Fusionetics recently announced that it has added a new partnership with the United States Youth Soccer National League to its over-sixty professional and collegiate program partners. Fusionetics includes many elements, but overall is an integrated performance health-care solution, according to Fusionetics’ senior practitioner Tony Ambler-Wright. Through his insights, we were given a look into Fusionetics and their collaboration with the United States Youth Soccer National League.
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Ambler-Wright said that the key to Fusionetics is their software and technology platform. This platform allows others to take advantage of the research and clinical applications that Fusionetics has pioneered and refined in the sports science space. The technology platform allows athletes to minimize the risk of injury and maximize performance potential. In short, the system provides the ability to identify an athlete’s current status, delivering evidence-based solutions that “allow an athlete to get the most out of their body.”
Dr. Micheal A. Clark, founder and CEO of Fusionetics, applied available research and evidence within elite sports to create Fusionetics. In an effort to optimize an individual’s performance, Clark combined sports science education with cutting-edge clinical applications and refined those methods through years of experience working in elite sports. Fusionetics sought to allow as many as possible to benefit from their applications, inspiring the adaptation of their expertise into a technology system. Fusionetics strives to “help people move, feel, and perform better and recover faster,” Ambler-Wright explained, “and the Fusionetics system allows us to do that on a large scale.” While Fusionetics was influencing health and fitness clients through education and research, the company still wanted to take their platform a step further and provide the entire package.
A key aspect of Fusionetics’ platform is their ability to reduce the likelihood of injury on an individual basis. Certain movements are highly correlated to injury, and those movements differ on an individual basis. So, Fusionetics “takes athletes through a series of bodyweight movements and as they complete those movements, we observe what is happening throughout their body,” all of which is compared to a standard created by Fusionetics. Ambler-Wright added, “Based on what they do and how they move, we can identify if the athlete display patterns that are highly correlated to risk of injury or certain performance limitations.
Then, the data is entered into the system. [After analysis,] it provides the athlete with a score on a scale of 0 to 100. The lower the score, the less ideal it is.” Essentially, movements are efficiency scored. Along with the score, a status level is also collected. Anything below a 50 is red on the scale, or high priority. The Fusionetics system provides more than just a score and status level. Rather, it has a unique feature of generating a program that prioritizes what an individual athlete should focus on based on their test results. The generated list provides solutions to improve the athlete’s movement and reduce the injury risk factors for the athlete.
As a partner of the US Youth Soccer National League, Fusionetics will take those athletes through the testing process. “I think everyone is looking for tools that can increase the value of the products and services that they’re offering, as well as protect their interests—in this case, the athletes” said Ambler-Wright while describing the motivation for this partnership.“
“Musculoskeletal injuries are on the rise and youth athletes are at a high risk,” according to Ambler-Wright. This particularly compelled the US Youth Soccer National League to find a tool to combat those potential injuries. “[Fusionetics] allows the athlete and coach to see where they are physically and identify if they are displaying characteristics that may lead to them getting hurt. In a nutshell, we have tools and resources to see performance potential on a large scale and minimize injury. Our tech system allows us to identify this in thousands of kids.”
The US Youth Soccer National League is a particularly important partner for Fusionetics due to the potential implications of suffering from an athletic injury while younger. “In a youth athlete in particular, in addition to the physical effects, there is a mental and psychological impact from suffering a musculoskeletal injury,” Ambler-Wright said. “For example, physically, risk of re-injury and later on in life development of osteoarthritis is greater after a youth suffers an injury.”
Also, Ambler-Wright said it can be more difficult for youths to overcome catastrophic injuries due to the fear associated with getting hurt again, underscoring the importance of educating athletes and coaches on movement quality and what to do to improve it, so the risk of getting injured in the first place is reduced. “[Young athletes] may not think about how their body moves, but we know that it can have a profound impact on performance as well as injury risk, so addressing proper body movement with them is extremely important.”
Ambler-Wright stressed how imperative their technology is to having partnerships like that with the US Youth Soccer National League. And with that technology, the testing process can be implemented with kids to improve their quality of play and elongate their athletic careers.