Recovery & Resilience
A Deeper Look Into the Los Angeles Rams Sports Medicine and Performance Team
There is no greater setback to an athlete’s livelihood than injury. In a profession where health is a crucial determinant of performance, a broken bone or muscle tear could be the difference between winning a championship or getting cut from a roster.
The inevitability of injuries in American professional sports is currently at its most devastating. Due to longer seasons and intensified training regimens, the prioritization of player health is more important than ever before. It is a significant reason why America’s major sports franchises invest heavily in not only state-of-the-art facilities, but also the most experienced professionals that sports medicine and sports science have to offer.
These individuals are cornerstones to any pro team’s success. Through them, athletes are enabled to perform at the highest level, week in and week out. In the case of the Los Angeles Rams, the fifth-most valuable sports team in the world, the Sports Medicine and Performance team consists of an ensemble of characters who specialize in varying disciplines that include athletic training, strength and conditioning, and nutrition, to name a few.
On gamedays they inconspicuously blend into the sidelines amidst a sea of players, coaches, and media members. However, their contributions to the organization are most noticeable when the bright lights of SoFi Stadium aren’t shining down on them. They work tirelessly at weekly practice sessions, in the operating room, and even the cafeteria — any space where the players can better themselves. From nursing injuries to tracking nutrients, the team sets up professional athletes to thrive doing what they do best: excel at the highest level of professional sports.
The magic happens at the Rams practice facility in Thousand Oaks, on a secluded plot of land adjacent to California Lutheran University. Behind a fenced perimeter lies a modern, modular campus on which the world’s best athletes work out, refine their craft, and recover. Everything the Rams need is located somewhere within the compound — there’s a media room, a fully staffed cafeteria, administrative areas, indoor training spaces and two full practice fields. It’s an enclosed professional sports playground where players and personnel are given a rare opportunity to perform their jobs without cameras recording their every move.
At the helm of the operation is Reggie Scott, the VP of Sports Medicine and Performance, who has been with the organization since it was based out of St. Louis. From his office to the rehabilitation room, he’s a leader who curates environments that promote optimism and excellence. Decision science, quality assurance, and the help of experienced, passionate team members motivate Scott to promote a positive mentality that is necessary to assemble a cohesive unit.
“It’s our job to try to create availability of our players every single day through strength and conditioning, dieticians, sports science, sports medicine,” Scott said. “We are a dance, and it’s a concert every single day to make sure that we are all in sync, all aligned to create that environment for athletes to stay available.”
Growing up playing baseball and basketball in Dover, Delaware, Scott knew from a young age that sports would be a key aspect of the life he aspired to have. His first introduction to athletic training came after dislocating his patella in high school, an event that gave him the opportunity to assimilate in the rehabilitative side of the sports world. In college, Scott became a student athletic trainer at West Virginia University and was an intern for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the summer between his junior and senior year. Though by that time he was most familiar with baseball diamonds and basketball courts, the atmosphere of the gridiron possessed an alluring quality that led him to ultimately pursue a career in the NFL.
“The medical components of NFL and football medicine and the injuries were so dynamic. You’ve got to be creative, you’ve got to have really good skills, and it really challenges all your skills and hones everything in as an athletic trainer,” he said.
After graduating in 2002, Scott deferred his pursuit of a master’s degree in physical therapy to avail of a four-year fellowship the Buccaneers offered him. He’d find his way to becoming the Carolina Panthers Assistant Athletic Trainer a year later, and in 2010 his work would earn him the job as the Rams Head Athletic Trainer at the age of 31 — the youngest Head Athletic Trainer in the modern NFL era. Five seasons after achieving the milestone, Scott and his staff on the Rams were named the 2015 NFL Athletic Training Staff of the Year. The honor was presented by the Professional Football Athletic Trainers Society (PFATS), a group that Scott would serve as the president of from 2020 to 2023.
