Sports Science in the U.S. is divided among different practicing groups. Universities have their way of doing things. Athletic departments, sport teams and academic departments sync up to varying degrees where teams function as living laboratories for researchers doing vital, publishable work. Professional services contractors like Exos and P3 cater mostly to individual athletes (and […]
Read More →Author: bstenger
Applied Sports Science == Practice
Applied Sports Science is a pure exercise in improvement. If the players get better and the coaching gets better and the organization gets then the team gets better, and that last step is on display for everyone and anyone to see. The thing I’m trying to understand about Applied Sports Science is how all of the different […]
Read More →How High Are the Stakes with the NBA Draft?
The NBA has been considering changes to its player draft rules. The league is leaning towards increasing the randomness of the selection order, diminishing the current dependence on losing team records for setting selection order. The concern is that bad teams have an incentive to lose games in order to improve their chance of acquiring […]
Read More →Last Week in Applied Sports Science, 10/12-10/18
The impending NBA season marks the return to play of star players Derrick Rose and Kobe Bryant from injury. We have seen both athletes get the longform journalism treatment. Chis Ballard wrote on Kobe in late-August for Sports Illustrated. Last week Wright Thompson wrote on Rose for ESPN The Magazine. I remember being blown away by […]
Read More →A Quick NBA Season Preview
The dominant factor this NBA season is the schedule, 82 games, and how teams deal with it. For some teams and players it will be 82 opportunities to improve. For the other teams it will be about survival, getting to the end of the week, the month and ultimately the full season. How teams approach […]
Read More →Productivity-enhancing technology for sports: Coming soon?
Just about everything that applies to the care, maintenence and improvement of elite athletes also applies to the people in charge of elite athletes. Organizations have habits and it is rare for a team to have good habits when coaches and front office lack them. European soccer writers have done a nice job documenting how coaching […]
Read More →Last Week in Applied Sports Science, 10/5-10/11
The Chicago Marathon was earlier today, won by Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge in 2:04:11. Leading up to it there was lots of great storytelling during the week about Steve Jones and record-breaking 1985 Chicago Marathon run. True Toughness: Steve Jones and the Chicago Marathon 30 Years Ago, Steve Jones Transformed the Marathon The Transformation of Steve […]
Read More →Athletes’ Private Health Information: Rights, Expectations and Sports Science
Going all the way back to ancient Greece, the sense of trust a caretaker gives patients is paramount. The Hippocratic Oath says to “first do no harm” and it is supposed to take precedent to any further clinical decision-making Modern sports medicine has inherent conflicts of interest: Teams hire, pay and fire caregivers based on the work […]
Read More →Last Week in Applied Sports Science, 9/28-10/4
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, […]
Read More →Evaluability
Cass Sunstein posted a short opinion bit at Bloomberg View on behavioral economics, using the iPhone to talk about something called “evaluability.” Evaluability speaks to the criteria people to make decisions and that criteria varies in different contexts, but ultimately that criteria boils down to stuff that really matters, and stuff that doesn’t really matter. […]
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