Meet Aaron Nelson

[luckyman]

https://www.nba.com/pelicans/news/on...ve-new-orleans

During New Orleans’ summer league trip to Las Vegas in July, it was common to see Nelson filming video clips of Pelicans players jumping or doing squats, exercises that help identify whether a player is moving properly. Via technology created by the company Fusionetics – its founder, Mike Clark, has been a mentor for Nelson since 2000 – Nelson can quickly determine which corrections need to be made, sometimes based on lack of flexibility or muscle weaknesses. This identification is at the core of programs designed and tailored to the specific needs of individual players.

Core and mobility training is the thing now. Proper stretching is serious bidness.

[Pelicanidae]

“The point is to correct problems now, before you put players on the court,” Nelson explained. “The feedback from the athletes is usually very good. People will say things like, ‘My hips feel free,’ or ‘I have more range of motion in my ankle,’ or ‘I felt pain, but now it’s gone.’ ”

“If you try to drive your car with the parking brake on, you’re going to have to rev up your engine really, really high in order to get it to move,” Clark said, using an apt analogy to describe the correctable problems some players have. “If you’re running around a basketball court and your hips are stiff, or your ankles don’t rotate, you’re going to use way too much juice. Your body can’t recover. That’s why you’re starting to see so many of these young kids get hurt. They come into the league with tight ankles and tight hips, or their stomach (muscle) is weak.”

This is what really excites me. Obviously you don't wanna see someone like Zion or Jrue get injured, of course not, but the guys who are big concerns for me are guys like Ingram and Lonzo, who have already had so many injury problems in only a short time. If Nelson can come in and help them really free up their ankles, knees, hips, etc, and take away a lot of that pressure that has been giving them issues then we get a lot more out of them, and can judge them a lot better.

Gentry’s very first regular season game in October ’15 was a bad omen – a series of injuries forced New Orleans to sign point guard Nate Robinson as a street free agent, then immediately place him in the starting lineup against Steph Curry and defending NBA champion Golden State. That same night, 13th-year NBA veteran Kendrick Perkins was pushed into starting duty at center, while Ish Smith logged 38 minutes at backup point guard, mere hours after Smith joined Robinson as an emergency signee.

This is something that I never needed to be reminded of, and it made me sad. Well done. Please do not remind me.