[00:00:00] Tom Kelly: Today, we're with Jim Becker. Jim, are you at home in Bozeman right now?

[00:00:04] Jim Becker: I'm in the office, actually, at MSU.

[00:00:07] Tom Kelly: Great. And I know that we're all kind of getting anxious for this season. I was looking at the forecast for this weekend, and there's snow coming to Montana. Right.

[00:00:16] Jim Becker: It's coming. Yeah. The higher peaks are turning white now we keep going out for trail runs going. Oh, is there enough to slide on here. Right. And there's if you like your ski bases but. …

[00:00:26] Tom Kelly: Yeah well, there's always enough to ski on. But yeah you're, you're right on the basis. So really appreciate you joining us here today to talk about the impact that you've had on US Biathlon. Just to get started here. Give us a little background on yourself. And I'm really curious, I know you've landed in Montana, but what's your background?

[00:00:43] Jim Becker: So I grew up on the East Coast, just outside Boston. Didn't … we alpine skied as a family, but didn't. Never Nordic skied at all. Went to school at Middlebury College in Vermont, which has a very good ski team, and I knew that I knew the athletes, but I didn't really know the sport of biathlon kind of existed. You know, it wasn't until we moved to Montana that we got into Nordic skiing and the sport of biathlon, so.

[00:01:12] Tom Kelly: So what were the steps once you got to Montana? What were the steps for you to get onto cross-country skis and ultimately carry a rifle?

[00:01:19] Jim Becker: Yeah. So, you know, we'd always alpine skied, we'd go ski tours in the backcountry. We really enjoyed sliding on snow. We were looking for new things to do in the winter. We saw biathlon in the Olympics in 2018, and just said, ‘that looks so cool.’ We couldn't get enough of it. We watched every race in those Olympics, having never seen it before. And we just had to go try it. And you know, West Yellowstone around here puts on some great trail events. And so we went down, tried one of those, and we were hooked. We were all in. We went out, bought skate skis, bought rifles, you know, showed up for the first day of practice, didn't really know how to use anything. But we said we're going to figure out this sport.

[00:01:58] Tom Kelly: When you were watching it, though, on television, on NBC in 2018, what were some of those things that really brought out the excitement of biathlon as a sport to you?

[00:02:07] Jim Becker: It was just so cool to watch how things could change in an instant, right? You know, one athlete is leading the race. They come in to shoot, they miss a target. All of a sudden, they're on the penalty loop. Somebody else goes out in the lead. Right? All the way up to, like, the last shoot. You didn't really know what was going to happen. It was just exciting the entire time. Also, as an athlete, you kind of really appreciated the fitness of these individuals and how hard they're working and how fast they're moving. And I've come to appreciate that even more, you know, really getting to know the sport.

[00:02:42] Tom Kelly: Your career has been in kinesiology and biomechanics for the layman. Tell us what that means. And what do you do in that field?

[00:02:51] Jim Becker: Yeah. So, big picture kinesiology. Basically, it's just the study of human movement. And from a biomechanical perspective, we're looking at what are the forces that generate that movement? What are the forces that are applied to your body doing that movement? How do we quantify the movement? Some movements may be really good in terms of beneficial. We want this pattern. This is good technique. Some might be not so good if you move this way. We apply a lot of force to this structure. And that's how we get injuries. So we're trying to understand what's good performance what's optimal movement patterns what might lead to injury. We also overlay a lot of the physiology of movement with that looking at the oxygen, the athletes consuming their efficiency. Because all of this ties together when you really want to optimize performance.

[00:03:46] Tom Kelly: You know, I want to go to the injury portion because I think a lot of us will look at this and we'll think, okay, this is going to help people be more efficient in their technique, but talk to me a little bit more about that injury factor and how good technique and the things that you're analyzing can help prevent injuries.

[00:04:03] Jim Becker: Yeah, a lot of it is, you know, if you think about common injuries, right? Maybe you start skiing a lot, and you haven't skied a lot in the fall. You haven't roller-skied, right, and your elbows start getting really sore, right? And maybe when we actually look at how are you poleing, we notice, you know, rather than like keeping the elbows bent and using the big muscles in your back to drive the shoulders back, you kind of just extend your elbows into the ground, right? And we're really skiing with a tricep press rather than using our shoulders. Right. So now you're overloading those tendons. You do that day in, day out. It's not going to take long before those elbows are going to start talking to you. Right? We could apply that same analogy to your knee. Maybe if you don't perfectly stack up over the ski, you're a little bit off the ski at an angle you go to push off. We're applying a little bit to your knee, and you're starting to compress one side of your knee. Do that over and over. You're going to start feeling it. So, you know, those are the kind of things we can pick out and say, hey, that's not really optimal. That might be loading this tissue in a way that if you keep doing this, it's going to cause problems.

