Sports Performance

US News - Stanford Medicine Children's Health

Successful athletes consistently perform at their best—safely and efficiently. Our technology and experience can help your young athlete use their individual talents to achieve their goals.

The Motion Analysis & Sports Performance Laboratory is unique in its ability to help athletes excel. Our technology captures the body’s motion and force and translates it into actionable data that our team of experts uses to create custom improvement plans for your child.

For athletes at the top of their game, our technology identifies ways to take their performance to the next level. By taking a virtual look beneath the skin, we can pinpoint problem spots and fix them before injuries develop. If your child is injured, we act as a bridge between physical therapy and safe return to sport. Doctors often refer patients to us to assess whether the patient has recovered enough to return to play.

Our methods are based on rigorous science with proven evidence of results. During your child’s visit, he or she will wear reflective markers that help us measure the intensity of every sprint during actual sports activities and see how long it takes young athletes to recover after hard work. Our team of researchers has published several studies on intermittent workload and recovery during field sports. We have also published data documenting the stress placed on the foot during sprinting, cutting, and landing, helping us understand what causes stress fractures and how to prevent them. We can help your child understand his or her recovery after injury, accurately recording every step in the path back to full health.

Our team includes doctors, human movement scientists, physical therapists, and athletic trainers. We have decades of elite coaching, training, and sports medicine experience and have produced top student athletes that have gone on to receive scholarships at major universities and compete for Team USA at the Olympics. We all work together and harness the power of your child’s unique movement to help maximize performance.

The lab adds to the depth of children’s sports and orthopedic services offered at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health locations across the Bay Area. Our lab works in conjunction with the Young Athletes Academy, our highly skilled team of orthopedic surgeons, the Sports Medicine Program and the rest of the world-class facilities at Stanford to provide the best outcomes for your child.


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Helping an adaptive sport athlete succeed

Ella Rodriguez is an impressive adaptive sport athlete, playing wheelchair basketball, dancing and participating in several track and field events. A visit to the Motion Analysis & Sports Performance Laboratory helped her take her performance to the next level.


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Lab helps athletes recover stronger

Kaleigh Castillo had surgery after she got hurt playing soccer, and she never felt quite like her old self afterward. One visit to the Motion Analysis & Sports Performance Laboratory helped her see why. The lab’s technology helped pinpoint lingering issues with Kaleigh’s motion and forces as she moved, uncovering a huge risk for another injury.