(Ep065) Andy Barr: Rehabbing Kevin Durant’s Achilles Injury and Pioneering Sports Science in the NBA & Premier League
Sometimes the only way to begin a new chapter in life is to painfully end the previous one. So it was for Andy Barr, whose pro soccer career with Luton Town in England was cut short by injury. With help from the player’s union, he pursued a degree in physiotherapy and right out of college, found himself back in top-level football with Bolton Wanderers FC, where he was part of a forward-thinking sports medicine team.
Andy helped reduce injury rates at Bolton, Southampton, and Manchester City by 40 to 60%, while also pioneering the use of heart rate monitoring and other technology. He then seized the chance to work in the NBA and enabled the New York Knicks to make similar advances. Founding Quantum Performance allowed him and his colleagues to scale elite-level training to not only pro basketball, soccer, and football players, but also weekend warriors. Andy helped Kevin Durant return to play, is consulting with the Brooklyn Nets, and recently launched the Q-Bands prehab/training/rehab system.
In this episode, Andy shares:
Why the best kind of ability for any athlete is availability
What role communication and collaboration played in helping Kevin Durant return from an Achilles tear
How Mike D’Antoni was ahead of his time with load management
Why sports science always needs to be all about the players and the game
How risk taking and wanting to increase his impact took him from Manchester City to Manhattan and led to creating the Q-Bands training and rehab system
Keep up with Andyon Instagram @andybarrpt, learn more about Quantum Performance atquantumperformance.co and check out Q-Bands athttps://www.qbands.co/products/quantum-performance-bands
