The gray slab in front of me is nondescript, like a scale with no numbers. It seems like no more than just a floor tile. Yet after I jumped and balanced on the elevated surface a few times, I learned from data extracted from sensors beneath how fit I am: I’m in pretty good shape—but also a bit inflexible, unbalanced, and at mild risk for an Achilles injury.
On a recent morning in an office in midtown New York City, Sparta Science invited a few reporters to test out the company’s assessment technology. Sparta uses information gleaned from the Bertec force plate, which measured my dynamic movements 1,000 times per second in three directions as I did standing jumps and then took turns balancing on each leg while closing my eyes for 20 seconds. (The latter task sounds simple but was actually quite humbling.) This wealth of data is then run through Sparta Science’s advanced algorithms and extensive database to gauge both my physical performance and injury risk.
The founder and CEO, Dr. Phil Wagner, guided me through the tests, starting with four standing jumps. Data from these was used to calculate the Sparta Platform’s signature readings for Load, Explode, and Drive. (Load is a measure of how a person’s body prepares to jump, Explode analyzes how the person initially creates upwards force, and Drive looks at how they sustain that force.)
My scores for Load and Explode were both 45, a solid reading half a standard deviation below the median for Sparta’s population. My Drive, however, was weaker: 37. The Drive bar graph appeared in red. Wagner explained that a diminished Drive implies a need for better flexibility.
Whatever pliability I gleaned from high school hurdling has long since deteriorated. That puts me at some risk for soft tissue injuries. For someone whose primary training these days is running, this usually translates to Achilles tendinitis.
Though the Drive score was disconcerting, my reading for Explode was comforting. That initial transfer from compression to force generation is a task for the core muscles. As someone who underwent hernia surgery earlier this summer, seeing a respectable score is reassuring that I’ve made a proper recovery. (Ideally, I’d have been tested when fully healthy to generate a baseline for comparison’s sake.)
That is at the core (pun, sadly, intended) of what Sparta Science seeks to accomplish: identifying risk of injury before something goes wrong, and signaling when an athlete is recovered enough to return to play. That’s why MLB teams (including the Colorado Rockies), NBA teams (including the Cleveland Cavaliers), NFL teams (such as the Atlanta Falcons and San Francisco 49ers) and about 15 Division I colleges (including Kansas, Rutgers, and Wake Forest) all use Sparta Science.
“It’s actually really easy to get somebody to perform at a high level,” Wagner said. “What’s hard is to have them perform at a high level a lot of times.”
My balance tests produced similar results: a 52 for balancing on my left foot and 38 for balancing on my right. Some imbalance in that direction is expected because there’s natural cross dominance. Right-handed people favor their left leg and vice versa. Wagner said the preferred difference is no more than 10, however, so I may have some muscle weakness on my right side.
My overall Sparta score—a catch-all metric accounting for performance and injury potential—was a 79, and my total injury risk was low. But having warning signs noted early gives me a chance to make take action. For me, Wagner recommended slow, single-leg movements to build strength. Yes, my prescription was the dreaded lunge.
The Sparta Science database currently includes 16,000 elite athletes, and tens of thousands of military and amateur fitness enthusiasts. Sparta aggregates across all three groups, rather than providing breakdowns within each sub-group. “There are a lot more similarities than we expected between these groups,” Wagner said. His team has found that the biggest similarities run along gender and age lines and not within the subset of elite athletes.
Quantifying the power of these movements, but having a large data set with injuries and risk factors is the secret sauce. “That’s what gives meaning to the force,” Wagner said.
The explosion in popularity of training programs such as CrossFit and Peloton have increased the national fitness IQ and popularized the idea of workouts as competition—both against peers and against one’s previous best scores. Though I do not participate in an organized workout program, I generally fall into that same category, running regularly and often using a GPS tracker to compare my pace and time along my usual 3.5-mile route. Sparta Science is trying to reach more people like me.
Wagner said Sparta eventually will develop more affordable, less sophisticated products for the average consumer who doesn’t require the same granular data as an elite athlete. This democratization of advanced technologies is one of the major trends in sports right now, following the lead of (among many others) Catapult, STATSports, and Polar.
“The fitness market is something we’re growing into,” Wagner said. “The end goal of Sparta was really to make sure there were no physical obstacles for anybody who wanted to be active. We started in sports because it’s a smaller sphere where people are more compliant because of a clear goal. It was always the plan to grow into fitness and we still want to do that, but it will evolve into different products.”