The developers for Omegawave technology were former athletes themselves. When our duties as athletes were finished in the former Soviet Union, different developers became different professionals in the sport machine. I was more in a position of a coach. Other partners were in positions of sport scientists where they used conventional approach to testing of Russian athletes. The conventional approach meaning muscle biopsies, blood lactates, blood panels, stress tests etc. By that time it became apparent that the process of testing was very insufficient.
First of all, only few times a year that type of testing could be applied due to its stressfulness. It was invasive so you had to use needles to draw blood and muscle tissues for samples and so on. Obviously the athletes didn’t appreciate that very much. In addition, the information wasn’t timely available, as the samples were needed to send to labs where they would be analyzed. By the time the information was available to coaches it wasn’t that relevant anymore because as time changes, so does the condition of the athletes. The other limiting factor was that there was absolutely no connection between this scientific information and the training process. So when it came to building training processes, lots of coaches didn’t appreciate the data cause they could not apply it into the decision making.
In that stage, it was clear that for technology to help coaches to be successful, it had to be non-invasive, non-stressful, the information would have to be available right at the spot, and more importantly the information needed to be collected not in the lab but in the athletes’ environment. Only under those conditions and assuming the information gives coaches direct guidelines to training applications, that type of technology would be successful.
Our technology matches all those criteria, its non-invasive and non-stressful, it’s quick and easy to apply, and the information is available right away. It has direct guidelines for coaches on how to adjust training process.
For the first time in sports science we could start seeing dynamic changes, because we could test athletes every day. Unlike in the previous experiences when they were tested once or twice a year or in some cases once a month, being able to test athletes frequently allowed us not to see just a single frame but actually the whole movie.
We could see exactly how athletes respond to different training. We could be more proactive at changing the training and the recovery sessions to optimize their performance and to decrease their injury rates. By that time the Omegawave training philosophy started to take form, and eventually became something that has helped elite athletes throughout the world in different sports.
Val Nasedkin is one of the developers of Omegawave technology and an expert in physiological readiness. He is a former elite athlete and a current coach. He is also in the advisory board for the Nike Sparq athletic performance division.