Marcus Elliott : "Dr. Sports Genius"

David Obst

SB People

Oct/Nov Santa Barbara Magazine

THIS PAST SUMMER, one of the wealthiest young men in Europe left his comfortable Moscow estate and flew thousands of miles to spend a week in Santa Barbara. He wasn't on vacation or shopping for another million-dollar home, Andrei Kirilenko, the 28-year-old NBA all-star who plays for the Utah Jazz, was looking for the man responsible for pushing him out of the starting lineup last season.

His nemesis wasn't a rival player, but Marcus Elliott, whose crack team of sports scientists had trained two of Kirilenko's teammates at downtown Santa Barbara's P3 athletic facility in the off season. The 226-pound, 6'9" forward wanted to be next in line.

A Harvard-educated physician, Elliott, 43, has successfully trained many of the world's finest athletes, including some of the biggest names in professional sports-Dodger third baseman Casey Blake, NFL quarterback Drew Bledsoe, All-American defensive end Andre Carter, USA Olympic basketball team members Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer, volleyball stars Jake Gibb and Nick Lucena, and a host of Olympians such as 2008 medalist Sheena Johnson, USA water polo star Brian Alexander, and world champion cyclist Sarah Hammer, among hundreds of other uber-athletes.

Elliott's cutting-edge program has changed the way the physically elite understand how their bodies really work. "The old one-size-fits-all paradigm for athletic development was that athletes just lifted weights and ran, which had nothing to do 'with athleticism or the unique tools needed for their sport," he explains. "It was clear to me that by simply using new technologies and front-edge sports science, we could build much better, less injury-prone athletes."

He must be doing something right. Year-round, Elliott and his team host some of the world's top professional athletes at their stat -of-the-art facility buried deep in downtown's Funk Zone. In 2000, the NFL's New England Patriots hired him to come up with an off-season strength training program. The results: The players reduced their muscle injuries from 21 to just two in one year and went on to win the first of their three Super Bowl titles. Soon after, the professional sports community took notice, and teams from the NBA, MLB, and NFL brought their squads to Santa Barbara. ''I'm certain that other facilities will follow in our approach," says the fit father of two, "but for now, it's clear that we are setting the pace."

Raised in the Bay Area in the early 1980s, Elliott was a bright student and captain of his high school football and baseball teams. He was living the American athletic dream when one afternoon, his 17-year-old body betrayed him. He tore four knee ligaments on the football field-and suddenly his universe was undone. His best friend took over his position and he was quickly forgotten. This was the turning point in his life. Elliott was determined to find out what happened to his body and why to help prevent others from experiencing the same fate.

Elliott realized that new technologies combined with smarter sports science could be used to find a better understanding of each athlete's performance, "It was clear to me that technologies being used in biomechanics labs and medical institutions could be used in ways to help us more precisely understand how to care for elite athletes," he says.

"By understanding each athlete's physiology and biomechanics, we can assess how they are put together and more closely maximize their potential."

Thus began a time-consuming quest to source the best computer hardware and software available to measure human movement. He realized that he could build machines that communicate with each other to record data that would help athletes and invented his own unique system of correlation analysis so that they find out how best use their bodies. He collected a database so that athletes could compare their performances against each other.

Elliott, who discovered Santa Barbara while an undergraduate at UCSB, decided that this was a perfect place for him to set up shop. Taking advantage of the surfing, mountain-biking, and hiking frontier, he and his family readily partake of the natural beauty that makes Santa Barbara such an ideal spot to work and play.

With his wife Nadine, and son Keean, 2, hanging with him at the facility, Elliott is back on the P3 floor watching Kirilenko. While carefully checking the computer printouts from the various monitors, he gets a clearer idea of how to help Kirilenko get maximum efficiency from his massive frame. The young Russian is clearly pleased with the effects. "Part of the reason Andrei and the others come here is because P3 mixes 21st-century technologies with a doctor's understanding of how the body works," reiterates Elliott. "The result is that we are able to find the optimum body movement needed to produce professional success."

Perhaps Kirilenko will be back in that starting lineup this year after all.