How Plantiga is Redifining Athlete Recovery

In the rapidly evolving landscape of sports technology, innovation is driving the future of athlete performance and injury prevention. Plantiga, a trailblazing company founded by Quin Sandler, is redefining how we understand movement and biomechanics. With cutting-edge sensor technology, Plantiga provides real-time insights that can be the difference between a full recovery and a sidelining injury. It’s no wonder that top-tier athletes, from NBA stars to NHL captains, are leveraging Plantiga to track performance and rehabilitate injuries like never before.

Sandler’s entrepreneurial journey is as compelling as his product, beginning with ventures in branding, production, and event management before a deeply personal motivation spurred him to create something groundbreaking in sports tech. Fueled by the memory of his father—whose name now graces Plantiga’s AI—Sandler and his team are building tools that give coaches, physical therapists, and athletes unparalleled data on how they move, heal, and perform.

During our conversation, Sandler shared a pivotal moment when Plantiga’s technology helped track the recovery of a premier NBA player from a devastating ACL injury. This breakthrough became a powerful proof of concept, cementing the company’s value to elite athletes and their trainers. But Plantiga’s ambitions don’t stop there. Sandler envisions a world where personalized movement data will not only be the standard in professional sports but also an essential tool for everyday health and injury prevention.

With insights on AI-driven data interpretation, asymmetry tracking, and the future of wearable tech, Quin Sandler gives us a glimpse into how Plantiga is changing the game—not just for athletes but for the entire sports industry.

Read the full transcript of our conversation to learn more about how this technology is shaping the future of performance and rehabilitation.

Taylor Pipes
To start I’d love to hear more about your founder’s journey, career directory, and how you ended up in your role at Plantiga.

Quin Sandler
My journey is very different than some. I’ve been an entrepreneur, and self-employed since I was out of high school. I had a tutoring company, a branding and identity company, an agency, and a live production events company where we did work for Honda, Volkswagen, and Live Nation. Then, I founded Plantiga, bumping along in product and design.

My dad spent a good 20-30 years around biomechanics and measuring human movement. His insight was that measuring movement is what is often considered the sixth vital sign.

The way that you move tells us so much about your health and so my dad said it was so valuable as a lens into human health but it is so hard to collect this data. You need to put markers on the body, process it, use cameras and prime syncs – it’s just filled with friction. My dad said if you could build a gait lab and build into the shoe with a way to passively track our health and performance – it would change how we look at human health.

We started this as a side project a decade ago. In 2018 we got into the Creative Destruction Lab, an accelerator that doesn’t take equity with the University of Toronto. We got a pilot program with the Lakers and went down there and did a demo. The guy down at the Lakers said this was amazing and asked if he could buy it for the whole team and literally the thing I had in my hand was the only prototype we ever made.

It showed us that we were on the right path and that this desire to measure lab quality and movement on a field, on a court, on ice – wherever – was an epiphany. We got this pilot program with the (Seattle) Mariners. Tragically, during that time, my dad got very, very sick with prostate cancer, and he passed away. And it’s just a different beginning. I was super sad, but we fought on in my father’s honor. I’m proud that my dad sits on all of our patents. We have some critical intellectual property that was granted to us by the USPTO. And really, it was my dad putting these applications at the prime time, almost in human history. Our internal AI coach is called Norman, which was my dad’s name. I’ve always been entrepreneurial, and I was doing errands when I was 11 years old, going around to homes. I’ve always been hustling, working, and making my projects and my own source of revenue.

Taylor Pipes
Was there a lightbulb moment in your journey? It sounds like the Lakers story might have been that one. So I don’t know if there was another lightbulb moment when you said, “Wow! We’re really onto something here, which is why we will keep moving forward.”

Quin Sandler
There were lots of moments. In the early days, we got hired to support rehab for one of the best NBA players of all time.

So, in that epiphany, we tracked one of the best players in the NBA, going through a pretty bad rehab leading up to the pandemic. We had technical challenges and hardware and some things we were going through, but the data and the value of being able to measure these asymmetries in how he ran and walked and jumped. I think it was that moment where I was like, ‘Wow!’ We were on to something that hasn’t quite existed yet, but I continue to get these reinforcements, like I just had one last week, to be honest, while we were all together at the Rally conference, I had a guy who is the captain of an NHL team that’s using our products coming back from a bad rehab and literally said, “I don’t know where I would be without this data.” That gives me goosebumps! That’s why you do what you do, to make a positive impact on those people’s lives. I know we’re on to something really, really big – we’re changing the way these people rehab after injury, were changing the way they fend off injury.

