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Lawrence – The Jayhawk Athletic Performance Laboratory (JAPL), a sports performance-based research center based on the Achievement & Assessment Institute, works with Kansas Athletics to better prepare KU soccer players on the 2025 NFL Scouting Combine and Big 12 Pro Day by technology and data analysis.

The NFL combine -until March 3 in Indianapolis -and the Pro days are annual events in several days in which selected College Footballthletes take part in tests to assess the health and biometry of athletes, the characteristics of physical performance And to evaluate the potential for success for the success at a professional level. Only around 250-330 football athletes receive an invitation every year, and this year four Jayhawks were invited to take part in the NFL combine, and 13 will take part in the Big 12 Pro Day of KU.

The JAPL, a member of the WU Tsai Human Performance Alliance, focuses on optimizing the high performance in the sporting environments by using first -class technology such as power plates, motion ingress systems, acceleration meters and vertical jump test systems. Cooperation with Kansa's football for a produced day-specific strength and conditioning program offers the KU athlete a leg, while she continues to help JAPL research.

Quincy Johnson, deputy director of the JAPL and assistant professor at the Department of Health, Sport & Training Sciences, leads the research and analysis of JAPL for the Pro Day program. Johnson carried out extensive research on College Football athletes, including his recent publication on important performance indicators for American football starter in college. He uses this research to better inform data acquisition and the resulting recommendations.

“We take what we have found through our research and work with other KU teams to really concentrate on Pro -day specific questions.” '' “Is it important whether you raise as much as possible, how you can or as quickly as you can?” “How quickly can you sprint?” He said.

In collaboration with employees of Kansas Football Performance, JAPL researchers begin logistics and the first planning of the training approach. In this phase, you work to determine how many athletes will train, how often you train, which resources are required for evaluation and training and which approach is best suited to bring them to a top performance for the big day.

While the researchers develop the training approach, a critical element is to carry out an athlete analysis, create a sporty performance test battery and identify important performance indicators, said Johnson. The analysis of the athlete requirement is an important assessment of three key components that contribute to sporting performance: bioenergetics, biomechanics and common injuries.

The bioenergetic requirements relate to the primary energy system used during each event on the pro day, a biomechanical analysis relates to how athletes move their bodies, and an analysis of common football injuries helps the practitioner to understand potential risks and the mechanisms for injuries Johnson.

As soon as the data has been collected, JAPL researchers use it to make suggestions to the employees of the Kansas football performance that monitor the Pro -day training and monitor adjustments to training and neuromuscular fatigue.

“It is a very collaborative relationship. We help to structure and control data acquisition and ensure that it is valid and reliable. From there we pass it on to Coach (Matt) Gilersleeve and Coach (Eric) Scott and they bridge the gap between research and performance, ”said Johnson.

What makes this cooperation particularly effective is that research and data acquisition is carried out under real conditions and not in a laboratory.

“In many sports research, researchers try to reproduce something in a laboratory under different conditions in which the players are not normally located,” said Sam Norwood, doctoral student of practice physiology and member of the JAPL research team. “If we are able to monitor and collect data during the live exercise or in the actual games, we can have a more precise picture that can better inform the training.”

JAPL has worked with Kansa's football in the past, but this is the first time that they have teamed up for the Pro -Day training. Norwood said that the training group for the pro day is much smaller, it can offer it more personalized training, which leads to optimal results.

“I think it is one of the main reasons why we are moving forward and achieving positive results. We still have a few weeks and hope that we can continue this growth and help these boys, ”said Norwood.