Everton Football Club has announced a partnership with Kitman Labs, a sports science company that aims to minimize player injuries across several different sports.
The club had been using Kitman Labs’ services and decided to extend the agreement to a multi-year deal. With this deal Everton is following in the footsteps of other teams such as the NFL’s Miami Dolphins and the NBA’s Detroit Pistons, both of which have partnerships with the company.
“The Barclays’ Premier League is one of the world’s ultra-elite sports organizations, and Kitman Labs is honored to be working alongside such a prestigious club in Everton,” said Stephen Smith, co-founder and CEO of Kitman Labs. “Everton’s continued use of the Kitman Labs system is a sturgeon endorsement and we’re honored to be working with an organization focused on the evolution of performance.”
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Everton is excited about the deal as well—the club’s Head of Medical Services, Matt Connery, said, “Football is in the midst of a science and technology revolution, and Kitman Labs is at the heart of it.”
Kitman Labs uses a series of simple tests and measurements and pairs this with a player’s injury history to statistically predict the likeliness of player performance decrements and risk of injury. The information that they use includes both musculoskeletal markers and well-being information.
As an example, one thing they might measure is the amount of pressure a player can generate from a groin squeeze. By combining many simple tests like this one, Kitman Labs’ systems can get a real sense of how a player will be able to perform and where vulnerabilities lie in physical strength.
It has been a big week for Kitman Labs—this deal comes on the heels of their partnership with the Pistons, which just happened a few days ago. If this trend of teams adopting technological solutions to manage athletes keeps continuing, hopefully injuries can start to be minimized across all sports and leagues.