A sports facility gives athletes a place to practice. Housing a biomechanics laboratory creates something different: a place where the movements behind the game can also be measured, studied & better understood.
Sawmill Sports Hub houses Synapse SRT’s Motion Analysis Lab, bringing advanced movement-testing technology into our Willowbrook, Illinois, facility. Alongside the courts, turf & training spaces is a specialized environment where sports science connects with the physical demands of athletic competition.
For Sawmill, this is about more than having impressive equipment under our roof. It is about providing a setting where athletes, clinicians & researchers can examine the details that a scoreboard, stopwatch or highlight video cannot show.
A Motion Analysis Lab Inside a Working Sports Facility
Sports do not happen in a straight line. Athletes accelerate, stop, rotate, reach, land & react. Understanding those movements requires space to perform them, surfaces suited to the task & technology capable of recording what happens.
That combination is what makes the lab’s location inside Sawmill Sports Hub meaningful. Synapse Sports & Rehab Technologies occupies approximately 8,000 square feet within the facility, including 3,200 square feet dedicated to motion analysis.
Rather than separating athletic movement from its environment, the space brings testing closer to the actions players recognize from their sport. A basketball hoop, volleyball net, soccer goal, performance turf & court flooring create opportunities to examine movement in sport-specific settings.
Located at 17W411 S Frontage Rd. in Willowbrook, Sawmill provides a DuPage County home for this work, close to communities including Darien, Burr Ridge, Downers Grove, Hinsdale & Westmont.
What the Technology Can Measure
Athletic movement leaves information behind: how the body changes position, how much force travels through the ground & when muscles activate. Synapse SRT’s equipment captures different parts of that information, helping its team build a more complete picture of an athlete’s movement.
Movement in Three Dimensions
The Motion Analysis Lab uses two camera systems. Eight modular OptiTrack Prime Color cameras work with Theia3D software for markerless tracking, allowing movement to be analyzed without markers attached to the athlete.
A second system uses 20 mounted OptiTrack Prime cameras with Motive software for marker-based tracking. Together, these approaches provide options for studying body position, joint mechanics & movement patterns during selected tasks.
The Forces Beneath Each Step
Four AMTI force plates, arranged in two pairs, measure ground reaction forces. These measurements help examine how an athlete produces force, maintains balance & manages tasks such as jumping and landing.
A jump’s height tells only part of the story. Force data can add information about how the athlete pushed off or distributed loading on landing—details that may matter when evaluating performance or rehabilitation progress.
Muscle Activity During Movement
The Delsys Trigno wireless EMG system records electrical activity associated with muscle activation. This gives the evaluating team another perspective on the timing & coordination of muscular effort.
The equipment does not replace professional judgment. It provides measurable information that clinicians and researchers can interpret alongside the athlete’s history, goals & other assessment findings.
The Space Makes the Testing Possible
Technology needs an appropriate environment to be useful. Inside Sawmill, Synapse SRT’s testing footprint includes Nex Field X-Gen E2 Pro turf & a dedicated 1,200-square-foot Taraflex court.
The performance turf area includes 2,200 square feet of permanent turf & 1,000 square feet of modular space. Flexible layouts allow the environment to accommodate different assessment needs instead of forcing every athlete through the same setup.
- Basketball assessments: A regulation hoop provides a setting for examining vertical jumps & shooting mechanics.
- Volleyball assessments: A custom net supports evaluation of spikes, blocks & lateral agility.
- Soccer assessments: A full-size goal supports soccer-specific testing within the turf environment.
- Multisport assessments: The space accommodates tasks such as sprinting, cutting, jumping & throwing.
The benefit is practical: athletes can perform recognizable sporting actions while specialized systems record the mechanics behind them.
From Athletic Questions to Measurable Findings
The most useful assessment begins with a question. Has an athlete’s movement changed during rehabilitation? What happens when they cut in one direction compared with the other? How does a new piece of equipment affect a selected movement?
The Synapse SRT Motion Analysis Lab supports several ways to investigate those questions.
Establishing a Starting Point
Biomechanical baseline profiling documents movement patterns, force production & joint mechanics during selected tasks. Those findings provide a reference for tracking changes and informing individualized training or rehabilitation planning.
Monitoring Recovery
Rehabilitation testing can help document progress beyond how an athlete feels. Objective measurements provide additional information about their ability to perform movements relevant to the demands of their sport.
Return-to-play testing contributes to a broader clinical decision; it does not independently establish readiness or guarantee an injury-free return.
Investigating Movement & Loading Patterns
Screenings can identify asymmetries, loading differences & movement characteristics that deserve closer attention. These findings may inform injury-risk management, but they cannot predict or prevent every injury.
Evaluating Sports Technology
The laboratory also offers a setting for independent testing of sports equipment, footwear & wearables. Structured assessments allow researchers to examine product claims using movement and force data rather than relying on promotional promises.
More Than One Kind of Athletic Preparation
The Motion Analysis Lab is part of a broader Synapse SRT environment inside Sawmill. Nearby, the Synapse Brain Gym at Sawmill Sports Hub houses 20 Neurovisualization Feedback Training stations in a 1,200-square-foot neural training room.
Featuring i-BrainTech, the Brain Gym adds a different approach to preparation: sport-specific mental visualization with feedback on recorded brain activity. It complements the lab’s focus on physical movement with a dedicated environment for neurocognitive training.
Offices, a conference room & a team lounge provide room to review biomechanics findings, discuss research and collaborate. These supporting spaces help connect measurement with interpretation—the step that turns collected information into useful insight.
For Sawmill, housing this work expands the role of a sports facility. Alongside youth sports programs, leagues & training opportunities is an environment focused on investigating how athletic movement works.
Explore What Is Inside Sawmill
Athletes come to Sawmill to put their skills into motion. Synapse SRT provides tools to study what happens next. That connection between athletic space & specialized science is what makes housing the Motion Analysis Lab an important part of our facility.
Visit Sawmill Sports Hub to explore our Willowbrook facility, learn more about research and assessment through Synapse SRT, or discover the Synapse Brain Gym.
For photos & videos of the facility and technology inside Sawmill, follow @sawmillsportshub on Instagram.