Through leaguewide advancements in medicine since Scott’s start in the NFL, the technology in which trainers evaluate player health has grown considerably in scope. At the apex of professional football, the margins of error are thinner than the difference between fourth and inches and a first down. In the past twenty years, various innovations in sports medicine have highlighted how the field is more than just a helpful asset — it’s an invaluable resource.
“It’s driven by elite athletes wanting to move the needle in their health care. How can [they] get better a little bit faster, what can [they] do creatively to get back on the field,” Scott said. “How can we biohack the system to push the medical field of orthopedics and athletic training?”
Gracing a blue backdrop on the wall outside of Scott’s office are three words in bold white letters for players and personnel to see: “MIND, BODY, SPIRIT.” The message is a mantra which Scott stands by to not only motivate players, but also more importantly remind them that recovery is achievable even when injuries are at their most daunting.
“[If] you tear your ACL tomorrow, there’s a lot more than just you tearing your ACL. There’s a mental component to it, there’s an emotional component to it, there’s a spiritual component to it, there’s a physical component to it,” Scott said. “We’d be wrong to just rehab your ACL — we have to rehab the whole person.”
At the root of Scott’s holistic philosophy is another word: vulnerability. Competitive sports have been marred with associations that categorize vulnerability as weakness. It’s a stigma that is most notably associated with football, a predominantly male, contact sport that, on the surface, prioritizes physical strength and mental toughness. To add to those pressures, there are also fans who chastise players from afar on the basis of stat totals, fantasy football outcomes, and missed parlays. Elite athletes who suffer injuries need a safe space that is free of the toxicities that intrude their everyday experience, and that’s a tenet that the rehabilitation room provides. Player care lacks meaning in the absence of trust for the trainers who contribute to the recovery process.
“I want to develop relations before the injury happens. I want to get to know you, who you are, how you tick, the things you like, and really develop a relationship because I just genuinely care about you. That’s when that trust starts,” Scott said. “Because one day we might need to go through some adverse times, and you go through a lot of those adverse times a lot better when you trust somebody and have a relationship with somebody outside of the injury.”
Trust is a privilege that is not taken lightly in the Sports Medicine and Performance team, especially for Byron Cunningham, the Director of Rehabilitation. He oversees the gamut of injuries that range from day-to-day knocks like minor sprains to long-term setbacks like muscle tears and bone fractures.
“We always say you’re not treating the injury — you’re treating the human,” Cunningham said. “Some of these guys, they could spend 10 months with us [for] five, six days a week. Establishing trust is probably our biggest key point in regards to our player care.”
Cunningham attended Florida A&M University as an undergraduate in the school’s physical therapy program. There he shadowed one of his professors, who was both a physical therapist and an athletic trainer, at high school football games to learn more about the craft. The experience was enlightening for Cunningham, and it was what inspired him to pursue athletic training in a sports setting.
Cunningham is one of the Rams’ most consummate professionals. His first stint for an NFL team came in 2002 as a summer intern with the Indianapolis Colts, and in the years since he has witnessed the meteoric improvement and expansion of player care techniques.
“I can remember when I first started 20 years ago, there were certain body parts you just couldn’t move for six weeks. Now we’re moving those body parts — same injury in 2023 — we move those three days later,” Cunningham said.
As someone who works with the world’s most elite athletes, Cunningham recognizes the drive and commitment that players employ to thrive in a physically taxing setting. His appreciation is what compels him to spend weeks, months, and sometimes years treating players in hopes of seeing them take the field again one day.
“A lot of people, they just only see Sundays,” he said. “And they don’t really see what takes place behind the scenes, and it’s a grind.”
Doctors and scientists actively devise new therapeutic techniques and modalities to decrease recovery time from injuries, and Cunningham diligently studies all of them to stay at the cutting edge of treatment. His industrious pursuit of knowledge, uplifting attitude, and diverse skillset as an athletic trainer are what have earned him the reputation of a person who players can comfortably confide in.
“I am father, uncle, friend, mentor, psychologist — you name it, I’m that,” Cunningham said. “[If] you establish that level of trust, then the sky’s the limit when it comes to what you can do with them from a rehabilitation standpoint.”
