New Colorado coach Mike MacIntyre is keeping his practices open for the public to see. Fans see quarterback Connor Wood throwing to a bevy of new speedy receivers. They see the young secondary MacIntyre hopes can come of age after last year’s indoctrination by fire.
But what they won’t see is something that may be as important as passing, running and tackling. The Buffaloes will soon wear heart monitors at every practice. A band around their chests with electrodes will pick up signals from their hearts, all leading to data CU coaches hope to analyze to help increase the players’ recovery time, endurance and performance.
It’s all part of cutting edge technology from a Basque doctor named Inigo San Millan, director of the Sports Performance program at the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center in Aurora. The facility is part of the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus, a convenient connection for a first-year CU coach trying to find any edge he can to get his team out of the Pac-12 basement.
“We went there, and they shared their idea with us and I was blown away,” MacIntyre said. “I said: ‘We’ve got to do this! We’ve got to do this! We’ve got to do this!’
“To me, it gives us the best opportunity to really dive into our young men’s physical attributes and really have a measuring stick on it. It’s great for the well-being of the athlete and it can give us, if they might be malnutritioned, different ways to bring them back. … We’re really, really excited that our university is working with us on it. It’s a big deal.”
San Millan, 42, monitors how each player trains and fatigues. He does blood work, heart work and running tests.
“It’s going to help us recover quicker,” MacIntyre said. “It’ll help us at altitude. It’ll help us to find out different things with blood work and basically muscle depreciation after workouts to help us recover.”
San Millan became interested in sports science as a former “frustrated cyclist.” He came to Colorado State in 1992 to study sports exercise physiology. He rode competitively for a few years, returned to Spain to get his doctorate and spent the better part of a decade working with pro soccer teams and pro cyclists, including 16 Grand Tour podium finishers and two-time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador. He returned to Colorado in 2008 to take a faculty job at CU’s School of Medicine.
“The most important barometer that we measure is lactic acid or lactate,” said Millan, who also is working with the CU men’s and women’s basketball teams. “High-intensity exercise produces a lot of lactate. Lactate decreases muscle performance.
“Therefore, those athletes who clear out lactate more efficiently can last longer and go faster for the last part of the game.”
For now, CU is in the information gathering stage. It’ll take time before it can reap the benefits of the research. MacIntyre is a coach who took a chance on a program with seven consecutive losing seasons. He’s willing to take a chance on new technology.
“I’m very pleased that Coach MacIntyre is willing to take it to the next level,” San Millan said. “Football has historically been a very old-school sport. Not much evolved in the last decade as far as physical training. Where other sports are evolving, we take from other sports and tailor it for football.”
As for his rooting interest, he soon has a day of conflict. Both he and his wife graduated from Colorado State. On Sept. 1, CU opens the season against CSU.
“Now my wife says, ‘So what’s going on?’” San Millan said. “Yeah, but I work for CU now.”