Jayhawk Athletic Performance Lab teams up with KU Football to elevate pro day training

LAWRENCE — The Jayhawk Athletic Performance Laboratory (JAPL), a sport performance-based research center housed under the Achievement & Assessment Institute, is collaborating with Kansas Athletics to help KU football players better prepare for the 2025 NFL Scouting Combine and Big 12 Pro Day through technology and data analysis. 

The NFL Combine — ongoing through March 3 in Indianapolis – and pro days are annual multiday events where select college football athletes participate in tests designed to assess athlete health and biometrics, physical performance characteristics and potential for success at the professional level. Only around 250-330 football athletes receive an invitation each year, and this year, four Jayhawks have been invited to participate in the NFL Combine, and 13 will be participating in the Big 12 Pro Day from KU.   

The JAPL, a member of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, focuses on optimizing high performance in athletic settings by utilizing top-of-the-line technology like force plates, motion capture systems, accelerometers and vertical jump testing systems. Collaborating with Kansas Football for a pro day-specific strength and conditioning program gives the KU athletes a leg up while helping further JAPL research.  

Quincy Johnson, assistant director of the JAPL and assistant professor in the Department of Health, Sport & Exercise Sciences, is leading JAPL’s research and analysis for the pro day program. Johnson has done extensive research on college football athletes, including his most recent publication on key performance indicators for college American football starters. He uses this research to better inform data collection and resulting recommendations.

“We are taking what we have found through our research and work with other KU teams to really focus in on pro day specific questions like, ‘How much weight is enough weight for athletes to lift and relative to their maximum weight that they can lift?’ ‘Does it matter if they lift as much as they can or as fast as they can?’ ‘How fast can they sprint?’” he said. 

In collaboration with Kansas Football performance staff, JAPL researchers begin with logistics and initial planning of the training approach. During this phase, they work to identify how many athletes will be training, how often they will be training, the resources needed to evaluate and train them, and what approach may be best to get them to peak performance for the big day.  

As researchers develop the training approach, a critical element is conducting an athlete needs analysis, creating an athletic performance testing battery and identifying key performance indicators, Johnson said. The athlete needs analysis is an important evaluation of three key components that contribute to athletic performance: bioenergetics, biomechanics and common injuries.  

Bioenergetic demands relate to the primary energy system utilized during each event at the Pro Day, a biomechanical analysis relates to how athletes move their bodies, and an analysis of common football injuries helps the practitioner understand potential risks and the mechanisms for injury, Johnson said.

Once the data is collected, JAPL researchers utilize it to make suggestions to the Kansas Football performance staff overseeing the pro day training and to monitor adaptations to training and neuromuscular fatigue. 

“It’s a very collaborative relationship. We help structure and guide the data collection and make sure that it is valid and reliable. From there, we pass it along to Coach (Matt) Gildersleeve and Coach (Eric) Scott, and they bridge the gap between research and performance,” Johnson said.  

What makes this collaboration especially effective is that the research and data collection is performed under real-world conditions, not inside a lab. 

“In a lot of sports research, researchers try to recreate something in a lab under different conditions that players normally wouldn’t be in,” said Sam Norwood, an exercise physiology doctoral student and a member of the JAPL research team. “Being able to monitor and collect data during live practice or actual games gives us a more accurate picture that can then better inform training.”  

JAPL has worked together with Kansas Football in the past, but this is the first time they have partnered up for the Pro Day training. Norwood said that because the training group for the Pro Day is much smaller, they can provide more personalized training, leading to optimum results. 

“I think it is one of the leading reasons why we are progressing forward and getting positive results. We have a couple more weeks, and we’re hoping that we'll be able to continue this growth and help these guys be at their best,” Norwood said.