[00:05:12] Tom Kelly: You were recently down at Soldier Hollow with the US Biathlon Team, and I know that what you've provided through Montana State to the team has been very beneficial the last few years. Let's go back to the origin of this program. How did this partnership with Montana State and US Biathlon first come into being? Yeah.

[00:05:30] Jim Becker: A lot of it. Like like a lot of things. It was just a, a combination of people being in the right place at the right time. And just kind of luck. So it started, um, just a random conversation after the master's biathlon season at Crosscut. One time, I was talking to the head coach. I said, you know, what kind of testing do you guys do for your team? And kind of looked at me like, what do you mean, testing? I said, okay, you know, we should talk. We've got all of these lab facilities at MSU. Maybe we can we can do something. And we started very simple. Just some assessment of shooting technique. Right. Which, when you really look at it, it's very similar to an assessment you do for balance control. Right. And so our lab did that very well. And that was very easy for us to start. And then as we started doing more, I was looking for okay, who are students who want to get involved with this research? One of the students in our program at the time was Tim Cobb, whose dad, Max Cobb, was the CEO of US Biathlon at that time. And I think it was Max that actually connected us with Armin and the coaching staff and said, hey, you know, you might want to talk to these people. We had a very kind of preliminary initial conversation. And, this was probably four years ago now at Soldier Hollow, and said, It. Maybe there's some stuff we can do here that could help the team. And then as I started talking with Lowell and the high-performance staff, you know, we started very, very simply of maybe we'll just do VO2 max tests, right? And then it's just built and built and built from there. To the kind of the whole sport science services program that we have currently.

[00:07:09] Tom Kelly: When you first started doing this testing with the athletes, were they inquisitive? Were they kind of worried about this at all? Or but what was … how was the reception by the athletes?

[00:07:20] Jim Becker: It was really positive. I think I mean, I think there was a little bit of, of healthy skepticism, I'd say in terms of, um, you know, is this really going to help me? Right? Because I think maybe some of the athletes, um, you know, you might have an experience where you do some testing, and if you don't see the benefits right away, you become a little skeptical. Why am I doing this? So we had a little bit of that, but we really tried to involve the athletes in the process take their feedback. And I think they have come to a point where they know, like we're our job here is really to work with the athlete and help the athlete first. That's our overarching goal here, is help the athletes. I think on another level, I've heard from lots of them. It was, you know, they know their competitors in Europe are doing this kind of testing, right. You see it all over social media in the spring and the summer. And, you know, they were kind of like, why aren't why aren't we doing that as well? Right? We want to compete in the same pool. We want to be just as good. And, you know, they were like, yeah, I'm really excited now that we're doing everything that I know all the other athletes are doing. So, the response has been pretty positive.

[00:08:28] Tom Kelly: We're going to talk about some of the details of the testing in a minute, but I would imagine that over time, you've expanded those tests that you're doing with the team. And what you're doing today is probably a lot more sophisticated than it was three years ago.

[00:08:39] Jim Becker: Oh, absolutely. It's kind of grown exponentially over the last three years. I mean, we started very simply. Let's just do a VO2 max test and maybe measure some lactate profiles so we can give you training zones. Right. And then, as we started seeing things come up of why is somebody maybe not as efficient at certain speeds as we would like? Well, that gets back to the ski technique, which means now we need to actually really quantify that. So now we've that led us to we need to do 3D biomechanical analysis. We need to look at your positioning and the forces you apply. Right. And so it just kind of expanded from there. We know that's good. Now why aren't you doing it in a race. Well let's look at your tactical performance in the race. Right. And it just grows and grows and grows.

[00:09:23] Tom Kelly: Now, I know you go and do these tests literally around the world with the team. Can you give us a sense of where you've been conducting testing over the years?

