly correlated to injuries. Well that's fine, but the inverse is not true.

Jamie (11:40.812)
Right, like no player load will also yield lots of injuries because we don't practice and you'll play on Sunday and get injured because you're not prepared, right? So there has to be a level of complexity around like a multifaceted like consideration here of high fatigue, high load can yields high fatigue, right? And then couple that with a a high level of acute intensity will increase likelihood, but the intervention has to be moderate so as not to remove all those things.

'cause some of it is necessary, it's just too much. I is is risky. So then you you you build a platform which of which you can intervene at at the times that we see that. That that would be one way. one example.

Richard Graves (12:24.749)
You see, I'm drawn in immediately by the passion, the enthusiasm with which you talk here, Jamie. And it brings me to the question of where does the real value lie in all of this? You know, because what's been put out to market clearly has exponential value to organizations and individual athletes. does the real value lie with the tech itself? Or is it really with

what the performance team is able to do with the data it provides.

Jamie (12:57.129)
I look th it's they're a they're a codependent proposition, aren't they? You know, so a highly skilled practitioner needs the the more highly skilled these practitioners are, and these are the best in the world in the NFL, let me tell you, the better they are

the better the tools they need. It is what it is, you know? And and and the more, the better those tools are in the hands of these fantastic operators, the more they can get out. The more of the capacity of this information they can use because they understand it. And and and most importantly, they have the ability to intervene. They have the ability to to even even proactively intervene. Okay, we saw this you you using it in a reactive sense

that I just gave you is is is great it yields good results but using the information to prescribe is is the other side of the coin of saying like and and the best teams are doing this sitting down with your head coach

Richard Graves (13:58.767)
Just on that note then, how do you use the data provides to judge whether a player is ready to play on typically a Sunday or whether or not you need to just be a little bit careful?

Jamie (14:10.987)
I don't know what be s I I don't know that it's Sunday. We're playing on Sunday. Like if you can walk onto the field, you're playing, right? Yeah. So the so the the idea is like, okay, like if the idea is that you need to play every Sunday, which you do, and players want to, because they get played their contracts are structured in such a way that that the games, you know, matter. okay, what would it take for you to play every Sunday? Right? Well,

Richard Graves (14:15.245)
Playing every day of the week almost now in the National Football League.

Jamie (14:38.017)
you would you would you would do you would practice these amount of times. That's been the traditional approach. Well what would each of those practices look like? Okay, like so w th the hard ones, the days off, right? And using the their information for that absolutely. But to my point earlier about vector A, like even to the micro of like how many reps should you take on a Wednesday ahead of a Sunday game? And then a Thursday. And what what

What type of reps should they be? You know, if we did this many run focus reps in team period and this many pass focus and this many red zone and this many seven on seven, or a different combination of all of those, I mean I mean it is quite common now and and only in the last few years for that conversation to be be happening as a proactive application of the the wearable data.

Richard Graves (15:29.153)
Well, and in the same breath then, how do you use that data to shape training sessions? Generally, because you know what the argument is between having one size fits all group sessions. And as we hear time and time again, each athlete is an individual. Sports science teams, performance teams will tell us that they have to manage different players in different fashions.

Jamie (15:49.24)
Yeah. So you know, yeah, exactly, that's right. A a and so it's like, well what am I managing, right? Like what am I looking for? And so if you're being prescriptive with the information, you would say, Okay, like this is practice, right? And here's my script, okay. and it is made up of let's say A, B and C, like three things or three sections or whatever.

and within that there is an expectation or or an expected response right of the player and and and and to a specific like these players, these players, these players, and and we have that information to the individual level.

Okay, so so we want you to do this, like just like a gym program, like there's great intent into why you're lifting this amount of weight this many times. and so we're doing that in practice. Okay, and we expect you to get here, right? Like same as lifting weight. I know I can lift this many, this much weight for this many times. so we've prescribed what we want you to do, and we have an expected result. And we're looking at that response live, and if it doesn't match our expertise.

Expectation, we've got a big problem because there's not many reasons why you didn't meet the expectation. Most of them are result in injury risk, right? Like short of effort, like short of you being not in the mood, right? Or didn't sleep well because you got a baby at home at work, or something like that, right? Pretty much everything else is you're at risk of injury, right? Like we expect you to run.

500 yards over 12 miles an hour for this practice, right? and you're at 250 and we're nearly done like something's up.

Richard Graves (17:34.942)
That's a nice segue into my next point because obviously if you're not on the field you can't influence the game and that's important to all organisations across all sports. Given what you've just said Jamie, how aware do we need to be of not taking the generalized averages of a group training session? What does normal look like for a particular athlete and in terms of technology like Vector8, what can that do to help us when it comes to

injury prevention and not putting an athlete within harm's way.

Jamie (18:08.141)
Yeah, well, individualization is highly important. but but but general averages have their place. And and I wouldn't say the h certainly in the world of football, we're not looking at the whole group, we're looking at like players, right? So like you would you would usually say skill, mids, and bigs, as we we would break them down into three. You can break them down into smaller groups, but it's something like that. and the way I like to interpret that is

If all of the wide receivers do something that's not ideal, right? They have lots of high speed yards, right? Or or or their acceleration is lower than expected, or or the duh du that is often

or or or basically always a result of something that was in control of us as coaches, right? Like so if you've got an individual that does something that's not expected, you say, okay, what's up with him? is he tired? Does he have some s you know soft tissue tightness or soreness? Was it from the game?

When the group does it, we've got a bigger problem, but a problem that can be solved for because it's in our control. Like maybe we made that mistake and then we can change tomorrow's practice or whatever. so it's like both are you know high levels of consideration that we want to really care about, but they're looked at with a unique lens because of of the intervention that would be required.

