… Carroll spent 2000 out of coaching before taking over at USC, where he won two national championships and four Rose Bowls. Since returning to the NFL with the Seahawks in 2010, Carroll is 57-32, including last year’s Super Bowl title.
Those lessons from USC carried with him to Seattle, and Carroll was asked at a Super Bowl press conference about having more control over football operations than when he was in New England. The Seahawks are run more like a college program.
… Wilson is clearly an outlier — the transformation into Super Man after a 55-minute drubbing, complete with cape and all — and admits it may be a combination of nature and nurture that allows him to do what he does. As with everything, he credits his faith — Wilson finds a daily Bible verse to tweet each day (picking it out the night before) — first and foremost for his ability to stay positive under duress. Carroll, a heavy believer in the power of a positive mental attitude, and the role of the psyche in athletic performance, has found a kindred soul in his quarterback, reaffirming that course. Advisors like Rodgers, who he speaks with at least twice daily; Rodgers’ son, Matthew, who lives near him in Seattle; mental coaches like Moawad, who crafts motivational videos for the quarterback and incorporates life lessons from champions of business, politics, sports and entertainment, round out Team Wilson, which has known nothing but success since the quarterback entered the league as a third-round pick.
“I have great people around me helping me with that,” Wilson said, noting the old “nature vs. nurture” debate as to how much of this he’s born with and how much is learned. “People like Trevor Moawad and Dr. Gervais and Mark Rodgers my agent, but he’s more than that he’s really like my best friend. I talk to them a lot, and they keep me going the right way.”
For most of the last two seasons, the Seattle Seahawks have been the most physically prepared team in the NFL, a collection of perfectly honed athletes that can outrun and outmuscle opponents at will.
The Seahawks’ secret weapon, though, just might be the team’s willingness to give a sports psychologist the freedom to roam the training facility, locker room and even the sidelines every game, to make sure their heads are as sound as their bodies.
For nearly three seasons, Michael Gervais has spent three days a week with the team, instilling what he and coach Pete Carroll refer to as “relationship-based coaching.”
… In some cases sensor costs have declined by as much as 100X over the past decade. One of those cases where a startup is attempting to drastically change the economics of sensors is in the area of near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. If that phrase sounds familiar, it may be because of all the attention SCiO is getting.
Designed and assembled in Israel by startup Consumer Physics, SCiO is an NIR spectrometer for consumers, set to roll out by summer 2015 for $249 per unit. NIR spectrometry detects the spectrum created from shining a light source at a given sample. That light spectrum—a so-called molecular signature—can be used to identify matter.
Typically, NIR spectrometers are found in university research laboratories and can run as much as $50,000. But Consumer Physics sourced hundreds of cheaper components globally and traded some sensitivity and accuracy of the sensor in order to get it to a consumer price point.
HHS’ Office of Civil Rights, which oversees the administration of HIPAA, will begin working closely with mobile health companies to make sure HIPAA rules are clear and unambiguous, according to a letter HHS sent to Representatives Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Tom Marino (R-PA) in November.
The letter, signed by HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell, was sent in response to a request Marino and DeFazio sent in September at the behest of ACT — The App Association, a DC-based group that lobbies on behalf of app-based companies, including mobile health companies.
This week the Federal Trade Commission published a report focused on privacy and security issues related to the massive Internet of Things (IoT) trend, which includes the growing number of connected health devices. The report summarizes the discussions that took place at an FTC-hosted workshop in November 2013, and it also includes recommendations for the industry from FTC’s staff, which they put together based on the workshop’s discussion.
MHacks is the largest collegiate hackathon in the country. At this year’s Michigan hackathon over 1,350 hackers from 197 universities and several high schools showed up to work for 36 hours straight on hacks. Strap held a contest for the best app created with Strap Kit which we launched for MHacks. Strap Kit allows you to write wearable apps in JavaScript and deploy natively to Pebble and Android Wear. In the end two apps tied: Pebble Pickup and Spant.
Pebble Pickup is a fun app that delivers pickup lines with a flick of the wrist and Spant lets you “feel time.” The hackers behind Pebble Pickup blogged about how they built the app here and Christian Pelaez-Espinosa blogged about building Spant here.
… Impellia will develop fitness, human performance and rehabilitation products with the goal of commercialization, according to a press release from Pitt. The company has optioned three products created by the Pitt Innovation Institute, including a telemedicine product, a knee function product and a joint-function product. All three are nearly ready for commercialization.
“Sports medicine and rehabilitation technology is a natural draw for me. What we see in these technologies is the ability for us to bring innovation available to elite athletes out to everyday people,” said Batch, a Steelers backup from 2003-12.
One product, interACTION, uses sensors placed on joints which collect data on the movement of the joint. The data are transmitted to a tablet, where a physical therapist can analyze the performance of the joint.
… At CES 2015, we were treated to an array of new fitness wearables, from smart garments to sensor-filled sticking plasters, and most of them tout brand new metrics, that are trickling down from pro-sports.
From breathing rate to high metabolic load distance (we’ll explain later) what you’re able to monitor is hitting pro sport levels, but will do us mere mortals really want or need it? Wareable’s fitness tech expert, Kieran Alger, delves deeper.
Post-match assessments of peak power output (PPO) during countermovement jumps and Creatine Kinase (CK) concentrations are common markers of recovery status in soccer players. Yet, the impact of soccer match-play on recovery in the 48 h after competition is unclear and the between-match variability of these responses has not been examined. Fourteen reserve team players from an English Premier League club were examined over 1-4 matches per player. CK and PPO were measured before, 24 h and 48 h after each match. Data were analyzed with within-subjects linear mixed models. Compared with the pre-match baseline, PPO was 237+/-170 W and 98+/-168 W lower at 24 h and 48 h, respectively (P<=0.005) and CK was elevated (+24 h: +334.8+/-107.2 [mu][middle dot]L-1, +48 h: +156.9+/-121.0 [mu][middle dot]L-1; both P<=0.001) after match-play. These responses were consistent across the different matches and playing positions (P>0.05). Within-subjects correlations between PPO and CK were significant (r=-0.558; P<=0.005). The between-match variability of PPO was 10.9%, 11.0% and 9.9% respectively at baseline, +24 h and +48 h whereas for CK the variability was 41.7%, 30.0% and 34.3%, respectively. These findings highlight that greater than 48 h is needed to restore metabolic and performance perturbations following soccer match-play and that CK demonstrates greater between-match variability than PPO. Such information is likely to be of interest to those responsible for the design of training schedules in the days following a match and sports scientists whose responsibilities include the monitoring of recovery status in soccer players.
… Creating great customer experiences is not easy, but here’s some good news. Academic research in behavioral economics and psychology has produced a foundation of lessons that, when combined with technology, can help companies relieve customer pain points and deliver delightful experiences in any industry. Dan Egan of the automated investing service Betterment estimates that between 10 and 20 Fortune 500 companies have someone at a C-suite level serving in the role of a “chief behavioral officer,” bringing behavioral science perspectives to strategic business decisions. Beneath them are people in consumer research, marketing, analytics and user-experience departments, who work with behavioral science concepts daily.
With an abundance of data, academic research and money, consumer finance companies are at the forefront of behavioral science application.
Moneyball has popularised the idea of team selection through data, but a reliance on statistics alone when recruiting in business or in sport will leave teams coming up short.