Saquon Barkley was two decades removed from ACL surgery—and a few months recovered from a left knee sprain—when, in May 2022, he reached out to Dave Hancock for help.
Hancock, the founder and CEO of the health information system ApolloV2, has a master’s degree in sporting medication and exercise physiology and has worked with some of the world’s most renowned athletes and artists to help them with their rehabilitation. For instance, he spent four decades with Kevin Durant after sustaining a torn Achilles tendon in 2019. He’s even worked on David Beckham, Madonna, Odell Beckham Jr. and James Bond actor Daniel Craig.
Barkley met Hancock through another NFL player, who he doesn’t name, and invited him to his New Jersey home. He was frequently injured and on the verge of signing a quarterback deal with the New York Giants. The first thing they did, Hancock says, is what he calls a’ action screening.’ Hancock put the 6-foot, 233-pound running up through an avalanche of little testing, including rotational exercises and movement patterns, over the course of about an hour. Almost instantly, a handful of small weaknesses and restrictions became evident.

” There were a number of checks where he couldn’t think he was thus weak”, Hancock said. ” He kept saying,’ Do it again. Do it again.’ We repeated it three or four times. He don’t assume that I’d found these things—you know, he’s built like the Hulk”.
Hancock, who declined to discuss details about Barkley’s benefits, gave the running up a plan to add into the rest of his power, stretching and pregame routines. The ApolloV2 team checked in with Barkley a few times a week, and that season, Barkley set personal bests in yards ( 1, 312 ) and carries ( 295 ), playing all 16 games for the first time since he was a rookie.
These specific greats were only two years old. This season, his first with the Philadelphia Eagles, Barkley rushed for 2, 005 feet on 345 carries, both heads in the NFL. The Eagles and Barkley, whose broker didn’t reply to an interview ask this year, network the Packers at 4: 30 p. m. And Sunday in the first round of the NFL finals.
” You usually hear,’ Oh this sportsman is simply unlucky.’ No, the player’s not merely unlucky”, Hancock said of a common misunderstanding regarding accidents. ” I started seeing trends —so you see one guy who never got injured, he gets one injury, then another and another. Every group, every institution sees these athletes. And it all boils down to this destructive structuring in how the system goes because, in the end, an adult’s body needs to move quickly and stop quickly.

ApolloV2 is, as the title implies, the next version of the business. Hancock launched the initial Apollo in Leeds, England, again in 2007 alongside Prozone leader Ramm Mylvaganam. Apollo helped gymnastics team concentrate and view information, but as Hancock recalls, was run “like a mom and pop store” with one main customer, Manchester United.
Hancock worked as the result chiropractor for a number of well-known sports teams, including Los Angeles until 2006, Chelsea until 2008, and the New York Knicks until 2014. He received his master’s degree from the University of Nottingham in 2000. His main concern was his sideline job.
When he left the Knicks, but, Hancock says he began thinking more carefully about Apollo’s systems, his knowledge, and the struggles of several teams to conform to the idea that every sportsperson is unique in how he/she moves, bears weight, handles stress and recovers. Although Hancock felt that there was still room for improvement because his original product was being overused and the market was becoming crowded with other businesses. And a big business opportunity, both for his company and for his clients.
” Look at how athletes are produced”, he said. ” In English football, or soccer, they’re worth an incredible amount of money. If you produce a home-grown talent, they’re worth tens of millions of dollars”.
ApolloV2 formally relaunched about five years ago with a handful of investors and advisors, including Bruin Capital’s George Pyne, who serves on the board, and former Madison Square Garden CTO SeanO’Donoghue, an advisor. ( Hancock declined to comment on how much the company has raised, or its financials, outside of saying revenue jumped 40 % in the past year ).
The company takes data that teams collect through myriad means—fitness tests, Whoop bands, Oura rings, game data—then layers in some of its own measurements, like the movement test that Barkley first took back in May 2022. Using Hancock and AI analysis, each client has a unique user interface that makes it easier to assess and treat each of its athletes.

The data that comes from ApolloV2 clients is owned by the team/organization, and is not used with other clients, Hancock said. It’s not even used to train the company’s AI initiatives. The company does, however, scrape public data for improving its product. ApolloV2 owns AthleteGameLost, a data platform that tracks public injury information across many different sports.
Today, ApolloV2 has roughly two dozen employees, with offices in New York and England, along with a satellite in Los Angeles. The company works with more than 100 sports teams of various sizes, including some of the world’s most prominent—Manchester United, Alabama’s football team, USA Softball and the University of Southern California athletic department. Its product typically costs$ 60, 000 to$ 100, 000 per year, though it varies by partner.
Hancock claims that he doesn’t spend too much time with athletes he’s worked with because “my son typically tells me how well they’re doing,” but that he will be watching when Barkley and the Eagles take on the Packers on Sunday.
” To be really honest, I don’t always have the time to keep track”, he said,” but the relationships I’ve built with athletes, and the ability to help them if they need it, that gives me great satisfaction”.