The Future of Sports Training

Read Time:3 Minute, 51 Second

By Chris Kidd, Special for  USDR

 

Radio Host Kevin Price, and Chris Kidd, Financial Coach and Contributor on the
Price of Business on Business Talk 1110 AM KTEK (on Bloomberg’s home in
Houston), interviewed Steve Gera, who is the Managing Director and Co-Founder
of WinningAlgorithms.com, as well as a business development consultant with
Horizon Performance. (Click here to listen to the interview)

 

 
Steve Gera has worked in the NFL for the past decade, and before that was in the
Marine Corps. His work includes consulting with corporate, sports, and
government clients. He has worked with NFL and NCAA teams from coaching and
consulting positions. Steve has enjoyed working with sports teams in a number of
different facets, blending what players are doing on the field with business.
Gera says he is absolutely passionate about helping people understand how
technology can help amplify how coaches can work with their players. Referring
back to Chris Kidd and his financial coaching work, Steve said, “When you can
give a player in the NFL or even a player coming up through the NCAA
information and just good advice on that, it helps kinda open their aperture for
living a well-lived  life.”

 
Steve continued, “I spend a lot of my time also currently advising teams on
integrating player and coach performance with business, and how to properly
navigate technology, because obviously sports technology right now is just
blowing up. And then I work a lot with sports technology companies and I help
those companies make things that matter.”
Click here to listen to the  interview

 

 

 

“There’s a real unique time I think in the history of coaching, because you’re starting to see a lot of young coaches starting to really grasp how technology can amplify their ability to work with their players.”
-Steve  Gera

 

 
Chris Kidd asked Steve Gera if he could some of the technological things he is
working on. “He could tell us, but then he’d have to kill us,” Kevin Price
enthusiastically interrupted. Steve joked, “No I’d only have to kill you if we talked
about some of the work I do with special forces and NASA and some other
companies that Horizon works with.”

 

 

“We’re within probably two or three years of most teams in the NFL having some sort of simulator in their building to where their quarterbacks, their second string and third string quarterbacks, can develop at a more rapid rate.”
-Steve  Gera

 
Gera recalled, “It was about 5, maybe 6 years ago when technology really started
to touch the player and the coach. And it all started in content delivery.” This first
process was very simple, taking the typical big 300 page playbooks and converting
them into PDFs that could be delivered via iPad or a Microsoft Surface.
Steve continued, “I was actually with the San Diego Chargers, and we were one of
the first teams to go to fully digital content, and that kind of started to evolve into
additional communication, talking between player/coach, delivering video much
faster, and in a way that was intuitive for the players that they just got and they
understood. So that was really the beginning of it all. And now you’re starting to
see analytics come into play, you’re starting to see wearables, different big data
tools. And then you’re also starting to see some really cool things coming in, some
advanced training systems, such as like brain training. You have virtual reality,
augmented reality, so VR/AR. One of the projects I worked on this past year with
an NFL team was putting in a simulator in their building for their quarterbacks and
for their inside linebackers to begin with, and eventually hopefully it will blow out
to additional position  groups.”

 

 
Gera says this technology is very important to the quarterback position, because
second string and third string quarterbacks in the NFL cannot get enough on-thefield
reps. The big question that comes up then is, “So how do you get them
enough brain train? Looking at a defense, diagnosing what’s happening in the
middle of a play and then making good decisions?” according to Steve Gera. He
says, “One of the things I’ve been passionate about for the last couple years has
been simulation and then VR/AR, and how you can use that with quarterbacks in
order to train them up when we can’t get them on the field, and we just can’t get
them enough  reps.”

Click here to listen to the  interview

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