Dr. Jo Shattuck, PantherTec

“When I played sports, I recognized I had a sense of control that I did not have in other areas of my life.”
Dr. Jo Shattuck

Dr. Jo Shattuck, founder & CEO of Panthertec, shared the story behind her title with us on January 11, 2023.

Panthertec is a performance enhancement company that combines data, neuroscience, and biomechanics to capture athlete’s motion and provide sensory feedback. Their goal is to enhance performance and reduce injuries and impact by disrupting sports’ training and recovery.

The Kinesthetic Awareness Training system was invented by company founder Dr. Jo Shattuck, an experienced coach, educated neuroscientist and former professional athlete. Kinesthetic Awareness Training was created from Dr. Shattuck’s personal experience as a top 10 world-ranking professional racquetball player and 23 years coaching in a highly technical sport.

As a coach, Dr. Shattuck spent countless hours in one-on-one training with my students in the technical bio-mechanical details of racquetball strokes; she became fascinated with the malleability of motor learning performance. Jo marveled at how the wording of her instructions, or subtle changes to the task parameters could immediately and profoundly affect her student’s ability to perform that task. What she said and how she said it changed the way they moved; it undoubtedly changed their neural processes.

She remembers wishing for the ability to see inside her athlete’s brains, to see what was happening when she used this technique or that or gave feedback with this word as opposed to that word. Watching the motor learning process unfold in front of her and seeing her student’s achievements was fascinating. Her need to understand how external factors affected motor learning acquisition grew from her 23 years of trying to improve it.

During her last two years of professional competition, Dr. Shattuck earned a master’s degree in sport science and actively experimented with pedagogical interventions to improve bio-mechanics in motor skill acquisition. She created MuDCAT© (Multi-Discipline Circuit Aptitude Training), a training technique that combines the principles of motor learning stages, biofeedback, blocked and random practice, visualization and vision exercises. She coached at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs in ten annual training camps where she applied these interventions. When she retired from competition in late 2010, Dr. Shattuck went on to work in the Nebraska Athletic Performance Lab during her doctoral studies, and earned a PhD, focusing on the brain-behavior relationship of motor learning.

The company PantherTec and the Kinesthetic Awareness Training system are products of her competitive career, coaching career and education. PANTHER stands for Principles of Athletics And Neuroscience Toward Human ExpeRtise.

SUE SAYS

Dr. Jo is an accomplished athlete, coach, advisor, Neuroscientist and Entrepreneur who shares her story of overcoming self-doubt….something we all experience. Listen in to Jo describe her invention that captures movement in real time and teaches it back to the wearer with vibrations felt through sensors. It’s a fascinating device that may well end up helping numerous industries outside of sports!