Recovery after games is something that a good team needs to be good at. The information about what to do is abundant and it is now clear that quality recovery and quality athletic performance go together. Teams that ignore good recovery practices, or fail to get players to buy in to the importance of recovery, will lose to the teams that give recovery proper attention. Sleep and nutrition are the pillars that quality recovers builds on top of. The choice of interventions past those two are many. Cool-downs, compression, manual therapies (like massage and needling) all have adherents, though efficacy is hard to prove since players get a placebo effect from most any intervention that they sincerely believe works. Some of what’s come out in recent news articles, blog posts and research papers:
- This Smart Sleep Tracking Strap Monitors Your and Breathing Each Night (Digital Trends)
- For Arianna Huffington and Kobe Bryant: First, Success. Then Sleep. (The New York Times)
- Before Rest, Nutrition Is Key to Post-Race Recovery (The North Face, Never Stop Exploring blog)
- Jokerit Helsinki Optimizing Performance and Recovery (Firstbeat)
- Avoiding Neural Burnout (USA Swimming)
- How Much Sleep Do You Need? (Chris Kresser)
- Recovery and Technology: Dr. Yvonne Cagle Interview (Freelap USA)
- Lions heed Jim Caldwell’s advice, and sleep on it (The Detroit News)
- and the new quarterly issue of Aspetar Sports Medicine Journal that targets Recovery
While information of how to practice recovery is abundant, there is somewhat less information available on indications for inadequate recovery. Data approaches for monitoring player health are growing in importance: heart rate variability, Omegawave, chemical biomarkers through blood- and saliva-testing, wireless player tracking for practices and workouts, sleep monitors, photo comparisons, and the often telling how-you-doing interaction. None of this is new to training or sports medicine staffs. What seems to matter is the awareness of coaches and team management and their willingness to collaborate with athlete performance people. Game strategies and personnel decisions that incorporate athletes’ recovery and readiness vary from team to team. Last week the Cavaliers made news saying that they may hold LeBron James out of games during the upcoming NBA season, a sign that inadequate recovery is becoming a valid reason to keep players from playing. The more interesting tactical thing to watch will be the increasing number of important roles for a team to have. For 5-player basketball the norm had been to use a core starting-5 and a handful (3-4) backups, and to repeat the player rotations game after game. Recovery-determined availability seems to call for multiple starting-5s, and that those different, but still core, 5-man lineups will have diverse personnel makeup and skill sets. The University of Kentucky men’s basketball team plans to take this approach, or something like it, for the coming season. Baseball has seen this trend in the form of widespread platooning and the increasing importance of athletic, multi-position players. 11-man soccer and football have so much going on tactically that roles tend to have narrow definitions where “do your job” has proven to be a useful way to execute strategy. The big change seems to be that there are more jobs out there to do, in all professional sports.
The Best Things I Read Last Week:
- Chart: Which NCAA Football Teams Outplay Their Recruit Rankings? Regressing … The non-SEC science-y programs (Oregon, Stanford, Baylor) show major gains for their players. Only new-to-SEC Missouri is on the graph’s positive side among the conference programs, showing how extremely competitive the conference is, and also showing how tough the task is for Kentucky to make gains based on sports science.
- Sporting Kansas City injury woes mount as US U-20 defender Erik Palmer-Brown ruled out for season MLSsoccer.com … Not answered in the article: Is this trickle down from the extra work that a good team has to account for in a World Cup year?
- Relationship Between General Nutrition Knowledge and Dietary Quality in Elite Athletes International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism … Athletes that know more about nutrition tend to act on that knowledge. Authors point out this this is one good reason for directing nutrition education at young male athletes.
- Arsenal’s mystery injury blight has Arsene Wenger scratching his head The Guardian … Coaches have habits, good and bad, and they affect the health of players.
- ‘Skin-Like’ Device Monitors Cardiovascular and Skin Health Northwestern University … Chemical sensing is a technology area where the U.S. and Canada excel. Significant impacts on sports science are bound to occur.