The Wahoo Sports Science Center
The ribbon just got cut on the new Wahoo Sports Science Center. I toured this facility last month and spent most of a day there. I'm reporting on that now, in text and pictures. As usual, if you see a really nice professionally taken photograph, I probably didn't take it. If you see a pic that looks like a 12 year-old took it on a disposable camera, photo credit to me!
The Center is in Boulder, Colorado, and it’s there rather than, say, Atlanta (Wahoo Fitness’s headquarters) because there are more athletes in and proximate to Boulder. This speaks to the point of the Center. It’s not – as I would have surmised – primarily a facility for academics who’d like to investigate queries using a state of the art lab.
It’s not a typical commercial enterprise, with a membership and premium services at premium pricing. It could be both of those, and maybe it should be. Maybe it will be in the future. But it isn’t. The first (of two) purposes of the Center is to support Wahoo athletes with a suite of services not easily available. What are those services?
The most obvious is the stress testing lab, with gas analyzers, a treadmill and (of course) a Wahoo KICKR Bike, that can among other things calculate your oxygen consumption. While this is widely available at hospitals and universities that have these performance metrics on their radar – I had my VO2Max test done at UCLA Medical Center last year as part of a cardiopulmonary workup – the luxury of a KICKR Bike and a Woodway treadmill is not typical. At UCLA it was a dumb stationary bike and even though I brought my own cycling shoes and pedals they won’t let me use them. So, I chose the treadmill for my test at UCLA. Details (like getting tested on a proper bike with proper pedals) matter to me, and they will to Wahoo's athletes.
That same pain room is also set up to test blood lactate accumulation (above) and sweat rate (below). I watched the Center’s head, Neal Henderson, demo a test, which is no trivial matter. It’s not waterboarding, but to call it asphyxiation is not far off. Followed by needle poking or, in Neal’s case, needle poking every 3 minutes during the asphyxiation.
This is pretty typical stuff that tells an athlete when he or she is fit, and tells a coach whether the training is working. Implicit in this is the need to perform tests like this multiple times during the year and that gets really expensive if your only source is a hospital. It’s also inconvenient if that hospital is a place to which you must travel, hence the Boulder location for Wahoo's Center. (Though, by this reasoning, Wahoo could easily have placed this Center in Girona, Spain; but you still have to man the facility and we'll talk about personnel in a minute.)
Below is a pic of cycling legend Alex Stieda, who was there on the same day I was and at age-61 can still turn the pedals in anger (as Phil Liggett says).
The Center also has a Master Spas H2X Challenger 18D Pro. It's the same model used by TO an Rinnie, and Ben Hoffman. It's much taller than my old Endless Pool, and would not be there were Wahoo not devoted to multisport. Were it me – the watcher of the company nickels – I don't know if I could've pulled the trigger on this judging by my Endless Pool experience, installing a pair of 60 amp circuits, paying the heating bill, and a hot and humid room that must be dedicated to the pool only. Nevertheless a pool they have, because this Center is eye-popping in what it offers to professional Wahooligans. (I am curious whether the additional depth of the Master Spas unit enables a more realistic swim experience.)
There is a room chock-full-o’ KICKR Bikes and ROLLR smart rollers, each of which has their value (I have a ROLLR in my workshop and half the time I’ll self-select this over a smart bike). Yes, this is pretty droolworthy room.
It used to be that my muscles were primary, secondary, propulsion-specific versus stabilizing, or just non-involved in an activity. The older I get the more any muscle of mine seems to atrophy if not actively, routinely, aggressively used. If a sparely-used muscle gets called into service it complains mightily. Because my weight doesn’t diminish in scale to the loss of muscular power I'm a lot more prone to injury due to misadventure. A wrong step. Bending down to pick something up.
Neal has chosen to include a “strength and movement specialist” in the Center and it’s Jeff Hoobler, above. I have always downplayed the need for core and stabilizing muscles that support and balance. Boring! I spent the afternoon with Jeff and what he does is more necessary to me, now, at this time of my life, than the sexier lab-type stuff.
Here is the team. Left to right: Dr. Ginger Gottschall, director of applied research; Mac Cassin, senior sports scientist; Neal Henderson, Head of Sports Science; Rupert Harold, operations manager; and Jeff Hoobler. this is the reason the Center is not in Girona. If Neal and his staff lived there, that's where the Center would be. The Center is nice, but the staff is the secret sauce.
There are some additional folk at the Center, and “The Knowledge” podcast emanates from here. Besides the KICKR Studio this was my favorite room because I don’t podcast but if I did this is equipment Joe Rogan aspires to if only Spotify would pay him enough money.
As someone who's owned a business and made payroll for most of the past 36 years I'm unable to keep myself from trying to find the business angle. What’s around the corner that’s not in plain view? The venal, greedy me wants to know where the return is.
For sure, Wahoo is making available to its athletes a state-of-the-art facility that will act as a glue, to keep them from bolting to a competitor. Beyond that, the Center will serve to inform the content and capabilities of Wahoo X and Wahoo is quite up-front about that. Just to remind you, Wahoo X is the content, experience and training engine that incorporates SYSTM and RGT. SYSTM is the relaunch of Sufferfest, plus additional functionality. RGT is the massive multiplayer game, in the same broad category as Zwift.
There are certain brands that have a great skill for thinking 5 moves ahead. SRAM comes to mind and the way it so masterfully absorbed its acquisitions, out of which sprung a full groupset and made it a major component powerhouse.
Wahoo’s particular skill is (according to me) its ability among those in its competitive set to produce a functioning, coherent, connected, intuitive and easy-to-use ecosystem.
Nike has its Sport Research Laboratory. Wahoo now does too, and we should expect the Center to become a think tank for Wahoo X development.
