UFC PI: Using Data and Tech to Adapt to Coronavirus

6/29/2020 • Thorne

To help both athletes and viewers at home, we sat down with Clint Wattenberg, Director of Performance Nutrition for the UFC Performance Institute (UFCPI), and Bo Sandoval, UFCPI Director of Strength & Conditioning to hear their advice on how UFC athletes and trainers have adapted during the pandemic, and how this can be applied to athletes and active individuals everywhere. In part one, Clint shares how the UFC employs tracking technology to measure important training and nutrition habits remotely.

Transcript

The video starts with a title screen. A maroon and orange gradient aura shifts in the upper right corner of the screen as words appear. They read “UFC PI” Using Data and Tech to Adapt to Coronavirus” and appear over a short resume blurb. The blurb reads: “Clint Wattenberg: Director of Performance Nutrition, UFC Performance Institute.”

After a few seconds the words pan up the screen as a question fades in from below. The question reads: “As the sport world adapts to the pandemic, will there be any long-term changes athletes should expect?”

Clint Wattenberg:

What's been interesting during this time is that here at UFC, we've just continued to soldier on. And really, our athletes, their biggest agenda during this time is, how do we take what we know we need to accomplish? And that's the things that we need to take into the cage, how do we obtain those in nontraditional ways?

As Clint talks, words appear on the right side of the screen emphasizing his points. The text only serves to clarify what is being said and does not add any new information that isn’t already present in what Clint has to say.

A lot of athletes moved in and did some remote training with themselves, or built a little pod of people that they could train with, training partners, coaches that they can train with and have smaller group settings. I think that the creativity and the adaptability that we've really had to utilize, a lot of it relies on technology. We've certainly been able to expand the scope of what we do day-to-day, and to really make that, I guess, common practice for all of our athletes over this time.

We have a very decentralized model where we have maybe three dozen athletes here in Las Vegas. But the rest of the athletes, we have to interface with in a remote or some sort of a nontraditional consultation method. And we've had to do that with every athlete over this last, I guess, 12 weeks. And so technology is a big part, both in communication. And obviously, we use a lot of video chat these days as we're doing right now. But also just the remote tracking, things like athlete service platforms, whether you're getting subjective direct reports from athletes, or even those that were relying on objective data. Some of the wearable technology does not rely at all on human interaction and can provide some of the real-time updates on training loads, training response, and all those things that we need to be able to fine tune and optimize the athlete's experiences to getting ready for competition.

So I think what this phase has done is to really highlight the importance of objective data and has really strengthened our resolve in that front. And it's also, I think, highlighted the impact of human interaction as well. So you get both sides of that coin where, yeah, you can move remotely, you can do a lot of things that don't require human interface where things like germs can be shared. But there's also a role for being able to look somebody in the eyes and have a conversation, and to be able to engage and to, I guess, share a moment with an athlete. And that's something that we've been craving. And now that we're back in the building, we're able to do that, albeit from the nose up, as we're wearing face masks whenever we're interfacing and interacting with athletes. But it is a very nice reprieve, and it's a great thing now that we're back in our building and being able to support athletes with the human touch.

Closing text appears onscreen reading: “Make the most of your health while staying at home. Subscribe to our newsletter and get the latest content on COVID-19 along with insights, education, and advice you won’t find anywhere else.

The video starts with a title screen. A maroon and orange gradient aura shifts in the upper right corner of the screen as words appear. They read “UFC PI” Using Data and Tech to Adapt to Coronavirus” and appear over a short resume blurb. The blurb reads: “Clint Wattenberg: Director of Performance Nutrition, UFC Performance Institute.”

After a few seconds the words pan up the screen as a question fades in from below. The question reads: “As the sport world adapts to the pandemic, will there be any long-term changes athletes should expect?”

Clint Wattenberg:

What's been interesting during this time is that here at UFC, we've just continued to soldier on. And really, our athletes, their biggest agenda during this time is, how do we take what we know we need to accomplish? And that's the things that we need to take into the cage, how do we obtain those in nontraditional ways?

As Clint talks, words appear on the right side of the screen emphasizing his points. The text only serves to clarify what is being said and does not add any new information that isn’t already present in what Clint has to say.

A lot of athletes moved in and did some remote training with themselves, or built a little pod of people that they could train with, training partners, coaches that they can train with and have smaller group settings. I think that the creativity and the adaptability that we've really had to utilize, a lot of it relies on technology. We've certainly been able to expand the scope of what we do day-to-day, and to really make that, I guess, common practice for all of our athletes over this time.

We have a very decentralized model where we have maybe three dozen athletes here in Las Vegas. But the rest of the athletes, we have to interface with in a remote or some sort of a nontraditional consultation method. And we've had to do that with every athlete over this last, I guess, 12 weeks. And so technology is a big part, both in communication. And obviously, we use a lot of video chat these days as we're doing right now. But also just the remote tracking, things like athlete service platforms, whether you're getting subjective direct reports from athletes, or even those that were relying on objective data. Some of the wearable technology does not rely at all on human interaction and can provide some of the real-time updates on training loads, training response, and all those things that we need to be able to fine tune and optimize the athlete's experiences to getting ready for competition.

So I think what this phase has done is to really highlight the importance of objective data and has really strengthened our resolve in that front. And it's also, I think, highlighted the impact of human interaction as well. So you get both sides of that coin where, yeah, you can move remotely, you can do a lot of things that don't require human interface where things like germs can be shared. But there's also a role for being able to look somebody in the eyes and have a conversation, and to be able to engage and to, I guess, share a moment with an athlete. And that's something that we've been craving. And now that we're back in the building, we're able to do that, albeit from the nose up, as we're wearing face masks whenever we're interfacing and interacting with athletes. But it is a very nice reprieve, and it's a great thing now that we're back in our building and being able to support athletes with the human touch.

Closing text appears onscreen reading: “Make the most of your health while staying at home. Subscribe to our newsletter and get the latest content on COVID-19 along with insights, education, and advice you won’t find anywhere else.