John A. Mercer, Ph.D. is a professor in the department of Kinesiology and Nutrition Sciences at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr. Mercer’s research is focused on biomechanics and physiology of endurance performance with a special emphasis on swimming, biking, and running.
John Mercer, PhD, FACSM
Dr. Mercer brings over 20 years of experience conducting research on the sport physiological and biomechanical responses. His research has a focus on understanding factors influence endurance performance as well as how to minimize the risk of overuse injuries. Dr. Mercer is a leader in describing and understanding the factors that influence sport performance over a range of sports including running, biking, swimming, lacrosse, and baseball, for example.
Furthermore, he has been an innovator in developing procedures to measure and analyze the biomechanical phenomenon that occur during running and have applied these procedures to a variety of experimental perturbations. For example, I have conducted experiments determining the influence of fatigue, running style, footwear, body weight support, and changes in foot strike patterns on running performance. Along with this, he is a leader in using electromyography to understand muscle activity during locomotion in the water and other body weight support modalities and understands the complexity of the instrumentation as well as analysis of the muscle activity signal. In addition to his scientific expertise, he also has the project management expertise as he has been the PI for over 75 projects, directing and overseeing multiple teams of scientists, graduate, and undergraduate students.
Dr. Mercer is co-host of a weekly podcast ‘The Evidence Based Triathlete’ which is designed to provide endurance athletes information about how science can be applied to help them achieve their endurance goals.
Dr. Mercer earned his B.S. from Buffalo State College of New York, his M.S. from the University of North Texas, and his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. He is a past President of the Southwest Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine.
