Output Sports (www.outputsports.com), the Irish sports technology company, has announced that three world-renowned sports practitioners – Jo Clubb, Nic Gill and Les Spellman – have joined the company’s advisory board to help Output make elite sports science simple and available to a wider audience than ever previously possible.

Jo Clubb, a performance science consultant, has more than a decade of experience assisting professional sports athletes to achieve their optimal performance across numerous sports including with the Buffalo Bills (NFL), the Buffalo Sabres (NHL) and English Premier League teams, Chelsea and Brighton & Hove Albion. 

Nic Gill has more than 20 years of experience as a professional strength and conditioning (S&C) coach. For the last 14 years he has been the strength and conditioning coach for the New Zealand All Blacks, a period of significant international success for the team which has included more than 160 rugby test wins and the World Cup title in 2011 and 2015.

Elite speed performance coaches training Olympians and athletes

Les Spellman has emerged as one of America's elite speed performance coaches training Olympians and athletes in the NFL, NCAA, and USA rugby. He has coached athletes to medals at the Winter Olympics, worked with Heisman Trophy winners and trained top NFL draft picks.

Dr Martin O’Reilly, CEO and co-founder, Output Sports said: "At Output we are driven to merge state-of-the art R&D with a simple and efficient user experience for exercise testing and monitoring. We are grateful and excited to have assembled this world-class board. Jo, Nic and Les will ensure our system development will always match the needs of practitioners and athletes at all levels of sport.”

Output Sports, headquartered at NovaUCD, was co-founded in 2018 by Dr Martin O'Reilly, Dr Darragh Whelan, Julian Eberle and Professor Brian Caulfield as a spin-out from the UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science and the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics following the completion of Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Funding.

In February 2020 Output Sports launched Output Capture, which uses advanced signal processing and machine learning techniques to test and track multiple components of athletic performance with a single matchbox sized wearable sensor and phone camera. Output Hub amalgamates this performance data into one centralised source to allow for longitudinal analysis, reporting and programming. Using Output S&C coaches, sport scientists and rehab professionals, can now fully understand and optimise their athletes’ performance using a single, user-centric and fully integrated system.

The company currently has clients in 18+ countries across 30+ sports, at professional and elite levels, including in the GAA Championship, English Premier League, La Liga, Major League Baseball, Six Nations Rugby and the NBA. The company has also developed a significant customer base in grassroots sports, high schools, universities and rehab/performance clinics.

Jo Clubb said: “Given our similar values and passions, I wanted to work with Output Sports to see how we can develop simple and scalable sports science products. I’m interested to learn about the development process for sports technology, as I feel this will improve my own understanding as a practitioner when I integrate technology in the applied setting.”

Nic Gill said: “The challenge with sport tech has always been about how the information can improve some aspect of training/performance. Output Sports has the potential to provide athletes and practitioners with meaningful insights into various aspects of athletic performance that could improve how we train and perform.”

'Accurate, easy and affordable ways to visualise data'

Spellman said: “I really believe in the Output Sports product and the people behind it. The team are always looking for methods of improving their system and they understand the importance in practitioner input to help with the same. I think the future of training depends on accurate, easy and affordable ways to visualise data to help with real time decision making. Output Sports is making that happen.”

Jo, Nic and Les join the existing members of the Output Sports’ advisory team, Professor Brian Caulfield, Director, Insight SFI Centre for Data Analytics at UCD and Dr Tom Comyns, University of Limerick, a former Irish Olympian who is an S&C coach to a number of Ireland's Olympic and Paralympic athletes.

Output Sport has to date raised €1.3 million in a seed funding round which was led by the Atlantic Bridge University Fund. Other investors in this round were Elkstone Partners, Enterprise Ireland, and angel investors, John Hearne, co-founder and former CEO of Curám Software along with Leinster Rugby players, Adam Byrne and Dan Leavy.

The company is currently looking to raise a scaling round of over €3 million to grow the Output team internationally, expand its client base and action on its mission ethos of making elite sports science simple and available to a wider audience than ever previously possible.