[00:09:31] Jim Becker: Yeah. So, the most common for sure is Soldier … not Soldier … Lake Placid. We'll go typically to the team camp in June and the team camp in August, and we kind of have the standard battery of tests that we'll do. So that gives us a really good preseason and then kind of an end-of-summer checkup. And then we'll … the rest of it depends kind of on where athletes are. So we'll go down to Soldier Hollow, usually like this last summer we were down there, did testing for the junior national team, as well as some of the team Soho kids that were there. Well, last year we traveled with the team to their preseason on-snow camp and to do some work. We basically, the idea was we know how they look on a treadmill, roller skiing. Let's see how that changes. When they go on to snow. And what kind of feedback can we do there? We've also did some work in Antholz last winter at being the Olympic test event. That was all around tactical optimization. And basically, how do we best approach the Olympic course to try to optimize our success on that course? So yeah, we've been all over, and then we do a lot in Bozeman, of course, in our home lab. You know, athletes are coming through here all the time. We have some athletes that are based here. So they'll come in and just do training sessions in the lab quite frequently.

[00:10:53] Tom Kelly: When you're out on location, be that at Soldier Hollow or Lake Placid. Is it mostly data collection you're doing there? And then you bring that material back to Montana State for analysis.

[00:11:07] Jim Becker: It's a little bit of both. So, like when we're in Lake Placid, we'll typically schedule the testing. You know, it might be 3 or 4 days worth of testing to get through the entire national team. And we work very diligently to say, okay, we'll test for athletes in the morning. We process all of that data that afternoon so we can try to meet with the athletes the very next day. Right. And so there's this rapid turnaround, um, and that's gotten better and better the more we've done the testing, we put a lot of effort into making sure the data is available to the athletes and the coaches immediately. Some of the other projects and testing we do is, is a little bit more, either exploratory or research oriented. And so some of that, it might be like we collect it and we take the data back, we look at it, we then send a report back to the team. So it kind of just depends on what the goal of that session is.

[00:12:08] Tom Kelly: It is fascinating, though, that you can go to a camp, you can test in the morning, sit down with an athlete in the afternoon, and give them personalized feedback.

[00:12:18] Jim Becker: Yep. Yeah. I mean, we spend a lot of time, a lot of effort trying to to make that happen. You know, often to the point where, like, we might be in the middle of a test, one of my graduate students is out in the hall talking to Armin, going through the report, and Armin said, hey, you know, this would be really cool. Could you show this? And so great we go that evening. We're rewriting the code to generate the analysis. Great. Armin wanted to see this the next day. Here, Armin, this is what you wanted to see, right? So we really try to personalize it like that.

[00:12:46] Tom Kelly: You're a professor at Montana State. Are you bringing along students or interns to help you with this analysis?

[00:12:52] Jim Becker: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this … you couldn't do this if it was just me, right? There's just too much work for for one person. So typically when we'll go to Lake Placid, I take a team of three or sometimes four students with me. Usually it's a mixture of graduate students, occasionally undergraduate students who are really talented and want to get that experience. Yeah.

[00:13:14] Tom Kelly: And I would imagine that that's a pretty cool gig to be able to take a little time out of school, go to Lake Placid, and learn about biathlon.

[00:13:23] Jim Becker: Yeah. For most of the students, you know, they get a ton out of that. It's a really unique experience. You know, they're getting to apply. You know they learn about all the theory in their coursework. But like okay, this is how it's actually done in the real world, right? Here's how you do the test. Here's how you, the coaches, and the athletes are using that data. Right? And then the students become fans of the sport. So we have a couple big televisions in our lab here. You know, I can tell you all winter, as soon as the races start, everybody's in the lab at 6 a.m. to watch the race, right? So, yeah.

[00:13:55] Tom Kelly: That's great. Let's geek out a little bit. And, uh, even if you're going to go beyond the understanding of our listeners, tell us about some of the things that you're doing, the things that you're testing and analyzing, trying to utilize to help the athletes perform better.

