Developing and maintaining an injury risk reduction strategy at the Kansas City Royals with Austin Driggers

Pacey Performance Podcast

This week on the Pacey Performance Podcast, Rob is speaking to Senior Director of Performance Science at the Kansas City Royals, Austin Driggers.

Although often flying under the radar, Austin is highly respected in the field having come up through the US Olympic Committee system working with winter sport athletes under the tutelage of Brad DeWeese.

This episode kicks off with Austin explaining how the Royals have developed a system which assesses each player throughout the year to understand their strengths and weaknesses. This then helps him and the rest of the team design programmes to keep each athlete fit and competing across the gruelling 180+ game season.

We also chat about how he has tapped into and learnt from other environments such as business. This is a fascinating part of the episode as sport can often seem in a bubble with people looking in but not much going the other way.

If you're aim is to reduce injuries with your athletes, check out this episode with Austin and press play on your chose podcast player.

Main talking points -

• What assessments Austin uses
• Gold standards of practice
• What has entered and exited their assessment process
• Maturation of sports science in baseball
• Integrating sports science with data science, biomechanics etc
• Learning from other enviroments
• What Austin has learned from the world of business