How the Atlanta Dream Use Left-Right Data to Bring Athletes Back Stronger
The WNBA season is a grind. Games come roughly every other day, recovery windows are short, and a minor flare-up can become a lost month. For Katie Buria of the Atlanta Dream, managing that reality means knowing exactly how much load each athlete is taking on, and on which leg.
Seeing What Other Tools Miss
Before Plantiga, the Dream tracked return to play with Kinexon, and they still use it. What it couldn't show was how each leg was loading.
"Plantiga allows us to track left-right asymmetries, which is very helpful for lower extremity injuries, which we previously didn't have," Katie says. Athletes have dominant and weaker legs, and now the staff can see what that looks like in practice.
That matters in basketball, where lower extremity injuries are common: ankle sprains, knee injuries, hip issues, foot problems. Many sport science tools can tell you where an athlete's center of mass went. They can't separate what's going into the left side from what's going into the right during running, jumping, and sport-specific movement. That’s what Plantiga does best.
Why Asymmetry Matters on the Court
Walking and running are effectively single-leg tasks, and basketball adds other level of intensity to that. Some athletes jump off one leg more than the other. Some push harder with one leg on double-leg jumps. Some land more on one side.
"Injuries happen when you put more into one side versus the other," Katie explains. Monitoring those patterns helps the staff catch areas of weakness before they become injuries, rather than only reacting afterward.
Load Management Across a Condensed Season
With games every other day, in-game load drives the next day's plan. The Dream use Plantiga data to decide what practice should look like, whether a walkthrough is enough, and whether an athlete needs more or less load given her injury history.
When flare-ups follow high load, the staff can pull back and adjust recovery. Because they see left and right separately, they can tailor those decisions to the affected side.
A Return to Play, Step by Step
This season, one Dream athlete missed the start of the year while returning from injury. Katie's team used Plantiga across the full progression, from the point where she could barely do anything to full return to basketball.
Walk tests. The first phase was a two-minute walk test with Plantiga in the shoes, tracking foot speed, distance covered, and left-right push-off and impact. The athlete stayed in this phase for a few weeks before moving to running and jumping.
Jump testing. Next came single-leg and double-leg jumps, with the staff watching landing impact on each side. Counter-movement jumps were especially useful. The Dream have force plates, which give some left-right information, but Plantiga adds the push-off and impact detail on the jump and the landing.
Return to practice. Once she was back in practice, the goal was finding the sweet spot: not overloaded, not underloaded, so the work put into her rehab wasn't undone.
Return to games. The same principle applied. Coming back into a grinding season and getting overloaded right away is how new injuries happen.
Monitoring Beyond Injury
The Dream don't limit Plantiga to injured athletes. Walk tests are used with healthy players to monitor fatigue and readiness, and counter-movement jumps track left-right differences across the roster. Sensors are then worn in practices and games for the full basketball picture.
Athletes Who Buy In
Katie's athletes engage with the data. Some turn it into friendly competition over load and distance. More importantly, they understand why the staff collects it.
When an athlete's left knee is bothering her, Katie can show her that impact on the left side is much higher than on the right. When an ankle sprain is healing, she can show reduced push-off on that side. "Well, that makes sense why my left knee is flared up" is a common reaction.
Athletes also see that practice and game loads are adjusted based on the data. That shows them the staff is looking at the long term, not one game or one practice at a time. Katie says she enjoys sitting down with athletes to talk through what the numbers mean and how they're used.
The Bottom Line
"The left-right is a huge win for us," Katie says. The Dream aren't only tracking general movement. They can identify lower extremity asymmetries that may affect injury risk, and use that to manage returns, tune load, and keep athletes healthy through a demanding season.