[00:14:13] Jim Becker: Sure. Yeah. So our testing, kind of you can think of it as we have two buckets, right? We have the standard kind of performance testing that we do. And then we have special projects that might be more of a one-off. So under the standard performance testing, we have basic physiologic capacity testing. Right. So the athletes are skiing on a treadmill. They ski faster and faster and faster, with their hooked up to a metabolic cart. So we're measuring their oxygen consumption, right? And we're trying to look at their maximal aerobic capacities. That's a very important variable in terms of endurance performance along the way. If we know their oxygen consumption we can look at their efficiency or their economy of movement at different speeds. And then we're also stopping the treadmill every couple of minutes a little finger prick, you take a blood lactate sample similar to as if you measure blood glucose. Right. That's a good marker of their metabolism tells us how are they shifting from aerobic to anaerobic sources. And so from that we can give them really detailed feedback on specific training zones and where they should be targeting depending on the goal intensity of a session. So that's the physiologic piece. What drives a lot of that efficiency is their technique. Right. And so we have to quantify their actual movement quantify the biomechanics. So we're using full 3D motion capture right. This gives us a skeleton that basically moves exactly as that athlete moved down to a couple millimeters a couple degrees of accuracy. So we know their movement. We couple that with, um, some insoles in the boots that measure the pressure distribution under their ski.

[00:15:58] Jim Becker: Right. So we can look at are you balanced? Are you forward on the ski, back on the ski, riding the inside edge. Right. That also allows us to calculate the force that they're applying to the ski. Right. So, we get a really detailed picture of their ski technique and how that changes as they go through this test and get fatigued. We then also apply all of those same biomechanical tools to assessing shooting, the shooting technique. You know, how what is the force between the rifle and your shoulder? What's the movement of the rifle? What's the movement of your body if you're in prone position or your elbows moving as you're bolting, right. All of these little variables that go into being able to shoot really accurately and fast, um, and then so those are kind of the standard staple techniques. Right. And then more of the kind of the special projects, um, as I mentioned, we did did something in Antholz last winter that was all around optimizing our tactics on the Olympic course. So the athletes, listeners may be familiar with the system that the athletes wear. Right. We can it's measures basically a fancy GPS and inertial measurement measures their body movement. So from that we can look at their speed at any point in the course, the technique they're using. Right. And so we were doing some analysis there to see what are we doing that is really good in certain sections. And where can we actually improve in certain sections of this course with the eye on like this is what we're going to actually have to do at the Olympics?

[00:17:29] Tom Kelly: I want to interrupt there. And what's amazing to me here. So you're taking data and translating it to a specific part of the course?

[00:17:39] Jim Becker: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Because we can … so there's some basically to not get into the weeds of statistical analysis and things, but there are some techniques we can do that you take the athletes speed over the entire course. Right. And you can do some analyses that says, tell me what sections of this course are really predicting their overall lap time. Right. And then it'll show you, hey, this 100-meter section of the course is really important, this 100-meter section over here. Not necessarily as important. Right. We could do the same analysis and say show me really the sections of the course where, skiers who finished in the top three, for example, are moving a lot faster than skiers that finish lower down. And then you can go into because of the IMU there. We know the techniques. Then you can go in and say, okay, now what are the actual difference? What are those faster skiers doing differently in that section than other skiers? And maybe it's their cycle lengths are longer. Maybe it's they're using a higher cycle rate as they go up the hill. Maybe it's, you know, they are working the downhills to a much higher capacity than an athlete that just tucks. Right. So we can really tease out on specific sections of the course. Here are really the things that we want to work on.

[00:18:53] Tom Kelly: Do you have access to data from other athletes, or are you able to glean this from video analysis you might be able to have access to?

[00:19:02] Jim Becker: So we don't typically … we don't typically have access to data from other athletes on a regular basis. I mean, some of it you can look at from video, um, the project we did in Antholz, we did collaborate with some of the sports scientists from some of the other nations that were open and willing to share some of their data. So we shared our data for our athletes and they shared their data. So that did allow us to look at what some of the other athletes were doing.

[00:19:30] Tom Kelly: I want to explore this a little bit more, but we're going to take a quick, short break, and then we'll be right back here on Heartbeat. And when we come back, we're going to dive a little bit deeper into this and talk about maybe how this has helped some specific athletes. And also just take a look at the bigger picture. We'll be right back with Jim Becker here on Heartbeat.

[00:19:45] Tom Kelly: We're back on Heartbeat with Doctor Jim Becker from Montana State talking about the amazing program and partnership with US Biathlon. Jim, I'd like. That was fascinating as we geeked out a little bit and heard some of the details of what you and your Montana State team have been doing. I want to translate this maybe to individual performance. US Biathlon team has certainly been rising up the last few years. Campbell writes, performance and others. It's really a new era for biathlon, have you? Now that you've got a few years experience in this, are you able to kind of see a little bit how this has been able to transform some individual performances?