Taylor Pipes
That’s amazing. So how do you sell yourself to customers and how does the customer base work? Is it relationships with teams, athletes? It sounds like you really have aspirations, or are currently trying to get in front of just regular people?

Quin Sandler
Going into the general public isn’t our immediate focus, but it remains our long-term goal. Now, I just think that’s where our company will become a billion-dollar company. But on that path, you have some stops, some mountaintops that you all want to get to. So right now, we are a B2B tool. We support health and performance practitioners who work in and around sports to make better decisions by collecting really good data on how their patients or athletes move on the court, on the field, and on ice. That’s the value prop.

We know it through and through because it’s continually like we see this blind spot of what they don’t have access to. We find them through word of mouth. You’d be shocked at how small the athletic trainer, physical therapist, and strength coach or sports scientist is in professional sports. So, a lot of it’s through referrals. We do find ourselves going to conferences, and they’re very, very successful for us, and then what I think is just about to happen is we want to start telling our story and doing a better job of that in the public domain, whether it’s athletes that are using our stuff. And so that goes back to your question, too. A lot of times, athletes are using our system and then their team gets wind of it, and when the team wants to use it as well, or the athlete is using it with their performance coach on the private side, and their team’s like, “Hey, that’s amazing! We should also get that for other players.” That’s primarily how we are doing it. But we want to make a concerted effort around marketing or storytelling of what we’re doing with athletes.

Taylor Pipes
What data seems to be obviously a massive part of what you’re doing. And I see, I feel like there’s been a sea change in the last few years, maybe last five years, five to 10 years, with like how companies are being built around data. Seems like data has been important 10 years ago, but now we’re going to the point where companies are having a dearth of data, and now you kind of have to get that data to a point where it makes, helps make informed decisions for the company or for the consumer, like, how, how have you arrived where you are now? And data has become such a crucial asset for you. And then what does that data look like, for the for the for the end user, for the athlete. You know, how are they able to use that data to get better at what they’re doing?

Quin Sandler
So I think we’ve always known that, one of the ethos that we subscribe to is you can’t change what you don’t measure. So think of it like you’re trying to get better playing a sport, or you’re trying to rehab after a really bad knee injury. How do you know anything is progressing, regressing, or plateauing? So you got to measure it? And so that’s always been something that we’ve held dear. Second to that is making sure that the data is reliable and valid and quality. Data is almost as important as what you’re measuring, making sure that it’s, does it measure what it says it does? Most wearables do not. In fact, most products are brutally, brutally inaccurate. So that’s kind of like always being part of what we do in terms of what the athlete sees. A lot of what we focus on is load and asymmetry. So, imagine you are; I’ll literally give you an example of athletes that we work with. Imagine you are six months post op, coming back from an ACL. The athlete wears our insoles or our sensors for the entire day. We track everything they do. So we track what their lift was, we track what they’re on court, drills were, rehab and exercises, and then we track the kind of their rehab in the gym and what they’re doing, and in that whole process, we’re literally breaking down. This is how you walked. These were the asymmetries and how you landed and came off the ground. And you can see trends over time. This is how you’re progressing, or conversely, looks like you’re getting worse the last week, like what’s going on. And so that data back to them is kind of like, almost like a check engine light or a dashboard. It’s like, this is how much work I’ve done, so how much load in the world of high performance for it loads like, imagine the impact of the world on my body. You know, if you think of it like a car you go off-roading, that’s like a lot of wear and tear on those shocks, compared to just going on, like a cement road. And so we’re measuring that, but off everything they do. So it’s like, what’s the load? What’s the load per limb? What are their asymmetries? And how is that trending?

We’re using data to pull the levers and know if we need to change course or focus on other areas. You have the practitioners that use that, and then the athlete wants to know, how they are doing – where is the line. It helps them know where they’ve come from and where they’re trying to get to, like directions on a map that provides the path – that’s the value of that data.

