Sports Science Reveals the Secret Behind Cristina Neagu's Unstoppable Handball Shot

Jonas Strebel, assistant and strength & conditioning coach for FC Aarau Women (Red Boots Aarau), shares insights into how integrated athlete monitoring and GPS-based systems like KINEXON are transforming training periodization, performance monitoring, and injury risk management in women’s football.

In college basketball, players spend nearly 80% of their time in practice — yet many teams lack effective systems to monitor practice shooting and translate those insights into improved game performance. Without a structured approach, coaches often rely on subjective observations rather than objective data to assess player performance. This disconnect leads to missed opportunities for talent identification and development, limiting a team’s ability to tailor training to individual player needs.

Managing the demands of the volleyball season while keeping athletes healthy and ready to perform is a chess match for coaches. Tyler Friedrich, the Marie and Alex Shipman Associate Athletics Director of Applied Performance at Stanford University, has refined this approach for the Cardinal women’s volleyball program. His philosophy: train hard enough to stay resilient, but smart enough to remain fresh.

In elite sport, the goal is not just to measure, but to measure with purpose. At Benfica, performance monitoring begins with a question. What do we want to know? What outcome are we trying to influence? Data collection, then, is a means to an end: informed decision-making that improves the physical readiness, longevity, and consistency of athletes across multiple disciplines. 

In elite team sports, performance is often decided by the smallest details – how efficiently an athlete sprints, how they handle fatigue, and how well a team manages training loads throughout the season. Coaches and performance staff need more than just numbers – they need meaningful insights, in real time, to make the right calls when it matters. 

The Phase Index Widget is a powerful new feature in the KINEXON Sports App that provides coaches with deep insights into training drills. By displaying the normative range of key performance metrics for different drill types, it helps coaches understand typical versus high-end workload demands, compare phases across single sessions (POST) and historical data (DEVELOP), and design training sessions that optimize player development while preventing overtraining.

What if youth football wasn’t just about the score — but about the players who shape the game? That’s the bold vision behind Wings Cup 2025, hosted by RB Leipzig, and why KINEXON Sports proudly partnered with this first-of-its-kind event. From April 22 – 24, 2025, the tournament became the world’s first global youth football competition to feature live player and ball tracking — marking a new era in data-driven player development. 

The Ragin’ Cajuns football performance staff enters the heart of the offseason following spring camp, facing player performance and conditioning challenges common to other American Football programs nationwide. Their approach: optimized practice schedules designed to help players reach performance goals, backed by data.

In the high-performance landscape of professional basketball, the pursuit of championships is a given. Yet, true impact often stems from a deeper purpose — one that prioritizes sustained athlete development, both physically and mentally. This perspective underscores a broader definition of success: positively influencing performance on a day-to-day basis, beyond wins and losses.

In the high-stakes world of competitive basketball, small margins make the difference between winning and losing. This is where optimization becomes the cornerstone of athletic performance. The focus is not just on finding a magic formula, but on creating the conditions for athletes to consistently operate at their best.

As basketball training evolves, teams are embracing data-informed insights to augment shooting efficiency. With every shot carrying potential season-changing weight in competition, refining practice intensity and replicating in-game pressure are key to gaining a competitive edge.

March Madness is one of the most intense and physically demanding periods in collegiate basketball. The congested schedule, high-pressure stakes, and minimal time for recovery require an evidence-based approach to reach and maintain peak performance while mitigating injury risk throughout the tournament. 

The landscape of professional basketball is evolving rapidly, with teams placing a greater emphasis on performance optimization and injury prevention. In a highly competitive environment like the EuroLeague, where the ultimate goal is to win games and championships, maintaining peak player performance while minimizing injuries is a fundamental challenge. 

Every coach knows the feeling – standing on the sidelines before a game, confident that the team is fully prepared. The training week went well, the players were engaged, and everything felt right. And when the final whistle confirms the win, the inevitable question arises: 
What made this week so effective? How can we replicate it?

Knee injuries are a major concern in women’s basketball, with ACL injuries accounting for a significant portion of these issues. Managing player workload is key to injury prevention, but achieving the right balance between training and recovery is challenging. The Texas A&M Women’s Basketball team faced this dilemma and turned to a data-driven approach to optimize player health and performance.