Sport Science

Episode 1: What Technologies Are Used to Train Singapore’s Top Athletes? with Dr. Marcus Lee

The achievements of Singapore’s elite athletes like Joseph Schooling and Shanti Pereira have long captivated and inspired Singaporeans. What kinds of interesting or unexpected technologies are used to train top athletes? How can biomechanics provide a competitive edge? Sport biomechanist Dr. Marcus Lee shares fascinating and surprising stories of how devices from 3D motion capture systems to simple cameras are applied to help Team Singapore athletes perform their best.

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Episode Highlights

How Dr. Marcus Lee translates biomechanics into a "4S model" (Structure, Strength, Skill, Strategy) to support Team Singapore athletes
The surprising range of tools used in high-performance sports training: from core temperature monitoring pills to eye trackers and more
The fascinating story of how 3D motion capture and magnetic gates helped identify and improve Shanti Pereira's sprint start technique
How a simple camera and mathematical calculations helped support the race strategy for Joseph Schooling's historic Olympic gold medal win
How Singaporeans can use everyday technologies to improve personal fitness

Timestamps

00:00 Intro
00:35 Understanding Biomechanics
02:03 Role of a Sport Scientist
03:19 Interesting Technologies Used in Training
04:54 Case Study: Shanti Pereira
08:28 Case Study: Joseph Schooling
12:02 Using Technology for Personal Fitness
13:45 Outro

Guest Biography

Dr. Marcus Lee is Director of Special Projects at the National Youth Council and also serves as Director and Principal Sport Biomechanist at the High Performance Sport Institute, Sport Singapore. A former Head of Sport Science and Medicine, Marcus has led teams behind the scenes to support Team Singapore athletes across various sports at major competitions like the Olympics, Asian Games and World Championships—making sure they’re not just ready to compete, but ready to thrive.

Drawing from biomechanics, physiology, nutrition, psychology and medicine, he and his team work closely with coaches and athletes to improve performance, reduce injury risks, and fine-tune every detail—from strength and movement, to recovery and mental prep. As a sport biomechanist, Marcus is especially curious about how the human body moves and performs under pressure, and how to equip athletes with the right strength, skill, and strategies to succeed.

A father of two and passionate advocate for youth development, Marcus believes science should serve people—helping athletes not only win, but grow with purpose and resilience.

Correction

The episode misgeneralises that "distance over time is velocity or speed." While this may serve as a practical shorthand in the sporting context, strictly scientifically speaking, the two terms are not interchangeable. Distance over time is speed, not velocity. Speed is the rate at which an object covers distance, while velocity is the rate at which an object changes its position in a specific direction.

Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

JANICE: From Science Centre Singapore, this is Void Deck, a podcast spotlighting the science in Singaporean life. I'm your host, Janice. The athletic achievements of Joseph Schooling and Shanti Pereira have captivated and inspired Singaporeans. Today we’re asking: what technologies are used to train Singapore's top athletes? To find out more, we chatted with sport biomechanist Dr. Marcus Lee, who previously served as Head of Sport Science and Medicine at Sport Singapore.

[Upbeat electronica jingle]

JANICE: Thank you for joining us on the show!

DR. LEE: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

JANICE: Now, let's dive straight into our very first question of the day. How would you explain biomechanics to people who have no science background?

DR. LEE: So the word bio- and mechanics, bio- refers to biological systems, things that are alive, [while] mechanics refers to forces, whether it's producing forces or absorbing forces, mainly anchored on the science of physics. So [biomechanics] is really utilising the laws of physics to understand the movements of biological systems.

My space is sport biomechanics, so naturally it's adapting this in a sporting context, but that's what you’ll find on Google. In the actual practice when we work with athletes, during my time, I came up with a model, it's called the 4S model: Structure, Strength, Skill, Strategy.

To explain what we do, essentially in sport, our athletes are moving their musculoskeletal structure or body structure with the appropriate strength to satisfy the skill requirements of the sport. So how you need to move your body is related to what the sport requires you to do, and, all else being equal, by knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and that of your opponents, and strategising–so that's the fourth “S”–you've got a better chance of winning.