[00:20:35] Jim Becker: Yeah, absolutely. You can see that in the data. You know, we have essentially good profiles on athletes now, right? And you can look back over three years, and you can see steady progress, right? As you know, the your Vo2 is has been slowly increasing your efficiency at these high speeds has been increasing. One of the metrics we were also really look at is what is the ski speed at your lactate threshold. Right. And we can see that's been steadily creeping up. You can pair that with the changes that we see in their biomechanics. Right. And so all signs point to like, you know, yeah, you are on the right path here. And we can see that the progress you know, it was it was really fun in Soldier Hollow because you know I kind of see this, right? And we talk to the athletes and go through it with them. But then you get to see them race, right? And you see some of the athletes that just, you know, you're like, I didn't know that person would have, you know, one of the fastest ski times. And you're like, yeah, I kind of saw that coming. Right. And so you get really excited. You know, we finished last. I was like, I want the season to start now. Like the team is ready to roll, right?

[00:21:43] Tom Kelly: Well and and it won't be long. Just a matter of weeks. A matter of weeks right now. One of the things I know is important in data analysis is having some benchmarks and some consistency of periodization. I'm sure that when you started this three, four years ago, you had no benchmarks to really look at. Now you've got several years of data. Two things here. First of all, how important is it to have consistent year after year tests from a given athlete? So you have that benchmark and how has that all helped you over time?

[00:22:17] Jim Becker: Yeah that's really important right? We always discuss with the athletes after the June and August testing, how they felt going through it. And we've had some suggestions for, hey, maybe we could tweak some things. And, um, we still go to great lengths to keep the overall testing protocol the same every year. So we can really compare apples to apples comparisons. And that's been been really important. Yeah, it's been super helpful. You know, initially we had to, um, start by saying, okay, we have this value. We're not sure if it's really good or bad or where it ranks. So we had to go out into the literature and really comb through all of the studies that have been done on World Cup skiers and high-level skiers say, yeah, this is kind of what we think we should be targeting for. And so that gave us a good starting spot. And now we can take our own benchmarks. Right. And we can then track how those have changed and track how they correspond to the resulting performance over that winter. So somebody has a massive season, right? We know what they looked like going into that season. Right. And so we can say, yeah, that was pretty expected based on what we saw in the progressions.

[00:23:32] Tom Kelly: And I would I would imagine that the coaches and the athletes are even more receptive than ever before to this data.

[00:23:40] Jim Becker: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the more we've done this, the more I think the athletes have opened up and feel comfortable. Right. And they you know, it took a little bit to educate them on like what's in the report. Right. But now they know how to read these things. They know the variables to look at. And so they know kind of how to track. Athletes will say, hey, can I see this particular variable right after their test? Right. They know what they're looking for or they know what they really worked on technique wise over the summer. And so in August, they really want to see how that's changed. The other really nice thing that's come from doing our own kind of benchmarking is, you know, we've also done this testing with a lot of our junior team, right? This is the future of the sport. Right. And so we can now say, hey, this is where a lot of our junior athletes are ranking based on these parameters, right? These are the opportunities for further development. And these are the things we really want to focus on as these athletes climb up through the ranks, right to reach the World Cup level.

[00:24:41] Tom Kelly: I want to look at the bigger picture, and I want to start with the bigger picture of biathlon worldwide. And for this, let's throw out the affiliation with US Biathlon and look at the sport as a whole. You know, what do you see across the sport of biathlon. Other teams are doing this as well. And I think if you know, you can maybe think about kind of the collective approach to high performance and elevating not just one team but elevating the whole sport. Do you see now that the sport of biathlon is just rising worldwide because of teams applying this type of data analysis.

[00:25:18] Jim Becker: Yeah, I think I think so. Absolutely. And um, you know, at, I think if you pick any sport. Right. And you go to performance at the highest levels, um, technology is playing more and more of a role, right. In terms of how do you leverage all the capabilities of technology out there with the goal of helping your athletes perform faster? Right. Um, and so I think biathlon as a whole is definitely doing that, right. We know some of the other countries have been doing this for a while. We're now doing this. I think you see, the IBU recognizes this, right? Through their IBU Academy, they have really good, um, resources. They actually fund a research grant every year that, you know, they'll have 4 or 5 groups get research grants to go study a unique aspect of the sport. Right. And then we share our findings with the rest of the biathlon community so everybody can benefit from this and further understand the performance factors in the sport.

