University of North Carolina Athletics
CAROLINA: Workout Wisdom
October 14, 2013 | Men's Basketball
Note: This article originally appeared in CAROLINA: The Magazine.
by Adam Lucas
CHAPEL HILL - In the last preseason conditioning session of the summer for Carolina basketball, Tar Heel strength coach Jonas Sahratian knows Joel James was working hard.
In fact, he knows exactly how hard the sophomore big man was working-hard enough to burn 358.6 calories in approximately 15 minutes of running. That's how long it took the Tar Heels to complete 40 crossings of the Smith Center court in late September.
The running session marked the penultimate event of preseason conditioning, which had alternately included some creative workouts in the sand and more standard indoor running. With the new NCAA rule changes that allow practice sessions to begin earlier, the Tar Heels started preseason practice in late September; Late Night with Roy Williams is slated for October 25.
Sahratian knows James' workout stats because for the last nine months, he's been using the Zephyr PSM Training Echo system to monitor the workouts of Tar Heel players. On the day of the conditioning workout, for example, he used the system on James and fellow sophomore Marcus Paige. That means they wore a very small, lightweight disk that transmits real-time information wirelessly to a laptop.
That gives Sahratian instant access to information such as the duo's heart rates, breathing rates, activity levels and calories burned. It doesn't replace close observation of a workout, but it's an extra layer of data that other teams (the Oklahoma City Thunder, among others, are also Zephyr users) have found useful.
"It's an evaluation tool for health and safety purposes," Sahratian says. "It helps us know their state of readiness. It also lets us see their mechanical load and their physiological load. If we see one is going up and not matching with the other, that's a sign of overtraining."
That's a dangerous proposition for athletes. One of the favorite questions of every coach in the world is, "Are you giving maximum effort?" The Zephyr system gets closer than ever to providing an objective answer to that question rather than just relying on the athlete to provide an honest response.
But it can also be beneficial for athletes. In one conditioning session, Sahratian had players riding exercise bikes and doing a rope workout. The Zephyr numbers suggested the players were working just as hard as they would in a regular running workout, but without the pounding that running can inflict on a body.
One of Roy Williams' favorite sayings is, "The eye in the sky doesn't lie." That means even if players don't believe him when he tells them they need to do something better, they can't argue when he shows it to them on film.
The Zephyr system gives Sahratian a similar advantage. James might not believe in the importance of recovery after a tough workout, until the strength coach shows him exactly how hard he worked. It's one thing to tell a player he just went through a rigorous practice and can't maintain that type of activity without the proper rest, recovery and nutrition.
It's quite another to point to a laptop screen and show James that he burned over 3,000 calories during one practice, as he did last season.
"It helps you preach recovery," Sahratian says. "You can tell them exactly what they did in practice, and how are they going to be able to do that again tomorrow without eating right? It's a catabolic sport, so you want to make sure you are doing whatever you can to try and maintain those qualities longer."
Moreso than Williams, perhaps, Sahratian is willing to dip into the various technological advances that have invaded the sports world. The Carolina weight room has force plates to measure the force of a vertical leap and tendo units to evaluate the speed of the bar while lifting weights.
He's even explored a GPS-based system used by some teams to measure how far their players run during any given game. That project was shelved when the GPS sensors wouldn't function inside the Smith Center.
Sahratian appreciates the extra information technology can give him. But he's not totally willing to turn his job over to a computer just yet. Sometimes there's no substitute for simple human interaction.
"There can be days that all the indicators are normal, but you just don't feel your best," he says. "No system in the world is going to pick that up."
