Kitman Labs, the award-winning performance and health optimisation solutions company, today announced the appointment of Darcy Norman as US Head of Performance Science.
Clients of the sports science company will benefit from Darcy’s wealth of top-level experience in the global sports performance sector, including a FIFA World Cup success in 2014 as High-Performance Consultant for the German national football team.
Darcy has been a driving force behind the performance science revolution and enjoyed roles at Bayern Munich’s Fitness & Rehabilitation Coach (2008-2010) and AS Roma’s Director of Performance (2015-2018). Having also spent two spells as Performance Therapist/Coach, and Director of the Performance Innovation Team at EXOS, Darcy is an experienced coach, physio and trainer in football, athletic training, biomechanics, technology, data and fitness training.
His role at Kitman Labs will be to focus on working with teams to implement best practices for using advanced, dynamic analysis of athlete data to create meaningful change and he joins Kitman Labs during an exciting chapter in the company’s rapid global growth. He will also play a direct role in the company’s product roadmap and solutions development.
Darcy said: “I’m delighted to be joining Kitman Labs, an innovative company that is as passionate as I am about delivering simple, practical solutions to real problems concerning athlete performance and health.
“The sports performance industry is advancing rapidly and this puts me in a place where I can have a broad impact and provide real value for teams while working with some of the world’s premier data and sports scientists to build the next generation of performance optimisation solutions.
Kitman Labs recently added Bundesliga team FC Augsburg to its growing base of football clients, which also includes EPL clubs Everton and AFC Bournemouth, Scottish giants Celtic and Rangers and MLS teams LA Galaxy, Houston Dynamo and champions Toronto FC. Other sports customers include innovative and top teams in the NFL, NHL, MLB, NRL, and AFL and Rugby Union.
Stephen Smith, Founder and CEO of Kitman Labs, said: “I’m delighted to welcome Darcy, a globally-recognised innovator in the sports performance sector, to the Kitman Labs family.
“Darcy’s vast experience of top-level sport will bring a new dimension to our systems and partnerships with elite sports clubs. I’m really looking forward to seeing Darcy combine his practical experience with our award-winning solutions to help teams understand what is possible when they ask deeper, more meaningful questions of their performance data.”
The Kitman Labs Athlete Optimization Solution powers over 150 elite sport teams across the globe. Using the company’s unique outcome-driven analytics to inform daily and strategic decisions, these teams experience enhanced on-field performance, lower injury rates, and accelerated talent development.
“Traditional sports science solutions focus on basic reporting of daily data, and what happened but Kitman Labs has taken it a giant step further, because the company is pioneering new analytical techniques in a simple way on top of that data to provide proactive solutions for teams, which is essentially the end goal,” added Darcy.
“These allow coaching and performance staff to focus on the more important questions of what matters most and why injuries or changes in performance happen– the key questions that lead to determining precisely what’s next for improving athletes, processes and, most importantly, team results.”
ABOUT KITMAN LABS
At Kitman Labs, we’re committed to the evolution of performance. Through advanced statistical analysis, rigorous scientific research and unparalleled industry experience, our system evaluates athletic injury with unprecedented precision and embodies the cutting edge of injury risk prevention technology. We’re committed to harnessing data enabling our users to find the true sources of injury and performance – and to intervene before injuries ever occur. Kitman Labs’ Athlete Optimisation System recently won the inaugural Performance Technology of the Year prize at the prestigious BT Sport Industry Awards 2018. The System is proving increasingly popular within elite sport because, for the first time ever, individual athletes’ data is processed in one place. This enables coaches and sports science staff to interpret all individual data via real-time, intelligent alerts to help them understand athletes with unprecedented precision, make informed decisions and gain a competitive edge.