Dr. Michael Banffy of the Cedars Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute has been the Rams’ Team Physician for the past eight seasons. Rather than working at the practice facility, he spends most of his time in medical centers and operating rooms. An important element of recovery that precedes rehabilitation is consultation, which determines the severity of an injury and the duration of time a player will be sidelined for. Banffy is the main person who teams approach in order to diagnose players’ injuries, which at times may require surgery that Banffy performs himself.
“I’m a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon and I take care of athletic sports injuries. Most sports injuries involve the joints. I focus on the shoulder, elbow, hip, and knee, the ligaments surrounding the joints, as well as the cartilage in cartilage structures that are within the joints,” he said.
The prospect of becoming a physician never crossed Banffy’s mind throughout his upbringing. He worked construction jobs during his summers in high school, and he planned on attending law school after graduating from UC Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. It wasn’t until he actually worked at a law firm that he realized his true calling wasn’t in a legal setting, but rather in the field of science.
At first, Banffy thought he was going to become a pediatrician; however, after learning insights about medicine’s different subspecialties from a lab mate in his histology class at medical school, he narrowed down his interest to orthopedics.
Banffy is a native Californian hailing from the Sacramento suburb of Roseville. After spending his first few years as a doctor on the East Coast, he reckoned a return to The Golden State was in the cards. Though moving back to the Bay Area was more enticing from a logistical perspective, he wound up residing in a different bay — Los Angeles’ South Bay — along with his wife, Emily.
“We didn’t think we were going to like Los Angeles as much as we did,” Banffy said. “But living in the beach areas changes your perspective a little bit.”
It just so happened that the Kerlan-Jobe Institute, a leader in orthopedics and sports medicine, was based out of Los Angeles as well. Being that Banffy was an orthopedic fellow when he arrived in Southern California, he was inspired to work for a practice that was both busy and academic. He found that with Kerlan-Jobe, where he is currently the Director of the Orthopedic Sports Medicine Fellowship program, a position that allows him to work with trainees.
“To be a successful surgeon, being a good diagnostician is the most important thing. You really have to pick the right patients to have the most successful outcome,” Banffy said. “The fellowship is so important so they can see the interactions, not just between myself and the athlete, but between myself and the front office and the coaches and the agents.”
To say Banffy is one of the busier doctors at Kerlan-Jobe is an understatement. He estimates that he works 10-15 cases a week, and on occasion 20-25. He’s amassed 17 years of experience as a surgeon, and his packed schedule is a testament to how highly regarded he is in not only the field of sports medicine, but on the football field.
“When you take care of the teams, it’s almost like you’re taking care of a little village, and you get to know every player very well,” he said. “It’s really hard not to be a fan of that team, or a fan of those guys.”
Banffy’s praise extends to the medical professionals who are called upon a moment’s notice to attend to injuries at practices and during games. When Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed in a January 2023 matchup against the Bengals at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati, both the Bills and Bengals medical staff were the first ones to come to his aid. Hamlin was in critical condition after suffering cardiac arrest, and through the decisive action of trainers, first responders, and medical professionals, he has since made a full recovery.
“One important thing to point out with regard to the NFL is it’s one of the safer places to be on the planet during the time of a game. You have close to 30 medical professionals that are there [who] are really instrumental with regard to the concussion protocols and cardiac issues,” Banffy said. “It really does take a whole team, it’s not just one single orthopedic surgeon out there doing it all.”
Justin Lovett joined the Rams in 2020 as the team’s Director of Strength and Conditioning. As someone who played football on the collegiate and semi-professional level, he knew his familiarity with the game would influence the career he chose once he hung up his boots.
It would be a disservice to talk about sports medicine without acknowledging its counterpart, sports performance, which is also known as exercise science. Whereas sports medicine focuses on diagnoses, recovery, and rehabilitation, exercise science deals with the optimization of the human body’s capabilities through physical activity.