Taylor Pipes
It sounds like there are also a lot of elements of personalization here. Is that true?

Quin Sandler
Oh, 100% In fact, another thing we often talk about is n=1. Now in the world of research, n just means subjects, but we’re not comparing you against everybody. We compare you against yourself. We can’t stress the importance of that. So you use our system five times, and we build a little movement profile of how you move, and then we track everything you do to that profile. And yes, personalization is everything.

Taylor Pipes
What about AI and machine learning? Are you taking this data and applying layers of machine learning to kind of further enhance that?

Quin Sandler
We employ a lot of machine learning models on a couple of fronts. We built a model that determines or can auto-identify what you’re doing – walking, running, jumping, and changing directions. That’s one model that’s critical to us. We have what’s called HAR, human activity recognition. That’s a machine learning model that says I know you’re running; then we have other software that understands your ground contact time and your flight time. The machine learning models we built have been trained on very high-quality data alongside our sensors. There is a whole level of AI that’s basically breaking down how you run once I know you are in a run phase.

We also have a machine learning model that learns who you are after you’ve used us five times, and so that’s a machine learning model that builds your signature. You teach it: This is who I am, and then it starts flagging for that. And I think where we go in our next phase is to build an AI that acts more like a co-pilot for the practitioner, like the physical therapist or the trainer. Right now, we help the trainers, and we teach them to analyze the data. Like, he’s getting weaker on the left side. What does this mean? And what should I do? Being able to have an AI copilot that interprets that data and then provides two or three things, whether that’s exercises or stretching or some insights on what to do, is this next level.

Taylor Pipes
Are there any other companies that you’re following and tracking that are doing something similar to what you’re doing right now? From what you’re describing, this seems like kind of a one-of-one.

Quin Sandler
Yeah, there’s not many. There are companies that use ion sensors so big in the healthcare side; it’s called Hinge and Wword Health; they sell to providers, and they put sensors to track people going through rehab at home. But the sensors are very, very unsophisticated. There are people that put sensors in shoes and pods that go on your laces, whether it’s from Garmin, but those are; they don’t mean any disrespect, but they’re more like trinkets. No physical therapist or surgeon is going to love going to look at that data, trust it, and then try to make a decision based on it. I really don’t think there’s a whole lot of people doing what we’re doing, which is nerve-wracking but also super exciting. We’re building a market that I think is going to be big. I think in three or four years, you won’t be selling into a practitioner that is using us in the clinic. Patients or athletes will be taking our stuff home or wherever they go. That data will be feeding both to the athlete and patient and then back to the practitioner, and they’ll be using that to drive really high-end, tailored, personalized care.

“We’re building a market that I think is going to be big. I think in three or four years, you won’t be selling into a practitioner that is using us in clinic. Patients or athletes will be taking our stuff home or wherever they go. That data will be fed both to the athlete and patient and then back to the practitioner, and they’ll be using that to drive really high-end, tailored personalized care.”

Taylor Pipes
It’s almost like your own personal Epic, but instead of software records, it basically follows you around with like data that you.

Quin Sandler
Even for running, this is the power of data. Imagine you used us, but you’re healthy, and so you use this five times on runs, whether it’s in Denver or wherever you live. And then, Plantiga knows who you are, and we have a signature for you. If you ever get hurt, it’s like getting blood work. You have really good data of what you look like when you’re healthy. Then whatever rehab you’re doing, it’s like, “Hey, man, do you!” You can’t change what you don’t measure. So, if we now know how you look when you’re healthy, you could then make your own decisions.

Our cars have hundreds and hundreds of sensors – the average car has 300 sensors, and human beings wear zero of them. So we know exactly what’s going on with the car and oil and this and that. With humans, it’s almost none. Maybe we wear a Fitbit or an Apple Watch, but nothing around biomechanics and movement.

Taylor Pipes
I’ve tried to get ahead of health issues in my family and heart stuff, and as a writer and a journalist, I just try to go out and find sources to better inform me. And I found Andrew Huberman and Dr. Peter Attia. And like, now, we’ve never guys. We’ve never been more quick. You got to get on one of their shows.

Quin Sandler
Man, Peter Attia – would love to be on that show.

