I’ve spent the last several years working hands-on with pro sports athletes and teams’ performance training facilities and performance labs across the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, PGA Tour, UFC, motorsports, and U.S. national teams. Shiftwave has also supported first responders, the U.S. military, and humanitarian efforts.
From that frontline view, what strikes me most isn’t simply who uses Shiftwave. It’s how they use it.
These are the highest-level performers in the world. They have access to every recovery and performance tool imaginable — saunas, hyperbaric and hypobaric oxygen chambers, red-light therapy, advanced GPS-based athlete-tracking systems, and the best training facilities money can buy.
They don’t add anything lightly. They choose deliberately, and they choose only what actually moves the needle.
The schedules these high performers face are brutal.
- MLB teams play 162 games in roughly six months — a nonstop marathon across dozens of cities.
- NBA and NHL squads play 82 games, many of which end late at night, before jumping straight onto a plane with almost no recovery window.
- NFL players often describe the physical toll as feeling like being in multiple car wrecks every week.
- This past NHL season was especially punishing because of the mid-season Winter Olympics, which compressed the schedule even further. One top team told me they saw an unusually high number of injuries directly tied to the year's demands.
Shiftwave meets these athletes exactly where they are.
Its portability and quick setup make it a road-warrior essential.
A head coach from one of the top NBA teams reached out during the playoffs to say he was even using it on the team plane. That use case on the flight really stands out.
We’ve had players dealing with well-publicized pre-game mental health challenges call me seeking fast, reliable options on those long Mondays before night games, such as Monday Night Football.
Some of the top athletes have gone even deeper: we’ve wired them up in our mobile psychophysiology lab, mapped their individual nervous-system responses, and built custom protocols tuned to their exact pre-game or pre-practice routines.
The use cases are as varied as the athletes themselves.
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Some step in the night before a game in their hotel room to quieten racing thoughts and actually get restorative sleep — especially valuable when fighting jet lag or international travel fatigue.
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Others use it right before competition or practice to sync mind, body, and breath into a calm, focused flow state. We’ve had quarterbacks and wide receivers use it at halftime for a rapid reset after the intensity of the first-half.
- Teams sometimes roll out Shiftwave the moment the plane lands or the day after a tough road trip.
- Veteran tight end Juwan Johnson, in his 7th NFL season with the New Orleans Saints, keeps a Shiftwave in the team locker room. He uses it before every practice and before four o’clock games. He credits it with completely changing his preparation and recovery — and with one of the best years of his career.
- Veteran safety Eric Murray, in his 10th NFL season with the Jacksonville Jaguars, reaches for it after brutal weeks of practice. “After a tough week of practice, I’m beat up,” he says. “I just need a big reset — a moment to just take a breath, lie down, and get a full body reset.”
- Mike Potenza, High Performance Director for the San Jose Sharks, brought Shiftwave in specifically to help players downregulate after late-night games. His team saw guys getting to bed an hour or two earlier and sleeping more restoratively in that tight post-game window. His take? “I think we’re just scratching the surface with this thing.”
We’ve also been there during true crises. One of the most iconic teams in pro sports — a team with a non-obvious reputation for not purchasing products or adapting new technology — reached out mid-season under absolutely extenuating circumstances for both the players and the organization. They purchased Shiftwaves quickly because they knew we could support them — and it was incredibly rewarding to deliver results.
Here’s what I’ve learned after all these years on the front lines: Shiftwave has become a meaningful tool for many of these high performers because it works at a foundational level.
For me personally, this hit home long before I joined the company. I was a hard-case insomniac since childhood — nothing worked consistently. Shiftwave became the one tool that finally changed that. I now sleep 7–9 hours most nights, and it’s been genuinely life-changing. That experience is a big reason I believe in the product and why I came on board. It’s been incredibly rewarding to now watch it help elite athletes and high-performance people in similar ways.
It’s just one tool among many. These organizations and athletes already have access to every possible resource. So it’s humbling to see Shiftwave earn its place in their routines.
Many of the players are even taking it home and using it with their families. One guy’s kids love climbing in and asking, “Daddy, are we blasting off?”, (referring to an ‘intergalactic’ adventure within one of Shiftwave’s ‘For Kids’ protocols).
We’re still learning right alongside them. These are multi-billion-dollar organizations and world-class performers who could choose anything. The fact that Shiftwave is now a key part of their toolkit is humbling.
I’m continually inspired by the stories our partners share. If this kind of thing is something you’re exploring for your own performance or recovery, I’d love to hear how it fits into your world.
Head of Partnerships and Member of the Shiftwave Research Team
A Better Way to Reset When You’re Overloaded