As the sports training world knows, there is a multitude of companies devoted to creating cutting-edge sport technologies to squeeze an extra tenth of a second or ounce of exertion out of an elite NFL player. But, there are also athlete training companies who are focusing on training athletes above the neck. One such company leading this area is Axon Sports. Axon prepares athletes by approaching their mental training in the same way physical training is performed; with expert feedback and repetition.
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Axon, with an underlying science partnership with GlaxoSmithKline and recent investment from Mark Cuban, has defined what they consider to be the “Athletic Brain” which consists of high speed decision making, visualization, emotional regulation, focus, reaction and spatial reasoning. By measuring these traits in an athlete Axon can develop assessment protocols that evaluate a player’s (from high school on up to the pros) ability to make in-game decisions. This has enormous potential for skill development, scouting and training of NFL players who participate in a sport that relies on quick thinking and having the proper instincts in place in order to react in a fraction of a second.
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of cognitive training for the NFL is that players can train their minds without putting stress on their bodies or adding to cumulative hits to the head which ultimately leads to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (the biggest issue plaguing the NFL right now).
Right now Axon is developing specific analytics programs linking the cognitive performance of athletes to physical metrics. This platform allows athletes to either use the Axon iPad app or visit an Axon performance facility and login (picture walking up to a large touchscreen television) to a system that inputs their sport and position and then takes them through sport-specific game situations. For a football player this might mean that a quarterback can process several hundred defensive alignments in a short amount of time.
So far the professional football realm has been accepting of this new type of athlete training. Former Super Bowl-winning quarterback Trent Dilfer incorporated Axon’s technology into QBEpic, his elite quarterback training academy. And Pro Football Focus, an advanced data and analysis supplier for college and pro football, just announced a partnership to integrate their player performance data with Axon’s system.
In addition to the NFL, Axon’s sports programs are serving baseball and college football players.
To date, they have logged more than one million training repetitions for NFL players and are ultimately a sports technology company that is leading the charge in a new frontier for athlete training.
To learn more, check out our 2015-16 NFL Tech Report.