[00:26:24] Tom Kelly: Yeah, it's interesting to see the IBU has been very supportive of this. And also your comment that you actually have done a little bit of data sharing with other federations.

[00:26:34] Jim Becker: Yeah, yeah. So the IBU um, their, their support of this is kind of unique, right. Among big worldwide federations, right, where they're sponsoring research projects. To learn more about the event with the goal of, you know, we don't do that research and hoard it here for the US team, right? It's like, no, let's share this with with everybody. Um, and so we've actually had two, two successful grants through them. They funded some of our work.

[00:27:01] Tom Kelly: It's well, let's look at the bigger picture now for Montana State. And you made a comment earlier that your students will gather in the lab at 6 a.m. to watch, uh, the race from Hochfilzen or wherever it might be that weekend. What is the program like this brought to Montana State and the students that you teach?

[00:27:21] Jim Becker: Yeah, it's great for the students. You know, our college motto here. Part of it is learn by doing. Right. And so this is the ultimate experience of learn by doing right. In theory, in class you know what VO2 Max is and why it's important. But until you've actually measured it and seen it on an elite athlete pushing to max, you really don't appreciate like, oh, that's what max looks like, right? You know, and so they get to do those kind of things. They get hands-on experiences. I mean, I'll never forget one student was there taking lactates and Armin and came over and started timing them like, how long is this taking you to do? Right. And so it's like, yeah, you know how to do it in theory, but can you do it quickly in the field when it matters. Right. So they get those kinds of experiences, right. And then more and more students know that our lab is doing that. So I'll get new students that reach out that say, hey, I want to go to graduate school. I want to study physiology or biomechanics. I've been a skier all my life. I really want to come to Montana State because of this. We then also work closely with the athletes. We ask them for their consent as we gather all this data to let us use it for research projects. And so now the students can go back and do some analyses or some research projects using really high-level athletes that in most research studies, you'd have a difficult time getting that kind of a population through the lab. So it opens up some doors that wouldn't be open to these students otherwise. Internship, you know, just networking experiences for students that want to work in this field. You know, they get to meet everybody. They get connected with folks at Usopc. You know, the high performance world. So there's just kind of an endless list of benefits to the program and to the students here at MSU.

[00:29:10] Tom Kelly: Speaking of students, let's go back in your student career and go back 15 or so years ago. You were one of those students. Somewhere along the line, you made a decision that you wanted to get into kinesiology and biomechanics. Can you think back to your younger self, and what was it that motivated you then, and how have you seen that progress in your career?

[00:29:31] Jim Becker: Yeah. I mean, it's actually kind of funny that you mentioned that because, if you'd asked me as a student, even as a, as a athlete, a track and field and soccer growing up, and you said, ask me what's biomechanics? I said, I don't know. Right. And even going through, you know, I always tell my students here in college, I didn't major in anything even remotely close to this. I was a geography major, right? It was what I really found passionate and interesting at the time. And it wasn't really until I. I started coaching that I realized I need to learn more about the sports science side of things. Right. And how do I help? Performance? How do I prevent injury? Right. And so that's really what sparked me to go back. So I always use that to as for an example for my students of like, it's never too late to find what you're passionate about and make a change to go study it. And then I was really fortunate once I did that, I had some coaches that were really open and nontraditional in terms of they wanted the athletes to, uh, be independent, right. They didn't want him to depend on the coach to do everything. They wanted the athletes to understand what they're doing and why they're doing it. And so they would have us, one coach in particular, at college. He would have me, like, read a lot of the scientific literature, kind of sketch out. This is what I think I should do for my own training for track and field at the time. And then we would meet and he'd give feedback and critique and maybe change this, change that. But it was a really impactful experience in terms of allowing me to take ownership over my own performance. And that really got me interested in the sport. And this was right before I went back to graduate school even.

[00:31:09] Tom Kelly: So last question before we get into kind of our fun closing section. But, if you look back now, over those past 15 years, and you look now at this partnership that you have with us, biathlon, what has that meant for you personally and for your school at Montana State to be involved on the international sports level with US biathlon?

[00:31:31] Jim Becker: I mean, for me, it's been, it's really a privilege. You know, I, we, we, we play an important role. But again, it's a very small role in the overall athlete's performance. Right. So, we know that. But to be able to leverage our expertise and our experience in a way that if even just one athlete can point to something they learned from our testing, to say, hey, that really helped me improve this, that's a huge win for us. It's just it's such a privilege to work with such a dedicated group of athletes and coaching staff that, um, you know, really buys in and, um, and, you know, if we come up with suggestions, they listen and they say, hey, you know, yeah, that seems like a good idea. Great. Let's do this. Right. So it's been a really fantastic collaborative relationship. It's been just, I guess the best way I can say it, it's been a joy to work with.