Taylor Pipes
I was struck by the different bios you had on your website, and notice a lot of I hope I’m saying this, right – Biomechanists?

Quin Sandler
Yep, biomechanists.

Taylor Pipes
What is that? I have an idea what that role is, but explain to me why that’s such an important, vital role for Plantiga, and what it is that they do for you.

Quin Sandler
They make sense of the data with the context of what’s happening with the athletes, to then provide some of the insights that I just went through. And I’ll give you a perfect example, biomechanics just means the physics of how the limbs move.

Taylor Pipes
What does the Plantiga tech stack look like? We’ve touched on a lot of different variables like data, AI, and machine learning. Do you have a tech stack that guides you, or, you know, a tech philosophy that guides you from building and playing with data and doing all this manipulation?

Quin Sandler
Practically, we make hardware. Those are enclosures, printed circuit boards, firmware, and mechanical and industrial design. We do assembly. We do all of the things around hardware, which are actually infinitely complex firmware, hardware, and 3D printing. Then we have all the software and the firmware that runs on little sensors – we call them pods. We built what we call a dock, which is where these things connect. That’s a whole other piece of hardware with a printed circuit board and firmware that’s connected to the cloud. We have a lot of cloud infrastructure that collects all of that data and processes it, and that’s where we’ve run all of our algorithms. Then we have the front end, which once you look at the data on the mobile app or a web app. We have all of the components of what it look like in PDF reports and downloads and chat functions. It’s really quite a broad technical stack where it’s hardware, firmware, algorithms, back end, software, compute, cloud, compute front end, and then everything in between.

Taylor Pipes
What pushed you to apply to our SportsTech Program?

Quin Sandler
From my perspective, one of the things that we need to work on is our awareness. Our team is basically a bunch of engineers, including myself. We don’t have anyone who does sales or marketing as a defined role. Sales is me with an SDR that helps me sometimes. I thought that NBC Comcast SportsTech Accelerator would boost our profile, which it has, and a lot of inbounds has come and lots of great things in the works with many of their partners. So it did precisely what I wanted it to do.

Taylor Pipes
And what’s it been like? This is probably the highest-fidelity startup I’ve seen. What’s it been like working with the other teams?

Quin Sandler
It’s been amazing to get to know the different companies, meet some of the partners and learn how they run sales commissions, how they do proposals, and what those proposals look like. We often sell into very similar customer segments, so being able to share tactics has been one of the best things. Even last week, it was amazing to talk to these other companies and share with me a proposal for an NBA team. This is what it looked like, and this is how much we charge. These were the terms. I would say that is a secondary benefit that I was not expecting, but was amazing.

Taylor Pipes
Outside of your work at Plantiga, what sort of sports tech innovations or trends are you keeping an eye on?

Quin Sandler
I’m always a reader of anything deep tech, space mining, asteroids, and telescopes. I think it fascinates me from a childhood perspective. We’ve been deploying and using machine learning for many years back to the Creative Destruction Lab in 2018.

I think it’s really exciting. I am also paying attention to how you prompt Chat GPT for something. A lot of our customers are asking us to prompt Plantiga’s database for how a player has improved over the last six months. Instead of having to go find the data and find the page and trends and select the period, we can just have that spit out to them in something that they could share with their general manager. And so this ability to talk and prompt our database wrapped with a large language model is something that I’m always kind of aware of seeing what other companies are doing with LLMs. Chat GPT has changed the expectations of how people want to interact with data. They don’t even want to look it up anymore. It’s more of a prompt for what they want.

Taylor Pipes
Are there any startups or brands outside of the SportsTech program that you’re keeping an eye on?

Quin Sandler
I really like companies that build hardware, firmware, basically the same things that we do. So, I like what Tesla and SpaceX have done. There’s a robotics company called Figure, which is awesome. There’s another robotics company from Vancouver called Sanctuary AI. I’m very impressed by these companies because while we’re fundamentally different, we’re actually not that different. Our data could probably help train robots, but anybody that is using software and hardware and combining those two with the complexity of firmware and analytics and front-end and machine learning where I live – I love that stuff.

Taylor Pipes
I really appreciate your time!

Quin Sandler
Yeah, we’ll talk soon!