Alumnus Profile, Marcus Elliott, '97

For the Love of the Game: Helping Athletes Reach Their Peak

It's not unusual for a high school student to love sports, but Marcus Elliott '97 took his commitment to an extreme. As a 16-year-old, in addition to playing football and baseball, he subscribed to - and actually read - the leading journals in exercise physiology. By age 18, he was working with athletes at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, helping coaches bridge the gap between laboratory discoveries and the process of training champion athletes. "From early on," he says, "I was interested in understanding what made one athlete better than another."

Perhaps there was something of a personal motivation as well. Elliott had been planning to play college football until he tore four ligaments in his knee. The injury had one positive result, however; his rehabilitation involved swimming and cycling, which led him to an interest in endurance sports. He went on to compete in track and cross country at the college level, then as a top amateur and professional triathlete. Participating in a range of sports provided him with a good foundation for his future work with elite athletes.

After studying physiology and biochemistry as an undergraduate, Elliott considered a doctoral program in biomechanics at MIT, but ultimately chose HMS. "I thought medical school would be a more interesting journey," he says. "But I also suspected I wouldn't practice medicine in the traditional sense. For some perverse reason, I remained interested in athletic performance." He has since worked with professional athletes and Olympic medalists in cycling, tennis, football, baseball, volleyball, water polo, soccer, rugby, speed skating, and swimming, as well as track athletes who run races ranging from 100-meter sprints to marathons.

One of his earliest success stories came from his work with triathlete Mark Allen, the summer before entering HMS. Allen had won the Ironman Triathlon several times and was favored to win again, but had broken his collarbone in a bike crash. His arm was in a splint, he couldn't run, ride or swim - and the race was only two months away. Elliott put together a creative conditioning program, using a stationary bike, an elliptical trainer, and a rigorous, unconventional plyometrics power training regimen. The program helped Allen get in good enough condition to participate in the race and place at the top, even though he hadn't done any actual running, biking or swimming for two months.

Model Student

Just as he wasn't an average high schooler, Elliott wasn't a typical medical school student. To defray the cost of HMS tuition, he worked part time for Ford Models. On one of his most memorable days, he spent nearly 12 hours in an operating room, assisting with the resection of a tumor, then hopped on a plane, arriving in New York just in time to walk down the runway at a Versace show. His fellow models were just as surprised to see him rushing in late as his medical colleagues would have been had they known where he was headed after a day in surgery.

Elliott's two lives did sometimes collide, however. At least half a dozen times, classmates or faculty would show up with a photo, sometimes on morning rounds, and ask for an explanation. There was also the time in 1996 when he was named Cosmopolitan's Hunk of the Month. "It's surprising how many otherwise intelligent medical students and physicians read Cosmo," he says.

After medical school, Elliott stopped leading a double life and focused on the work that had fascinated him all along: using his scientific background to develop the best conditioning programs for elite athletes. In his second year of medical school, he developed a training regimen for the New England Patriots. He continued moving away from individual training toward work with teams and sports organizations, and founded his own company, Peak Performance Project, based in Santa Barbara, California.

Although he participates in a variety of athletic activities, Elliott still often finds himself working in sports about which he knows little. Before entering HMS, he had designed a conditioning program for the country's best track cycling team in preparation for the Barcelona Olympics, even though he'd never actually seen a track cycling race. In a way, he says, this lack of specialization is an advantage, as coaches don't feel threatened that he may overstep his bounds and begin giving advice on tactics and strategy. "Coaches know I'm not planning to coach the athletes," Elliott says. "I'm there to help the athletes realize their physical potential, and the coaches know they're in the driver's seat."

Whether he's working with teams or individuals, sprinters or power lifters, cyclists or volleyball players, Elliott's approach is essentially the same. He tries to understand what's necessary to make an individual athlete successful, and tailors programs that will optimize their performance. Over the past 12 to 15 years, he says, significant research on nutrition has become available, which he incorporates into the programs he develops. "I see my roles as being on top of all the latest scientific knowledge," he explains, "and using it, with a touch of art, to develop personalized, effective programs."

An Ounce of Prevention

Elliott has remained consistently excited about the potential of applying science to the conditioning programs of elite and amateur athletes alike. In addition to his work with the Olympic Training Center, the National Football League, and other sports organizations, he and his friend Dan Gebow, who holds a doctorate in cancer biology from the Harvard School of Public Health, have put together a database of information on preventive medicine, including a software application that will allow users to obtain personalized recommendations.

"This project sprang directly from the intersection of my interest in athletic performance and my HMS training," Elliott explains. "It turns out that much of what I've focused on in athletes - conditioning, nutrition, biomechanics - is a foundation for laypeople to reduce their risk of most of the chronic diseases of the twenty-first century."

I'd like to put a call out to individuals in the Harvard community who have ideas about implementing these programs," he continues. "We've built personalized prevention applications that could have great value for people. We just need to get the programs in front of them."

Elliott plans to use the database and develop other tools that will make "personal training" more sophisticated. In fact, he doesn't refer to himself as a personal trainer. Because his specialty is a unique one, he goes by a number of titles, from "conditioning specialist" to "physician specializing in the performance and care of elite athletes." He admits that, "There are few people with my combination of interests and background."

Despite the value of disseminating information about exercise physiology to the general public, professional athletes are the ones most in need of conditioning advice to help keep them in top form and injury-free. Working with Bertram Zarins, chief of the Sports Medicine Service at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of orthopedic surgery at HMS, Elliott has been involved in some of the first research on injury patterns among professional athletes. A recent paper analyzes the more than 2,000 hamstring injuries that have occurred in the NFL over the past 12 years and suggests prevention strategies. Elliott recently received a grant to study athletes' risk of reinjury after they miss playing time. As little as one week of downtime, he says, can be dangerous to athletes competing at the highest level.

What Elliott enjoys most about working with athletes of this caliber is their unfailing devotion to their sports. "It's hard to find a group of people as dedicated to a single goal as professional athletes," he says admiringly. "Doctors can give their patients good advice, bit if the motivation isn't there, the treatment won't be successful. When you understand the physiologic systems you're working with and you have the trust of elite athletes, they're extremely motivated to implement your suggestions. That almost always results in wins."

Susan Cassidy is assistant editor of the Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin.