In preparation for this year’s Olympic Games, getting treatments for warm-up or recovery physiotherapy was often limited to a Zoom session. Add to this the stress of being in travel quarantine and it’s clear that many athletes were forced out of their comfort zone, with stark changes to their routines.
For New Zealand’s Olympic athletes, sessions were often hampered by unpredictable lockdowns, forcing the athletes to develop greater self-reliance for their training regimes.
“In the weeks headed into the Olympics we were on the road, separated from our training staff, so another lockdown isn’t anything new from a training perspective,” said Tom Murray, who won Gold with the New Zealand rowing team in Tokyo.
Thankfully, wearable technology Myovolt provided an innovative solution for these athletes, knowing they can recover effectively and safely in any environment, whether it’s a hotel room or on the bus.
“I would strap Myovolt on, then get on with my morning. Regularly turning it on before breakfast, and not take it off until I had finished my warmup”, says Tom.
“Especially during my time on the road, I personally really leaned on my Myovolt to help with my recovery between sessions,” said Murray. “Myovolt was pretty much the only tech I was using for my body. I’ve found it incredibly helpful as a preventative measure when I’m going through tough training weeks and used it daily in the build-up to the Olympics.”
Built on science and cutting-edge technology – and endorsed by a growing number of Medtech universities and organizations – the wearable technology uses Focal Vibration to massage the tissues promoting circulation and lymphatic drainage, removing lactic acid or metabolic waste, causing faster recovery and easier body movement.
Myovolt, used by the NZ Olympic rowing team to help them prepare, warm and recover allowed them to perform at a very high level in Tokyo where the team achieved a record of three Gold and two Silver medals.
High-performance trainer and NZ Olympic team physician Dr Stuart Armstrong, who worked with the medal-winning New Zealand rowing teams, echoes Myovolt’s effectiveness for the traveling athletes. In particular, he points to Myovolt’s effectiveness in replacing some of the manual treatment support his staff would typically provide the athletes.
“With limited staff headed away with our Olympians, Myovolt has become a mobile stop-gap to make sure athletes are still able to get daily high-level treatment,” Dr. Armstrong says.
“Myovolt’s portability has ultimately been one of the big things to win athletes over. As some of the world’s top athletes, they’re getting offered novel tools all of the time. I can say that Myovolt is the only real ‘new’ technology being used by these sportspeople,” says Stuart
For the founders of Myovolt, this is the second time they have built wearable technology to support Olympic medalists, after creating the technology behind the “hot pants” used by the British and Australian Olympic cycling teams at the 2012 London and 2016 Rio games, resulting in more than 17 Gold medals.
“We developed Myovolt specifically for athletes to get physio-level musculoskeletal (MSK) treatment anytime, anywhere, and portability was key at Tokyo 2020,” said Steve Leftly, Founder at Myovolt. “Lots of confinement or travel can really increase stiffness or MSK issues and Myovolt gave the athletes treatment wherever they were without a physio.”
The technology was also with the New Zealand Paralympic wheelchair rugby team in Tokyo. Cody Everson, Captain of the NZ Paralympic rugby team has been using Myovolt for several years and traveled to Tokyo with it where it played a big part in his recovery. “We had a lot of downtime in the village, Myovolt was great to have with me in my room to do my own recovery processes away from the team environment,” said Everson.
Not limited to Olympic gold medalists, Myovolt is also widely deployed among clinicians, physios, trainers and anyone who needs muscle recovery or rehab. “We’re trying to help anyone with MSK or mobility issues with this technology, so it was great to have both Olympics and Paralympics athletes using it in Tokyo,” says Dr Dianne Jones, CTO and Founder at Myovolt.