JANICE: Awesome. So, to sum this all up, biomechanics is really the science of how living things move.

DR. LEE: Absolutely, and perform skillfully.

JANICE: Now let’s move on to our second question: what role does a sport scientist play in an athlete's success?

DR. LEE: Hmm. I guess you can look at us as a supporter of the coach and the athlete, and this triad becomes really, really important. So the athlete is the most important person in this whole triad, and we're always athlete-centred, because at the end of the day, they are the ones in the arena competing, they are the ones who go through the ups and downs of winning and losing, and they are the ones who, when they have breakthrough performances, actually have the power to inspire Singaporeans [to] dream of wanting to achieve more.

The coaches are also very important because they are the ones guiding the athletes along the way. I always say that athletes and coaches are scientists themselves, because everyday they are thinking of ways to improve.

A sports scientist’s role is to listen to what the coach and the athletes are talking about, and then [use] scientific knowledge to say, hey, would this work? Would that work? And use a scientific approach to hopefully get us to increase our chance of achieving the outcomes that we want.

[Bright short musical transition]

JANICE: So, what type of equipment or technologies do you use to train Team Singapore's athletes in general?

DR. LEE: I remembered I was showing a Straits Times reporter around, he was asking me, what are some of the technologies that you use that we may not know of? For example, we use a core temperature monitoring pill that, um –

JANICE: Monitoring pill?

DR. LEE: We have actually got to put it up the rectum. [Laughs sheepishly] It's a bit different –

JANICE: Yeah!

DR. LEE: – but that gives you the most accurate readings of core temperature. So for example, if you wanted to monitor the core temperature of our sailors out in the heat, right, and obviously temperature is really, really important, that's something that we use. There's data that is transmitted from the pill out and we can monitor that live. That's one example.

We put eye trackers on our athletes, so we are able to look through the eyes of our athletes, where they're looking at, how long for, and there's some science to that.

JANICE: Eye trackers. Would they be in the form of glasses, or contact lenses that they can actually wear?

DR. LEE: They are in the form of glasses, but these days, they can even be in the form of headbands. Back in the day, yes, they are in the form of contact lenses.

JANICE: Wow.

DR. LEE: Yeah, but that’s a bit more invasive. That's an example. We put reflective markers on our athletes' bodies and we recreate their movements in 3D and use animation to study how they move. So yeah, all sorts of stuff.

JANICE: Yeah, that's really cool. The pill in the rectum one is really cool. I've not heard of that so far. Alright, let's move on to our next question. How do you use technology to study the biomechanics of Shanti Pereira's sprinting and provide a competitive edge?

DR. LEE: Well, it starts off by engaging with the coach and the athlete to find out one question: if you were to narrow down to three things that will help you make a breakthrough, what might they be? And one of the things that we identified together was that if you looked at Shanti's races back in the day, she would always trail behind her competitors at the start, and then she catches up.

So what we did was focus on the start. We took Shanti into the lab, and interestingly—I mentioned [the 4S model]: Structure, Strength, Skill, Strategy–structurally, Shanti is very talented.

Strength-wise, when we did various kinds of strength measurements—and these measurements are, I have to say, quite different from what you see in the gym, these are very, very specific strength measurements using different systems—what we found interestingly in the lab [was] on her third step, the breaking forces were actually higher than the propulsive forces.

And you would think hmm, how does that work? Because ideally, as you're pushing on the ground, Newton's third law, you know, every action has a reaction. The more force you're able to apply to the ground in the appropriate direction, it pushes you forward. But what we found was the breaking forces on the third step was actually higher, so that led to a whole bunch of interventions together with the coaches to try and optimise that.

At that time, we landed on a strategy to improve upon her technique, or in biomechanics, we say kinematics. Kinematics refers to the movement quality, whereas kinetics refers to the forces involved.

So If I can remember correctly —because that was sometime ago, and Shanti obviously now is performing at a much different level, kudos to her for her hard work—

JANICE: Yes, kudos, kudos!

