User Spotlight: AMTI Force Plates at the Banner Sports Medicine Complex

The Banner Sports Medicine Center in Scottsdale, AZ, is Arizona’s most advanced public facility for sport and performance testing and evaluation. Opened in 2023, the $54 million complex combines 17,000 square feet of indoor space with a 29,000 square-foot outdoor training area featuring professional-grade turf suited for real-time assessment and training.

In one convenient location, athletes of all ages can access high-quality orthopedics and sports medicine expertise, alongside the Banner Sports Medicine High Performance Center. That means an athlete can come here both to receive care for an injury or diagnosis and to undergo performance assessments, custom analytics, and individualized training programs designed to maximize performance and provide the competitive edge.

Blending Sports Medicine and Performance

Banner’s integrated approach blends the science of sports medicine with sports performance expertise, ensuring that everything is evidence-based and athlete-centric. The Center’s programs are designed with a clear focus on:

• Athlete testing and evaluation
• Performance enhancement and skill development
• Sports medicine and injury prevention
• Recovery and regeneration
• Return-to-Play
• Sports nutrition and mental performance

This approach helps athletes at every level—whether they’re building new skills, pushing performance, or working toward a safe return-to-play after injury.

State-of-the-Art Technology

Banner Sports Medicine features Arizona’s most comprehensive collection of research-grade athletic performance, diagnostic, and monitoring systems, including 3D biomechanics labs, motion capture, and integrated force plate technology built into real sporting environments.

What does that mean in practice? It allows Banner’s team to provide detailed, data-driven insights into the personal mechanics of athletes across a wide variety of sports:

• Baseball: Fully instrumented MLB-grade pitching mound and batter’s boxes deliver skills analysis for pitchers and hitters.

• Golf: A dedicated golf performance lab integrates motion capture, launch monitoring, and force plates to analyze the body, swing mechanics, and club/ball performance metrics.

• Basketball: Instrumented basketball court for assessment of all court-sport athletes (basketball players, volleyball players, etc.)

• Running & Sprinting: Instrumented Treadmetrix treadmill (featuring AMTI load cells as the core sensing technology) paired with motion capture provides gait and running analysis, translated into customized training plans.

AMTI’s Role in the High Performance Center

At the heart of this innovation are AMTI’s multi-axis force plates, which play a critical role in Banner’s performance testing and evaluation. Our industry-leading ground force measurement systems are embedded across multiple training environments, delivering the most accurate and reliable biomechanical data available captured in real time during authentic sport movements.

AMTI solutions installed at Banner High Performance Center include:

• MLB-grade Instrumented Pitching Mound with 3 embedded force plates

• Four BMS900900-2K force plates that make up the instrumented batter’s boxes

• Two BMS900900-2K force plates in the basketball court (with infrastructure in place for future expansion)

• Two BMS400600-2K force plates in the golf performance lab integrated with motion capture & launch monitor systems

• Two BMS600900-2K force plates in the weight room for performance testing and evaluation

Additionally, the facility’s Treadmetrix Instrumented Treadmill utilizes AMTI multi-axis load cells for its measurement and sensing technology—further extending the reach of AMTI’s biomechanics expertise across the Center.

A Growing Hub for Arizona’s Sports Community

As Mike Elliot, the Center’s Senior Director of High Performance, explains:

“Pitchers and hitters will gain skills analysis and improvement with our fully instrumented, Major League Baseball-grade indoor pitching and hitting tunnels. We also have a golf performance lab with motion capture, launch monitor, integrated force plates and motion capture, which allows us to analyze the body, the golf swing, as well as the ball and club performance metrics.”

Although the Center has been open for just over two years, it has already become a trusted partner for Arizona’s top sports organizations, including the Arizona Diamondbacks, Phoenix Suns, Phoenix Mercury, Tucson Roadrunners, Arizona Ironman, and the University of Arizona.

AMTI is proud to supply the force plate technology driving Banner’s advanced testing and training environments, enabling athletes to reach higher performance, safer returns, and data-driven improvements across every discipline.

👉 Take a tour of Banner Sports Medicine Scottsdale and the Banner High Performance Center here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIjzS5imWbI