Coach Nick Saban and the University of Alabama Crimson Tide
(Photo by Allen Kee / ESPN Images)
Alabama football continues to be a leader in sports science and technology with the recent addition of sleep-coaching program Rise Science for the 2017 season.
Rise announced Alabama as its latest client on Thursday after adding the Crimson Tide’s title game opponent the past two seasons, Clemson, two weeks ago. The perennial powerhouse program of Alabama, which has won four national championships in the past decade, has previously embraced the data from Catapult Sports’ wearable tech to monitor training workloads, the use of Cryotherapy to help players recover after practice and, previously, sleep monitoring through a FitBit watch.
The university even created the Integrative Center for Athletic and Sport Technology — a collaboration between the engineering and athletic departments — with a mission of optimizing performance through injury reduction, improved nutrition and enhanced recovery.
“Focusing on sleep is not new at Alabama,” Leon Sasson, co-founder and chief technology officer of Rise Science, said in a statement. “They’ve tried many different solutions but were attracted to the Rise program in part because it doesn’t require wearables to get valid sleep and recovery measures.
“We have coached hundreds of NFL and College football players, and we’ve learned first-hand that any sleep improvement program has to be easy and hassle-free for both athletes and coaches. There’s no magic pill or potion to solve sleep. It’s about equipping the student athletes with the tools and structure so they can make informed decisions every night.”
Rise, which has added a dozen NFL and Power 5 conference football teams this season, monitors sleep through force sensors placed under a mattress. That data helps estimate recovery levels by measuring heart-rate variability, and the app recommends personalized sleep plans. Players are also assigned a sleep coach with whom they can communicate for additional insights and suggestions.
More than data tracking, Rise maintains that the most important component of its program is the empowerment of athletes to understand why they are not getting enough sleep and create a plan to change habits.
“The main thing that we found is that these guys need help structuring this,” co-founder and CEO Jeff Kahn said in a recent interview, adding: “That change in behavior is what we’re going after. That’s what’s going to lead to the performance benefit on the field.”
Among major college programs, Rise has previously worked with the West Virginia Mountaineers and Tennessee Volunteers and recently has added Clemson, Alabama and Oklahoma State into the fold.
“We have long known the dramatic affect that sleep has on player performance,” Rob Glass, Oklahoma State’s assistant athletic director for athlete performance, said in a statement. “What we found at Rise was more than a monitoring system, however; Rise works directly with our athletes to help them actually improve their sleep behaviors and we know this will result in measurable gains on the field.
“Starting the program at the beginning of fall camp will allow our players to maximize the time prior to the season to build good habits. With so many demands on today’s student athletes between football, academics and community service; programs like Rise will allow us to help them take good care of their physical and mental health.”
Rise Science has primarily worked with football clients to date but also counts the NBA’s Chicago Bulls as a research partner and are looking to expand into other sports over the next year or two. Kahn noted that what he calls the travel sports — baseball, basketball and hockey — are particularly fraught with sleep challenges given the frequent flights in and out of time zones.