[00:32:29] Tom Kelly: Yeah. And more to come. So, Jim, thank you so much for that. We're going to close it out with a few questions in our On Target section. Really appreciate all that you've been able to share here today and diving deep into the program. But let's talk a little bit more about you when you were growing up. I know that biomechanics wasn't on your mind at that point, but growing up in New England, who were some of your childhood sport heroes?

[00:32:51] Jim Becker: Oh, gosh. You know, it's hard, hard to I don't know if I could give you a specific name. You know, the one that comes to mind. Larry Bird. Right. Growing up, going to the old Boston Garden when the Celtics and the Lakers were playing, you know, and watching him just do what he would do on the court. Right. Talk about cool under pressure and turn to his opponent. I'm going to go right here and do this. And you're not going to stop me. Right. And then he'd go do it. You know, that's one that I definitely sticks with me.

[00:33:21] Tom Kelly: That's a really great Boston example. How about this? The best vacation spot you've been to in the last year?

[00:33:29] Jim Becker: Almost all of our vacations involve some sort of working vacation, right? It's very rare. It's just a pure vacation. Usually, there's a conference involved. So the best one last year by far, was, was last January when we went to Italy. You know, we combined that with the work in adults at the World Cup. And then we went down, and there was a kind of a week of geeking out about the International Science of Skiing conference. Right. And, you know, in Cavalese and in between. Plenty of time to ski or get to explore the Dolomites. We got to do some work with the US Para Team at their test events while we were there. So, you know, with the students, we flew in and out of Venice. So, you know, got to take a group of students to see Venice and have a lab dinner in Venice one evening. So that was a great, great vacation.

[00:34:18] Tom Kelly: Did you enjoy the drive from Antholz down to Cavalese?

[00:34:21] Jim Becker: Oh, yeah. It was beautiful. Yeah, we stopped on the way down and, you know, skied a little bit and, um. Yeah.

[00:34:28] Tom Kelly: Yeah, that is truly one of the most beautiful places in the world. I'm still trying to figure out when I'm at the Olympics this year. Probably mostly in Milano, how I can get up into the mountains, but that's for me to figure out. How about one fun thing that you've done that our listeners might not know about?

[00:34:46] Jim Becker: Sure. So when I was in college, I did a lot of SCUBA diving as well as mountaineering and climbing. And so when I put those two things together, I can say, okay, on human power, right? I've dove down about 185, 200ft below sea level, and on my own two feet climbed about 23,000ft above sea level. So that gives me a pretty wide altitude range, I think, more than most people, I think under their own human power.

[00:35:15] Tom Kelly: That's great. As I'll say, a former SCUBA diver. I know exactly what you mean. That's a good one. How about, uh, you haven't been to all the biathlon venues yet, but do you have a favorite so far of what you've seen?

[00:35:28] Jim Becker: I mean, it was like you said, I haven't been to all the major venues in Europe, but being in adults, the atmosphere and just the celebration of the sport was amazing and fun to watch. But I think actually kind of a favorite venue is actually closer to home. I really like the Soldier Hollow venue or the particular … It's so open, right? So if you're up on that balcony right off the building. You just walk around to the other side. You can see the entire race unfold, right? A lot of the other venues, the athletes ski out. They go into the trees. You know, somebody comes out, you're like, where'd the race happen? Right? So in Soldier Hollow you can really see the entire thing.

[00:36:07] Tom Kelly: Yeah, it is amazing. And I think it's an often overlooked benefit of being there. Last question. Probably the hardest one, but if you had to sum up biathlon and your experience in it as both an athlete and as a scientist, can you describe it in just one word? What does biathlon mean to you?

[00:36:27] Jim Becker: One word, I think I … I'd have to go with grit. Probably.

[00:36:33] Tom Kelly: Grit is just one of my favorite words. So Jim, thank you so much for sharing this information on Heartbeat. We appreciate all you and your students at Montana State have done for the team, and look forward to seeing you on the track this winter.

[00:36:46] Jim Becker: Yeah, well, thank you for having me. This has been great.