CHICAGO — When Maryland football opens its season on Sept. 2 at Texas, the Terrapins will be well rested. That’s because, according to head coach DJ Durkin, the team has started using Under Armour sleep aids.
“We have all our guys wear what Under Armour provided for us with the sleep aids that measure how much our guys sleep a night,” Durkin said Monday at Big Ten media day. “That is really indicative and telling of how a guy performs the next day.”
Earlier this year, UA launched a sleep and recovery system powered by Tom Brady’s TB12 brand and UA Record. The platform provides a better understanding of the user’s sleep schedule and can aid in optimizing rest for peak performance.
“At Under Armour our goal is to constantly innovate and uncover new solutions that take performance to the next level,” Kevin Haley, President of Innovation and Category Management, Under Armour, said then in a statement. “We are providing athletes with untapped insight and guidance into the importance of sleep and recovery in a way that’s truly unique to Under Armour – with a revolutionary Sleep Recovery System that was created for athletes, by athletes.”
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By wearing a UA band or using your phone on a nightly basis the system develops a proprietary 14-day score based on quality of sleep. The goal is to establish a consistent pattern so rest complements a training regimen rather than detracting from it.
“We started tracing guys with muscle pulls or hamstring injuries; a lot of that comes from lack of sleep and hydration so we have ways to measure all that,” Durkin described. “We measure those things every day and that way we know if for some reason a guy didn’t get a lot of sleep we know to be cautious the next day.”
Maryland Athletics also recently announced it will be using the movement assessment platform PhysiMax to provide further assistance to their athletes.