Richard Graves (19:33.498)
And is that where this kind of technology comes in? Because I'm thinking of examples, and we've all heard them across various sporting spheres previously, where you can have technology saying this player is fit, available, ready to go, and they might turn around and say, look, I'm just not feeling it right now. I need more time or vice versa. So at this point, I guess what I'm asking is how much do we rely on technology and in a more advanced state?

I the more astute practitioner knows how to put that tech into context to give you the best possible outcome.

Jamie (20:09.687)
Well they work hand in hand, right? And so the the interpretation of the information. So like can you perform maximally d based on the demands of the game, yes or no? Okay, yes. I feel tired and sore, you know, as a result of that. Okay. If you've just and that's where the the prescriptive nature of this information comes in. If you've just completed a training block that we intended for you to go

through that was hard, right? The only way to get through like training camp, right? The only way to get through that and yield a positive result, i.e. conditioning or tolerance to load and fatigue, is to feel poor at the end of it, right? So if that was the intent of the prescripted exercise or like the prescripted practices, that's a good thing that you're tired at sore. Because if you're not, we we we didn't achieve what we wanted. So like

Back to the initial kind of piece, this idea of prescripted utilization of the data really flows hand in hand into like the the response of the athlete and and what the data says about that. and you've got to look at both of those in context to say like what did we attend here and and did we occur that you know did that occur?

Richard Graves (21:31.672)
And that's the key word, isn't it, all the time when we have these conversations. Context, context, context. Without that, you're liable to errors and bad decisions. As we enter the new NFL season, it's an 18-week regular season. As we go down the line, there's already been indications that that could be extended by at least a game more. That remains to be seen. So the key always is to try and keep players fit.

Jamie (21:36.737)
Yes.

Richard Graves (21:59.982)
and on the field. With that in mind then Jamie, and you've got experience of 11 years in your role at Catapult, what does the future look like? Is it about collecting more data or is it finding a way for sports scientists generally across the board to be able to make better decisions with the data that's already at their disposal?

Jamie (22:20.335)
Or it's both. as as new information comes together, I I would say as new data comes available, it will be utilized if it's if it's impactful. Imactful to drive decision making. everything has to come back to impacting a decision, because interesting data's for fans and impactful data is for coaches, you know. So it has to be that. As we kinda talk th

We've got a lot of data now, right? Information to inform us. I think that the the next frontier is information and data that, like we talked about, contextualizes the things that we already know and already are measuring as they happen. And that is like contextualize my wearable data, contextualize what the information that I'm seeing in the weight room with Purge.

And then contextualise the film, right? Like I'm watching film every day, give me context in that. And and and those three things are being enhanced as opposed to, you know, like they are kind of your core, you know, information stacks for me. And then what information is enhancing those to for me to more easily say, like, well, clearly we need to do this, right?

Richard Graves (23:34.617)
We mentioned right at the top of this conversation, you're about to pack your bags and head over to Australia for this first regular season game to be played on Australian soil by two NFL teams. At this point, as we enter the start of the season, in your role, does life get a bit easier? Does the workload decrease a little bit or is it only just starting?

Jamie (23:37.954)
Yeah.

Jamie (23:55.558)
it it decreases a little bit. Certainly the travel around all the training camps decreases. I've I've been doing the roadshow for the last month, which has been amazing. I I do love it. looking forward some time, a little bit of time with the family after this Australia trip's completed. yeah, and then just the conversation changes a little bit. For for this last month it's been about we've had five practices, you know, how should we stack the next five? How should we approach joint practices, which are just really in vogue in

The NFL at the moment. and it and it moves to hey, I've got a guy that that that we're seeing this. Can you help with that? You know, so.

Richard Graves (24:32.749)
And presumably as well, we talk about all the data that teams and athletes are collating to keep players on the field during the course of the season. I imagine it works in reverse as well for you and the team at Catapult, doesn't it? You're able to take real world data from scenarios now that presumably going forward will shape the next generation of technology that becomes available.

Jamie (24:54.177)
Yeah, certainly. we you know, we're I'm always we're all I'm you know, always talking to our customers about what they're seeing and and and what that means, like what what's next. certainly we drip feed that through the season and then February, March we we mu have multiple touch points with every customer. from but fr from me, but we have a lot of our product executives involved in those meetings as well where we are real really directly a showing what

what we're bringing out because that's the time you couldn't actually see it and and use it for the next pre season. and then the other way of

What do like? What do you what are you seeing? I I mean it's been a a a really fun dance for the last couple of years where we've we've acquired a few companies in the last eighteen months, right? And so like that has been further kinda listening to the customers, you know, perch was a a huge one where it was, okay, we're listening to these guys, and then we make this acquisition and it was just so exciting to be able to sit in front of

these coaches that you've been working with for years and saying, like, we've got this thing, you already use it or you know about it, like, let's let me show you, you know, what's new and and and what we can do with it now that we've acquired that. Yeah. So it's been really cool. And and you know hopefully that continues.

Richard Graves (26:11.821)
Absolutely. Football never sleeps right, neither does the technology that's shaping the game these days either. For our listeners that have enjoyed this conversation, do you have a significant presence on social media? Where can they stay across everything you and Catapult are progressing with?

Jamie (26:27.871)
I well sh I should say yes, yeah. I I I don't actually. I'm not much of a social media guy. I have a LinkedIn. I don't post very often. find me though. Find yeah, find me and say hi. Maybe th it'll encourage me to do Yeah.

Richard Graves (26:38.157)
Stay across it and when you do post you can be the first to be aware of it. Listen, Jamie, have a safe trip to Australia. The season is upon us. I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and I hope to speak to you again soon.

Jamie (26:53.101)
Thank you, Richard.