Sensemaking is an active research area in computing. I first heard about the subject at a 2008 research workshop in Portland, Oregon, a meeting that considered how interactive technology could help with sensemaking tasks.
Sports science is in need of sensemaking. The large number of articles, blog posts and research papers that serve as explainers is evidence.
- Are Sleep Apps Junk Science? Here’s What Doctors Think (Inverse, Rosalie Chan)
- Ankle Sprains – How Can We Minimise Risk of Re-injury? (Absolute Health & Performance)
- ‘Learn Better’ Book Shows How to Learn New Things (The Atlantic, Olga Khazan)
- The Effect of Fluid Intake Following Dehydration on Subsequent Athletic and Cognitive Performance: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (Sports Medicine – Open journal)
- Wearable tech has to be really good or really wearable (The Verge, Lauren Goode)
- The Gurus Behind Baseball’s Search for the Perfect Swing (Wall Street Journal, Jared Diamond)
- How does Roger Federer keep doing what he’s doing? (ESPN Tennis, Greg Garber)
- Bradenton Residency is dead: What does it all mean? (Soccer Wire, Charles Boehm)
- Cyclists Hunt for an Edge. This Time, It’s Data, Not Drugs (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Rodrigo Orihuela)
- More Smoothies, Less Soda as College Athletic Departments Focus on Nutrition (The New York Times, Zach Schonbrun)
- What to do when you don’t like vegetables. 3 steps for training your palate (and why it’s important). (Precision Nutrition)
- Information Avoidance: How People Select Their Own Reality (Carnegie Mellon University, CMU News)
- The essential problem with quantifying soccer and taking the numbers as gospel (Howler, Jeb Brovsky)
- The Brain at Work: How Two Germans Want to Change Football (The Set Pieces, Constantin Eckner)
- Player scouting at the forefront of Major League Soccer rapid evolution (ESPN FC, Jeff Carlisle)
- How the Utah Jazz turned Rudy Gobert into the next Bill Russell (ESPN NBA, True Hoop, Tim MacMahon)
- How World Leading Athletes Sleep (Medium, Michael Gervais)
- Using gelatin to improve performance, prevent injury, and accelerate return to play (Asker Jeukendrup, mysportscience blog, Keith Baar)
- The Enduring Wisdom of a 1972 Book About Tennis (New York Magazine, Science of Us blog, Brad Stulberg)
- Using heart rate variability to optimise triathlon training (220Triathlon, James Witts)
- Busting three myths around elite sports performance (The Conversation, Tim Rees)
- Can You Bank Sleep? (To Improve Future Performance) (Dr. Marc Bubbs)
- Inside the Elements of the FCS (FunctionalMovement.com, Grey Cook)
Some sports organizations are making progress. They are succeeding. They are actively making sense of today’s sports.
- Boston Red Sox: Why no David Ortiz is no problem for AL East champs (SI.com, Tom Verducci)
- Lessons in Practice from the Seattle Seahawks (Doug Lemov, Teach Like a Champion blog)
- As Sounders FC looks to defend MLS Cup title, use of sports science remains a ‘competitive advantage’ (GeekWire, Taylor Soper)
- Big Read: Inside the Toronto Blue Jays’ high performance department (Sportsnet.ca, Arden Zwelling)
- Sophisticated data strengthens Marquette’s chances in NCAA tournaments (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Lori Nickel)
- Loaded questions with Tim Gabbett (Training Ground Guru, Simon Austin)
- Progressing toward personalized analytics – A Q&A with Patrick Lucey of STATS (Nylon Calculus blog)
- The Life Lessons of Villanova’s Jay Wright, the Anti-Coach (GQ, Larry Platt)
- Jill Ellis Q&A: Looking Back and Forward (U.S. Soccer)
The point is that technology can help to make sense of how sports are changing, but technology is not yet a requirement. Eventually though, digital interactive tools that help with sports science will be commonplace. Their user interfaces will make sense, and the because the interfaces help with the tasks, sports science will make sense.
More things that I read and liked last week:
- No Rest for the Rookies (March 14, Andrew Barr, Innovate Performance blog)
- Basketball shoe trends favor fashion over feet (March 19, Lower Extremity Review Magazine, Will Carroll)
- Tapping into Tissue Regeneration (March 16, Undark magazine, Ian Evans)
- Research finds wrist-worn heart rate monitors less accurate than chest strap ones (March 13, 220Triathlon, Debbie Graham)
- Google says crowdsourced data makes for better fitness apps (March 13, Engadget, Edgar Alvarez)
- Champions League goal glut is a result of aggressive pressing in advanced areas (March 14, ESPN FC, Michael Cox)