DR. LEE: Yeah, and [to] her coach, really, because all we did was a very small part.

When you talk about technology, we did two things.

The first was with the 3D motion analysis system. We created some script using programming. We were then able to provide real time feedback. What real time feedback means is as you're moving, we identify different parts of your body that we want to track live and guide the movement to where we want it to go.

If the foot position off the ground is too high or too low, it's not giving that appropriate distance ahead, therefore Shanti was not able to apply the optimal forces. We've identified what that foot height [to give optimal forces] is. We can then program it to say, okay, when you're moving in space, if the foot height is not that, we want that auditory feedback.

Second thing we did was we collaborated with a company to optimise these magnetic gates. When Shanti goes through these gates, basically, it gives a distance and time matrix. You can start plotting a velocity-distance curve, so we know how fast she's moving across different distances, and using machine learning, you could count how many steps she took, what was the trajectory of her feet, how long she was in the air for, etc.

[Editor's note: While velocity-distance curves appear in sport science literature measuring athletic performance in sports like sprinting and swimming, from a general science perspective, there is no velocity-distance relationship. Velocity is the rate of change of displacement (not distance) over time. For more on speed vs. velocity, see this resource.]

So that played quite a big role prior to the Asian Games in her preparation. And again, kudos to her and her coach, they did extremely well at the Asian Games and created history.

JANICE: Yeah, they did. Awesome. Well, it really sounds like there's quite a lot of modern, high-tech training equipment available out there, but that leads me to my next question. You previously shared that, you know, training equipment, they don't always need to be fancy, right? Could you share the story of how a simple camera helped Joseph Schooling achieve his Olympic gold medal?

DR. LEE: Well, first, I want to say again, it's kudos to him and the coaches.

JANICE: Yes, kudos!

DR. LEE: No technology or science can claim to create those results. What did happen at the Olympics was that a colleague of mine from the biomechanics team was on the ground. Often in swimming or race-based sports, we do something called performance analysis, and it's pretty simple.

So when you're at the pool, lane ropes, they've got different colours. The different colours represent different distances, so by filming you swimming, I'm able to have a time element and to know how much time you spent to cover a certain amount of distance. Distance over time is velocity or speed. And we plot that curve across distance, so we've got a velocity-distance curve.

[Editor’s note: Although using velocity or speed interchangeably may be a practical shorthand in the context of sports, strictly scientifically speaking, distance over time is speed, not velocity. Speed is the rate at which an object covers distance, while velocity is the rate at which an object changes its position in a specific direction.]

On the ground, by that time, Joseph Schooling was already third at the World Championships. He was doing really, really well. And because these curves are plotted not just during a major competition, but at various competitions and during trainings, the team knew what Joseph Schooling's best timing would look like in his first fifteen metres, in his next twenty-five, fifty, so on and so forth. And you can imagine, we can actually plot a curve to say if Joseph was able to do all these timings, what would the eventual timing look like?

So at the Olympics, Michael Phelps was still swimming. But Michael Phelps was also quite a bit older, so when his curves were plotted and Joe's curves were plotted, it was quite clear that because Michael Phelps was still taking part in many events, the velocity-distance curves were suggesting that he was gradually slowing down more and more across the days, so that signalled to the team that maybe at this age he is fatiguing a lot quicker these days.

The team knew that if Joseph was able to do his best timings on the day, and based on Michael Phelps's curves that suggested he was slowing down over the days, he could have a chance to create history.

So therefore, my colleague did some calculations and made a recommendation to the coaches and Joseph to say that in your first fifty metres, if you want to turn half a body length ahead of Michael Phelps, this would be the time, and this will be the number of strokes, and then the second fifty, this will be the time, and this will be the number of strokes.

That's just mathematical. At the end of the day, Joseph had to do it himself.

JANICE: Yeah.

