Thomas Dewey on Wearables, Movement Quality & Readiness
Show notes
In this episode of the Movement Podcast, Gray Cook and Lee Burton sit down with Thomas Dewey to talk about data, wearables, movement health, and the future of human performance.
Thomas is an athletic trainer and strength coach by background, with experience across Functional Movement Systems, Naval Special Warfare, Sparta Science, and ŌURA. His career has focused on helping professionals turn complex human performance information into practical decisions.
The conversation explores one of the biggest challenges in health, fitness, sports medicine, tactical performance, and wearable technology:
We have more data than ever.
But what do we do with it?
Gray, Lee, and Thomas discuss how force plates, wearables, readiness scores, sleep data, balance, movement screens, and performance metrics can all help professionals better understand the person in front of them — but only if that information is organized, interpreted, and applied in a meaningful way.
They also explore why movement quality is still one of the missing pieces in the wearable technology conversation. Wearables can track a lot of movement quantity, recovery, sleep, heart rate variability, and physiological stress, but understanding how someone moves — their balance, symmetry, mobility, stability, and readiness to move — is still a major opportunity.
Topics include:
• Thomas Dewey’s background in athletic training, strength and conditioning, military human performance, Sparta Science, and ŌURA
• Why data needs to become actionable, not overwhelming
• How Sparta Science helped make force-plate data more useful
• Load, explode, and drive as simplified movement metrics
• Fast responders versus slow responders
• Movement quality versus movement quantity
• Why balance may become a future vital sign
• How wearables can support better sleep, recovery, and readiness decisions
• Why movement health still needs to be part of the data conversation
• How data can help create better feedback loops
• Why professionals need data literacy
• How AI, large language models, and integrated platforms may shape the future
• Why the best data should lead to better questions, better trials, and better decisions
The key takeaway: data alone is not the answer. The real opportunity is learning how to filter it, simplify it, and use it to help people move better, recover better, and make more informed decisions about their health and performance.
Learn more about Functional Movement Systems:
https://www.functionalmovement.com/
https://ouraring.com/
Symmio: https://www.symmio.com/whats-your-wellness-score
FMS Courses: https://www.functionalmovement.com/store?category=online_courses
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