“I wanted to be a coach, [but] I didn’t know if I played at a high enough level to be an effective coach. So when I got into college and studied some education, the physical education — or kinesiology and anatomy — that made some sense to me,” he said. “I loved athletics and the exercise and science appealed to me and it felt natural.”
He was a high school physical education teacher and strength coach for four years after graduating from Colorado State University in 2003. Though his initial ambitions were to become a high school football coach, Colorado State’s exercise science program opened up a new realm of possibilities that would change the course of his life. Following three assistant strength and conditioning coaching jobs, he worked his way to becoming Western Kentucky University’s head football strength and conditioning coach before being hired as Purdue’s director of football strength and conditioning. Now in his fourth year with the Rams, Lovett was named the National Strength and Conditioning Association’s 2024 Professional Coach of the Year.
Though the level of play has increased with every new role Lovett has filled, his standards for strength and conditioning have always remained high. He must be proactive in limiting injuries, staying on top of preparation, and programming effective techniques to thrive as a professional for an NFL team. Along with monitoring weightlifting sessions, it means constantly adapting to players’ needs, which could range from gaining mass and lean muscle to improving mobility or grip strength.
“Evolution is necessary in the field of performance enhancement. If you’re stuck on a system that you ran with different players ten years ago, that’s not going to fit in today’s game,” Lovett said. “We evolve tactics and strategies to take care of individual players having one-offs, interventions that might be suitable for you but not suitable for somebody else.”
On top of these specialized plans, there’s only so much time in a day for him to closely work with athletes on the professional level. In season, honing football skills and player recovery take priority over more intense, physical activities which push the body to its limit. During offseason at the college level, Lovett could dedicate several months to strength and conditioning training; at the highest echelon of the sport, he gets two weeks. As such, Lovett consciously avails of every second he is allotted with players.
“Being in proximity to world class athletes that have tremendous buy-in, to see how much work they put in, to see the results that they get quicker than most… it reminds me of being in a Marvel movie where you’re seeing the backside of what the Avengers do to train,” he said.
Chris Beaulaurier is a firsthand witness to these superhuman feats as the Rams Strength and Conditioning Fellow. As someone who played competitive football for 15 years, including professionally in Canada and Europe, Beaulaurier has an especially informed perspective on sports performance because of his involvement as an athlete himself.
“A good portion of [my experience] is understanding the culture of the sport itself and also the mindset of what it takes to get out on that field, especially in the middle of the season [when] nothing feels good [and] everything hurts,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t still have a game on Sunday.”
In 2018, Beaulaurier temporarily waved football goodbye to sell cars at a Ford dealership while he figured out his future plans in life. After training a couple co-workers who wanted to get back into shape, he realized what was missing from his sales representative job: working with top-of-the-line athletes who pushed the boundaries of what the human body could do. Not long after, he found a master’s program in exercise physiology at Florida State University.
“I spent a whole bunch of time in weight rooms and staring at Excel spreadsheets trying to make athletes bigger, faster, and stronger,” he said.
As someone in a high-performance field like sports science, a large part of what Beaulaurier does is evaluate data visualizations, make graphs, and crunch numbers. But data on its own can only be so useful to an organization; rather, the significance of data lies in what it represents and the assurance that everyone in the organization understands its value to implement effective changes.
“We use a ton of technology [and] we get all sorts of metrics off [players] constantly. It can be a little unnerving, as an athlete, to be asked to do all of these things and get all these numbers and basically end up looking kind of like a science experiment, especially if you don’t understand what’s going on,” he said.
On a daily basis, the sports performance personnel track anything from a player’s running speed and distance on the field to the quickness of his barbell movement in the weight room. They’ll also focus on specific strength metrics of certain muscle groups or perform one-off tests for those returning from injury. Discussions are conducted with the coaching staff about modifying plays or making more frequent substitutions to grant players rest when needed.
“All of those numbers come into giving us a more objective understanding of where the athlete is, how they’re performing, and how that has changed on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis,” Beaulaurier said. “Sometimes things can look deceiving, and having objective information like all those numbers is important to us.”
