The University of Georgia Bulldogs defeated Auburn to win this year’s SEC championship. (Photo by Phil Ellsworth / ESPN Images)
SEC champion and College Football Playoff entrant Georgia has been using MuscleSound for assessments of players’ game readiness this season.
MuscleSound is a Colorado-based company that uses ultrasound imagery to measure glycogen and determine muscle fuel by sending photos to its cloud for computation with its proprietary algorithms. Low readings can be a precursor to soft-tissue injuries. Nutrition and training recommendations can be catered to each athlete.
The ultrasound company is relatively new to college football, having worked with Colorado since last year and starting its collaboration with Georgia this fall.
Data provided by MuscleSound showed a sampling of up to eight Georgia players each week to provide a snapshot of the team’s physical preparedness. The Bulldogs received their highest score prior to its second game of the season, a come-from-behind road victory at Notre Dame that not only showed team stamina but also proved decisive in propelling the school toward its eventual No. 3 national ranking and matchup with Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl.
Georgia football data provided by MuscleSound
One of Georgia’s two other highest marks came before its 42-7 thrashing of Florida in the rivalry game formerly dubbed “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.” That game was preceded by the Bulldogs’ bye week, likely explaining the energy boost.
That overall number, from 0 to 100, is a composite of two component scores. A player’s fuel rating is a population measure, i.e. how he or she stacks up against the company’s vast athlete database. The second is one’s fuel level, a longitudinal tracking of an individual’s own fuel level over time.
“Combining those two measures, we have your muscle energy status, which I like to describe as your overall fuel status,” MuscleSound director of operations Lauren Fanelli said.
MuscleSound has made inroads with a number of college and pro sports teams, with the Colorado Rockies, Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Rams among the earliest adopters. Oregon State, Colorado, South Carolina and the Kansas City Royals are among the other programs and teams identified as having used the product.
The company’s goal is to give on-site practitioners another evaluation tool rather than serve as the sole determinant for playing time decisions. The idea, Fanelli said, is to “just give them another piece of information.” She deemed MuscleSound to be a “complementary” technology to wearable devices that measure training work loads.
Said Fanelli, “Andy [Jackson], our CEO, says it very well: He says,‘Heart-rate monitors tell you how hard you did something. A GPS tracker will tell you how far you went. We see MuscleSound as giving you the effects of those things.’”
The glycogen is bound to water when stored in muscles, she explained, and the higher density of water produces a darker ultrasound image. Sleep and nutrition are among the most obvious and readily available remedies for a low score. Fuel is one of 14 muscle indicators tabulated during a MuscleSound scan, as the company pivots toward being a full-service muscle health evaluator rather than just calculator of energy levels.
