Omegawave

History

The company began as OmegaWave Sport Inc. in Portland, Oregon, USA, being founded in 1999 by Leo Maskov, Val Nasedkin and Allen K. Huffstutter. The company was renamed Omegawave Ltd., and moved to Finland in 2012 after attracting investment from the Finnish innovation fund, Sitra, and Conor Venture Partners.

The key to Omegawave's system is the way the software, developed by Vladimir Larionov and Leonid Masakov, interprets electrocardiography (EKG), and a very slow moving♙Omega brain wave, and compares them with each other to determine an individual's current physical state.

With the move to Finland, Omegawave also attracted a number of former Nokia employees. Juha Pinomaa, who previously held a number of executive positions at Nokia and has also been President of Suunto, was advising the company in 2011, and served as the CEO in 2012-2014, followed by Gerard Bruen, another ex-Nokia executive. Chairman of the Board is Anssi Vanjoki, former vice CEO of Nokia and also Chairman of Amer Sports.

Two of the founders and original inventors of Omegawave’s technology – Leo Masakov, Research Director, and Val Nasedkin, VP Business Development – also moved to Finland and continued working with the new company.

Products and technology

Omegawave’s products measure and assess the functional readiness of athletes, with the aim of identifying the optimal types and intensities of training and recovery, to improve athletic performance and help avoid injury.

The most comprehensive of their products, Omegawave Team, takes measurements relevant to an athletes physiological condition, including ECG, Omega (DC potential of the brain), neuromuscular, and reaction rate measurements, for analysis by their cloud-service. Measurements and their results can be taken for a whole team and viewed by a coach locally, or remotely via the company’s cloud-service. They also have a related product for individual athletes called Omegawave Personal.

The measurements are processed by Omegawave’s patented cloud-based system to give results and recommendations that the company claims are relevant to the athlete’s cardiac readiness, metabolic readiness, central nervous system readiness, gas exchange readiness, detoxification readiness, and hormonal system readiness.

It is from the Omega measurement that the company takes its name. DC potentials of the brain are sometimes called Omega-potential and the measurement of them is sometimes called Omegametry.

History of the technology

While Omegawave’s products could be considered as part of the Quantified Self movement, the idea for a method of instant analysis of an athlete’s state was based on the coach’s rather than the athlete’s need for information. The need for the product to be non-invasive and non-stressful came directly from the inventors’ experience in Soviet athletics teams and the testing methods they used. At that time Soviet athletes were tested to assess their condition once or twice a year, with the tests taking place in a hospital. The tests included highly stressful methods such as muscle biopsies and exercising till exhaustion. Since the results became available several weeks later, and the athletes took a long time to recover, they were of no practical use to the coaches. The technology and techniques that eventually became Omegawave products were therefore designed with the specific purpose of being quick, non-stressful and non-invasive, and to provide results that were easy for coaches to interpret. Published studies appear to indicate that these non-invasive methods are, as intended, as reliable as the more invasive methods.

Notable users

Lionel Messi from FC Barcelona, Mario Balotelli from AC Milan, and Steven Gerrard from Liverpool F.C., are known to have used Omegawave products to reduce their risk of injury. The Russian National Triathlon team, the Seattle Sounders, and the Kentucky Wildcats are also known to use Omegawave products.