By Jim Sheahan
Director of Athletic Communications & Marketing
What is that noise? It sounds like a jackhammer, a pile driver, a wood chipper … what is that?
The racket echoes through the administrative/squash wing of the Stevenson Athletic Center just about every day for 20 minutes, all winter long. In the spring, the sound moves outside, where the bowl-like topography of Honey Field allows the sound to travel further, all the way up to the Stevenson Athletic Center, annoying everyone who has the misfortune of being within range.
It’s Alex Luscher. He made a massage gun out of a jigsaw and some rounded rubber attachments. It harnesses the power of intense vibrations and pressure to create a cascade of physiological events which include increasing bloodflow and loosening tight muscles.
And you thought massages were supposed to be relaxing.
The dual-sport student-athlete starts with the bottoms of his feet, then moves to his calves, his quadriceps and hamstrings, hip flexors, biceps, triceps, forearms, you get the idea. Aware of the noise he’s making, he has taken to isolating himself in yoga studios and empty offices near the squash courts when he’s inside. Outside, his baseball teammates are accustomed to finding him alone in the visitors’ dugout, carefully pummeling his body.
Despite its intimidating appearance, at least a half dozen curious baseball teammates are now using the massage gun, too. Luscher’s explanation for using it just makes too much sense.
“I generally use it as a warmup tool, every day, before I practice or lift,” Luscher said. “Getting blood to the muscles limits the chances for injury during the workout, and also helps with recovery.
“I realized after the first few times that I should probably leave areas where there are people,” he added. “They make quieter ones,” but at the time of this interview, he wasn’t able to part with his homemade tool just yet.
What Luscher does have is a 4.0 grade point average. He was one of Bard’s 2020-21 Scholar Athletes of the Year, an Academic All-America nominee, a College Squash Association Scholar-Athlete, and he made the Liberty League All-Academic Baseball and Squash Teams with room to spare. His multidisciplinary studies will culminate in a Psychology degree with a concentration in Mind, Brain, and Behavior.
You’ve heard of voracious eaters and voracious readers: Alex Luscher is a voracious learner.
“None of the skills I have now are naturally-occurring,” Luscher said. “They’re all the product of hard work and listening. I’ve come a long way academically. If I were naturally gifted, my midterm grades wouldn’t be so different than my final grades. All I can do is listen to my wise professors, try my hardest to improve in accordance with their suggestions, and make peace with the fact that I put my best foot forward once the semester is complete.”
It’s working. Avid learners are also avid thinkers, which has led Luscher’s initial interest in Psychology to narrow and focus over the last couple of years.
“The field I’m most interested in is industrial and organizational psychology as it relates to maximizing performance in the workplace," Luscher said. "Employees who are healthier, mentally and physically, perform better. It’s a win-win for employees and employers.”
This past summer, Luscher worked for a people analytics startup called Skylyte — an innovator is his field of interest. The organization tracks employee well-being, resilience, turnover intention, engagement and several other metrics, so it was right up his alley.
“I’m still trying to figure out the best path for me,” Luscher said. “I would love to go to a program that has a great industry research partnership to earn a Ph.D. working on a project that has a chance to make a big impact and to continue developing my product research and development skills.”
He chose Bard because he wanted to continue playing baseball, and because he wanted to find a research-based Psychology program.
“The professors here are absolutely amazing,” Luscher said. “The Language & Thinking Program unlocked college writing for me. When I arrived in Annandale, I was truly a high school writer. I learned that college writing is about making much deeper connections. Plus, all of the Psychology staff are researchers, so Bard is a great match for me.”
Let’s get back to tracking metrics. In addition to always having that massage gun at the ready (he should just wear a holster at this point) he’s also wearing a WHOOP Strap on his right wrist and a Garmin vívomove on his left wrist. The WHOOP measures everything from the quality of his sleep, to how well he has recovered from workouts or games. These metrics inform his actions and how intensely he should do them the next day. Amidst his busy schedule, the Garmin ensures that he is always on time and that his notifications are never further than a glance away. As an added bonus, this smart watch looks like a real, mechanical watch.
“What a lot of college athletes do is overtrain,” Luscher explained. “If you’re not fully recovered, not only are you not going to perform as well the next day, but you could get injured. When you’re fully recovered, you perform better.”
Performing for Luscher hasn’t always just been about athletics. He also has a lighthearted side. As a member of the squash and baseball teams, he prepares like no one else. Outside the athletics complex he played the trumpet in Bard’s Community Orchestra and made a little splash with this video he posted on YouTube of himself whistling 33 songs in about 14 minutes.
“COVID meant that there wasn’t going to be a concert, so they said if anyone wants to do anything musical and submit it as kind of a final project, go ahead,” Luscher said. “I never pull all-nighters, but it was the very end of the year, COVID was happening, I was home, nothing was going on, so I worked 48 hours straight to produce what you see now. The video may or may not have been filmed at three in the morning.”
Given a choice, everyone prefers the whistling to the massage gun.
