FALL 2024 | 15 they were in. With data, coaches can now get baseline readings. Stats are collected before the season, mid-season and postseason to show how athletes are performing over time, Cahill said. If data shows their performance is lagging, coaches can determine why and potentially pull back on training to prevent injury. The information also helps direct the kind of training athletes need. Athletes are susceptible to injuries, such as ACL tears, when their quad muscles are overtrained compared to their hamstrings, or one leg is stronger than the other, Cahill said. “It’s really all-encompassing what you’re doing in the weight room. Are you strengthening the quad enough? Is the hamstring too strong or not strong enough?” he said. “There are a lot of different variables we are trying to track, but that’s what wearable tech has helped us to do.” Lauren Calabrese ’07 took over as women’s head soccer coach in 2022. She was a four-year starter during her time as a student-athlete on the soccer team and said there wasn’t any hard data back then. When Calabrese began coaching, she pushed for every women’s soccer player to be outfitted with a WHOOP, a wristband that looks similar to an Apple Watch and collects round-the-clock data such as sleep patterns, blood-oxygen levels, resting heart rate and skin temperature. When Seshadri came to Lehigh, Calabrese and her team started sharing their data. Some players also began wearing GPS trackers. Amitrano was able to tell the women soccer players how quickly they were recovering after a game by looking at data, such as how much sleep they got the night before, and subjective measures, such as how hard practice felt that day, how stressed the athlete was and how well-rested they felt. The data showed that sleep and recovery are the biggest factors that impact an athlete’s performance. Recovery includes everything the athlete does after a practice or workout, from whether they reach a deep sleep, how many calories they eat and if they do after-care, such as taking an ice bath, Amitrano said. Seshadri’s work with the women’s soccer team is particularly important because there is a lack of data on women athletes. “Men’s sports are funded at twice the rate compared to women’s sports, and that financial inequity means there’s a lack of resources and technology that can be used for monitoring,” Seshadri said. “One of the key questions we are interested in exploring is the effect of menstrual cycles on injury—how do changes in vitals and workload-based variables affect the overall wellbeing of student-athletes.” Working with Seshadri’s team has been an interdisciplinary experience, Calabrese said. She’s working with a team of people to make important decisions about players instead of acting alone. “I’m collaborating with sports medicine, we are working with our sports performance coach, a sports psychologist and nutritionist,” Calabrese said. “It’s very holistic in the sense that decisions aren’t being made in a vacuum.” Seshadri’s Other Work In addition to his work at Lehigh, Seshadri is studying the application of wearable tech in a variety of other areas. His team recently partnered with Geisinger Health System to study the implications wearable tech couldhave for pedi- “If we start to collect more data, we can then help forecast and assess if the athlete is on track in their healing at various time points.” — ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF BIOENGINEERING DHRUV SESHADRI Joseph Amitrano ’23, a Ph.D. student studying bioengineering in the Seshadri Lab, has been working with the women’s soccer team to collect data.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTA0OTQ5OA==