Teams are doing more and more with sports science, and more and more writing about sports science surfaces on the Internet. I try to pay attention to as much of it as I can. See enough of it and you start to make value judgments. Chief among those judgments is the mental note I make when I see an organization experimenting. Smart experiments are the core of successful innovation.
Teams will experiment with technology. The Dallas Morning News profiled the Mavericks’ athletic performance director, Jeremy Holsopple, and what he is doing with sensor technology, though Catapult tracking sensors are mostly what is discussed. Sydney FC, of Australia’s A-League soccer, have adopted the EyeTower, a pole-mounted 360-degree camera that is 20-feet in the air and captures everything going on during practices (reported by FourFourTwo).
Technology experiments are fundamentally process experiments. If a technology is worth adopting for a team, it is also worth changing a team’s habits to incorporate the technology into its routine. Sometimes the inconvenience is too great, or the benefits fails to outweigh the costs, or maybe an organization is lazy and unwilling to venture forward. The Carl Valle inter view at Freelap USA with Indiana Pacers’ strength coach Shawn Windle illustrates how difficult it is to advance sports science in professional team settings.
It helps when the people in charge experiment. In Major League Soccer, the incentives for teams to develop Homegrown Players is bearing fruit, according to a Business of Soccer report. And the Wall Street Journal describes how Chip Kelly has grown increasingly comfortable at engaging university research professors, seeking input on how to improve his team.
Finding common ground between sports performance and campus and corporate researchers is easy, in general. If a Ph.D.-level researcher is a sports fan, it is a near certainty that they have considered their work in the context of sports. Failing that, the widespread use of data provides all kindsof conversation starters about questions, answers, techniques, problems and insights. Unfortunately, many in sports are reluctant to seek out the experts who do research and who could help them.
The Best Things I Read Last Week:
- Purdue basketball players strengthen muscles, bond Lafayette Journal&Courier … One other value judgement I tend to make: Are these people working hard, like really hard? Purdue men’s basketball is heavy into effort.
- EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Kelly Starrett’s 12 “Ready to Run” Standards for Injury Prevention and High Performance Running LAVA Magazine … According to Starrett, “Athletes have a personal responsibility to perform daily maintenence.” The audience for the article is the endurance crowd, but this message applies to everyone.
- Stanford research shows that working together boosts motivation Stanford Report … Research is showing the subtle advantages that teams get from, you know, being a team.
- Social Context and the Dynamics of Cooperative Choice Journal of Behavioral Decision Making … More social science research, this experiment showed that time pressure increased the likelihood of making choices that are cooperative, not individual.
- Can a Computer Replace Your Doctor? The New York Times … The state of doctor-computer-patient interaction is in flux and bound to impact sports medicine. This opinion piece is a good rundown.
- Arsenal FC: We can’t get the sports nutrition products we need NutraIngredients … The nutritional needs of professional athletes and the general sports playing population are clearly not the same but does the broad sports nutrition market reflect that diversity of need?