The Center for Sports Performance and Research, located in Foxborough, Massachusetts, incorporates 20,000 square feet of laboratory and training spaces under one roof. The team comprises strength and conditioning specialists, performance assessment and recovery technicians, and research staff. In addition, Mass General Brigham Sports Medicine physicians provide medical oversight and guidance.
"We have a vast range of expertise at the Center for Sports Performance and Research and have the privilege of working with sports medicine and primary care physicians as well as biomechanists, physiologists, and physical therapists," says Cale Jacobs, PhD, ATC, director of outcomes research at Mass General Brigham Sports Medicine. "When we have a research question, we're able to tackle it from a lot of different directions."
Services available at the Center for Sports Performance and Research include:
- Scientific assessments to measure the physical and mental aspects of athletic performance. These include force-plate analysis, metabolic testing, and biomechanical analysis using motion-capture technology to provide insights into activities such as running and baseball pitching.
- Customized performance training to improve form and increase power. Certified strength and conditioning coaches take a data-driven approach informed by on-site scientific research and assessment to help athletes excel in their sport of choice. Athletes recovering from an injury or surgery can receive training that supports the transition from physical therapy and rehabilitation to full performance.
- Sports recovery services to relax the mind, mitigate injuries, and enhance performance. A comprehensive private recovery suite offers services typically accessible only to professional athletes, such as photobiomodulation (red light therapy), whole body cryostimulation (cold therapy), and restricted environmental stimulation technique (float therapy).
Strength and conditioning coach Mark Murphy, DPT, applied sports science lead, enjoys working with a wide variety of individuals, from professional, Olympic, and Division I collegiate athletes to first responders, senior athletes, and active amateurs.
"Performance is a continuum, and we have the ability to train anyone, no matter where they fall on the spectrum," he says. "We individualize our approach based on each person. Each training plan—how many sets, how many reps, which exercises—is highly dependent on what someone's initial assessment shows and what their goals are."
Research integrated into day-to-day operations
From the beginning, the team has integrated research into their day-to-day operations. Although Dr. Lattermann is a surgeon, he also runs a basic science lab and can bring clinical work into the basic science arena quickly.
"For example, we can do aspirations, tissue collections, and blood analyses when needed," he says. "We also have everything from gait analysis to strength and performance assessment, tissue repositories, and a basic science laboratory that is connected and available to link performance and recovery research projects across the translational spectrum all the way to cellular analysis.
"These are the kinds of things that typically have to go through high-level funding mechanisms like the National Institutes of Health or the Department of Defense to be established, and we were given the opportunity to create these here in Foxborough."
Dr. Jacobs notes that the research aims to improve the lives of people with musculoskeletal injuries and arthritis. He and his colleagues take what he calls a "biological, biomechanical, and physiological approach" to achieve this goal.
Ongoing studies at the Center for Sports Performance and Research span the following categories:
- Randomized clinical trials, such as one examining whether arthritis progression can be altered in patients who have had anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction
- Observational or mechanistic studies, such as one attempting to establish whether a different approach is needed in males than in females to determine a safe return to sports after patellar dislocation surgery
- "Up and coming" areas, such as one in collaboration with spine surgeon Harry M. Lightsey, MD, looking at how to enhance postsurgical recovery in patients with cervical myelopathy (a condition involving compression of the spinal cord in the neck)
A final component of the mission at the Center for Sports Performance and Research is education. The facility includes a presentation theater and a test kitchen, both of which can host community groups interested in learning about topics like training and nutrition. The presentation space is also designed to allow for content creation and the production of podcasts that the team may conduct in the future.
"We aspire for the Center for Sports Performance and Research to be a truly multifunctional space focused on performance and covering everything from assessments and performance training to recovery and education," Dr. Lattermann says.