As a former professional athlete himself, Beaulaurier can relate to the relentless tenacity that drives players to go the extra mile. Competitors at the highest level of sport have an innate tendency to disregard what is best for them in pursuit of greatness. It’s a mindset that, if left unchecked, can inhibit long-term performance and increase the chance of sustaining or aggravating an injury.
“[Players] are here because they’re phenomenal athletes with incredible work ethics, but sometimes our job is to save them from themselves,” he said. “At the end of the day, despite how amazingly athletic these athletes are, they are still human, they still fatigue, and we need to make sure they’re playing their best on Sunday, not necessarily on Wednesday.”
Beaulaurier recognizes that players are humans in more ways than their physiology. Even amidst the abundance of data, he makes a concerted effort to prioritize personal interaction with players. Mental health has historically been overlooked in professional sports, and it’s a matter the NFL has made steps to normalize. As of 2019, every team has a Behavioral Health Team Clinician whose goal is to support players’ mental and emotional welfare.
“Especially at this level, when everyone has numbers attached to them, whether it’s stats or probabilities for betting or contracts… it’s very easy to be seen as not a person,” Beaulaurier said. “Being able to build those relationships [where] I am more invested in you as the human being than the numbers is crucial just for being a good person and making sure that they know that they’re appreciated in that way.”
Katie Ahlers is the Rams Team Dietitian. Her position is one predicated not only on the personal relationships that she forms with players, but also the personal relationships they have with food.
“All the players have different backgrounds as far as food—what they grew up eating, how their family celebrated meals, stuff they like, things they don’t like — and they’ve been doing this their whole lives,” Ahlers said. “[Part of my role is] undoing those ingrained ideas and those ingrained habits in a way that still positive for them.”
Sports nutrition has developed considerably in the 21st century. New findings have enabled top-tier nutritionists like Ahlers to curate dietary plans that nourish players beyond a physiological level.
“There’s a lot of nutrition counseling and I love that aspect of it,” she said. “I teach these guys that food’s a fuel, but it can also be a comfort, and it can be a really positive thing,” she said.
Ahlers collaborates with the Rams kitchen catering staff to set menus that are individually suited for each player’s specific needs. The timing of the meals, an athlete’s injury history, energy levels, and personal preferences are a few of the many variables that she considers in her daily routine in the cafeteria of the practice facility.
Just over a year ago, Ahlers was working in a Mississippi hospital as a dietetic intern. Before that she spent two years working as a sports nutritionist for the football team of her alma mater, Iowa State University. Both of these professional experiences contributed to the Rams offering her a performance nutrition fellowship which she officially began after moving to L.A. on February 1, 2023.
Ahlers had never been to California prior to 2023, and she didn’t know anyone who lived in the state. She was a fellow under Joey Blake, who started with the Rams in 2017 as the Head Team Dietician before becoming the Director of Performance Nutrition and Wellness in 2021. Blake ended up leaving the organization four months into Ahlers’ fellowship, which in turn led the Rams to look for someone to replace him. Ahlers managed Blake’s responsibilities in his absence, and two weeks later the team had found someone who fit the qualifications for a head dietician. To Ahlers’ surprise, that candidate was none other than herself.
“I jumped at the opportunity. That was amazing. I’m so, so grateful that they did that,” she said. “I didn’t know if I was ready, but I feel like it’s definitely gone really well — a baptism by fire situation.”
It has been a whirlwind adjustment for Ahlers since she officially became Team Dietician in June. As the final stretch of the season nears, her responsibilities are only further magnified in importance; however, she knows with a positive attitude and sincere openness with her peers that she can only grow as a nutritionist and a human being.
“You can learn something from everybody in the room, and I really try to lean into that. Because in the grand scheme of things, it does help me relate to them better. The more I can relate to them, the more I can show them that I care about them as a person,” Ahlers said. “I am super new, I am super young. But I’ve never felt that from the people around me. They all really trust me, and their trust allows me to be great at my job. I don’t think I could replicate that anywhere.”