DR. LEE: Why half a body length is because generally in swimming, if you are turning side by side with a veteran, it will be a dogfight, and somebody who's won so many gold medals at Olympics–it’s going to be challenging. Yeah, but for somebody who's fatiguing–so there's a bit of psychology here–if you are able to turn half a body length ahead, it could be quite demoralising for somebody who's a bit older.

On that day itself, Joe basically outdid whatever recommendations that we made, so he turned, and true enough, he was, I think, three quarters body length ahead. So that's a little, little role that the team played in his race during the Olympic finals.

JANICE: What a story. Wow.

[Short contemplative musical transition]

JANICE: Moving on to our last question of the day: how can Singaporeans use technology easily available to them, for example, their phones or their fitness trackers, to improve their fitness?

DR. LEE: I get asked this question quite a bit. The very fact that we all have a mobile phone, it really is revolutionary. In a sense, before mobile phones had cameras, video cameras, all these were standalone pieces of equipment, so to even film oneself and do simple measurements, it was a big task, but now with a phone, with high-speed cameras, you can capture yourself moving in slow motion. It really is up to one's own creativity on what you want to do if you're looking at improving the quality of your movements.

Just filming yourself and reviewing it, doing a quick ChatGPT search on what needs to be done, you could do that. There's some apps that allow you to draw on the images. You can put two images side by side. You can compare a pre and a post. You can draw different angles. There are even apps that suggest what optimal movement looks like, but I'm always a little bit sceptical about that because we all move in different ways.

You and I, we can run a hundred metres and get to the finishing line at exactly the same speed, but move in very different ways. So, while apps and technology [are] useful to look at all these things, you do need a discerning eye to know what are the areas that if you intervene in, it will make a difference compared with not.

JANICE: Alright, and that’s all the time we have here for today. Thank you Dr. Marcus Lee for coming on the show.

DR. LEE: Thank you!

[Inspiring electronic outro music]

JANICE: We hope you’ve learned something new about biomechanics and sport science today. You can find the episode transcript, full show notes, and past episodes at voiddeck.science.edu.sg/podcast. And if you enjoyed the episode, please rate and subscribe to the podcast. See you soon, and stay curious!

Resources

Dr. Marcus Lee's Research
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marcus-Lee-11

The High Performance Sport Institute's Biomechanics Unit
https://www.sportsingapore.gov.sg/our-work/high-performance-sport-institute/sport-science/sport-biomechanics/

Sport Technology at the the High Performance Sport Institute, Sport Singapore|
https://www.sportsingapore.gov.sg/our-work/high-performance-sport-institute/sport-science/sport-technology

Sport Science: "A Little Red Dot’s” Aspirations to Punch Above it’s Weight in High Performance Sport | Singapore Sports Institute Webinar 2021
https://youtu.be/TaD_xDCuMW4?si=Hl2cweBQooAKQE5i

How Singapore’s finest sprinter found her speed
https://www.straitstimes.com/multimedia/graphics/2023/09/shanti-pereira-sprint-graphics/index.html?shell

Singapore to increase investment in sport science to boost athletes’ performance
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/sport-science-investment-boost-athletes-performance-kallang-4568061

Singapore Physical Activity Guidelines
https://www.activesgcircle.gov.sg/campaigns/spag

Want to learn more about the human body? Check out the following resources for a travelling exhibition on the human body presented by Science Centre Singapore, supported by the Ministry of Education and National Library Board:

The Unofficial Guide to Being Human
https://www.science.edu.sg/whats-on/exhibitions/the-unofficial-guide-to-being-human

Credits

Special thanks to Dr. Marcus Lee for coming on the show. This episode of Void Deck was hosted by Janice Tow. The episode and series was produced by Jamie Uy. Audio engineering and pre-production research were provided by Ewan Leong. Video teasers were edited by Lydia Konig. Studio production was assisted by Jane Stephanie Emmanuella and Ai Xin Qin. Season 2 music and graphics were created by Ai Xin Qin. The cover art was illustrated by Vikki Li Qi. The Void Deck podcast is an original transmedia production by Science Centre Singapore.

Last Updated 4 December 2025