The dynamic of a team in professional sports extends well beyond the playing field — it’s in the weight room, recovery areas, cafeteria, and medical centers. Sports medicine and science are ever-present assets in football which combine data, technology, and research to bolster elite athletes beyond what is considered possible. The disciplines seek to harness the potential of the human body in a manner that not only increases the competitiveness of games, but also innovates in the hopes of instilling healthy habits that reap positive effects on the sport of football.
New research, protocols, rule changes, and improvements to equipment have served to make the NFL a safer environment for players. Developments like these enable the league’s Sports Medicine and Performance teams to uphold the most valuable assets that an athlete can have: health and safety.
Along with their collective goals of player treatment and maximizing athlete potential, the members of the Rams Sports Medicine and Performance team share another common sentiment between them: at the root of everything that they do, they are most fulfilled by the people who they are surrounded by.
“I have always thought that the biggest thing about a work environment is the people that create that environment. There’s just something really, really, really special about everybody here and the way that people can bond so quickly in an environment that is always changing. People are just really supportive and everybody’s very innovative.”
Katie Ahlers, Team Nutritionist
“What I love most about what I do is the direct impact on the improvement in performance and quality of life of the players. So much of what I’ve studied post my playing career is stuff that I will learn and go, ‘Man, I really wish I knew this five years ago when I was playing, I could’ve saved myself from a whole bunch of injuries and pain and struggles and frustrations that we can now.’ If I have the opportunity to help someone chase their dream and be able to do what they’ve always wanted to do — for longer, for any time at all — that’s worth it. My goal is to allow people to be the best that they can be and see how far they can fly.”
Chris Beaulaurier, Strength and Conditioning Fellow
“The type of players and people that Sean [McVay] and Les [Snead] bring in are high achievers and solid characters. All these guys, even the guys that haven’t created their path yet that are not household names in the city or throughout the league. Those guys are doing some tremendous things and it’s pretty cool to see it before everybody else gets to feel it on the field. Everybody’s got a journey, and while some guys are out in front of the camera, some guys are really working extra hard to stay here, not only to survive but thrive. And their time is coming.”
Justin Lovett, Director of Strength and Conditioning
“My favorite part about what I do is patient appreciation. If I have a busy day and I’m running through all these patients — new patients, post-operative patients — and I have someone that is four months out from a surgery [who] is doing fine, but they just really want to say, ‘thank you.’ That’s really the best part.”
Dr. Michael Banffy, Team Physician
“The [players] are going through a lot outside of football. You throw an injury on top of that, and now it magnifies everything. But at the end of the day, my job is to inspire, to uplift, to motivate and to heal. And that’s what I live by. I see these guys in this vulnerable state and [get] to see them back on the field and achieve their ultimate goal, and that is to perform at a high level. It’s always the most gratifying part of my job.”
Byron Cunningham, Director of Rehabilitation
“I wasn’t put on this Earth to work behind computers all day, I wasn’t put on this Earth to work on machines or cars. I was put on this Earth to really engage and be around people. Caregiving is something that has been gifted to me. And so I love engaging with the athletes every day helping them become better men. I love engaging with my staff every day, and I love being a part of something bigger than yourself on Sundays, which is football.”
Reggie Scott, VP of Sports Medicine
Each team member’s role goes beyond elevating players’ physical and mental states — their positions are inherently founded in restorative, selfless care that is both professional yet personable. In a league that is hyper-fixated on wins and losses, these people come together to achieve victories on a human scale. It’s a rare aspect of a practice facility that is intangible amidst advanced technology capable of placing a quantitative value on an athlete’s every action.
Rehabilitation can be measured in time, strength can be evaluated by the weight of a barbell, and dietetics can be measured by nutrients; however, there will never be a metric for how profoundly impactful these individuals are to the people around them.
The pictures used in this piece are courtesy of the Los Angeles Rams unless otherwise noted.