Applied Sports Science newsletter, January 31, 2015


Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for January 31, 2015
… The (not necessarily every) Saturday newsletter has leftover items from the week that weren’t included in any of the Monday-Friday emails. Headsup: The quantity of links in this weekly queue-clearing is greater than the typical weekday e-newsletter.

New blog post yesterday at sports.bradstenger.com:

Behavior employees; Employees’ behavior

 
 

OKC’s Scott Brooks Opens Up: Team Pressures, Coaching KD and Russ and More

Bleacher Report, Jared Zwerling from

… Last week, Brooks sat down with Bleacher Report in OKC for the first extended interview in his coaching career, saying, “I very rarely want attention on myself; the players deserve the credit.” He opened up on the team’s challenges and evolution, Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook’s relationship, his coaching secrets and much more.

Bleacher Report: Regarding the season so far, Kevin told me after practice, “I’ve never been through anything like this before.” What’s it been like for you and the team?

Scott Brooks: This has definitely been a challenge. There were times where we had, like, seven guys and weren’t really practicing; we were just walking through things because we didn’t have the manpower or the energy to have a practice. That threw me in scramble mode

 

Everybody Knows NBA Players Smoke Marijuana

Pacific Standard from

Larry Sanders, NBA athlete and black man in America, believes in marijuana. Or at least he used to. Those were his words at the end of last season, after he failed a league drug test for the third time in his career, resulting in a mandatory five-game suspension.

“It’s something I feel strongly about, just to let you know something personal about me,” Sanders told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the paper of record for the city in which he plays. “I will deal with the consequences from it. It’s a banned substance in my league. But I believe in marijuana and the medical side of it.”

This moment of insight found, no less, in the mundanity of a sport scrum, was raw and visceral and unique in that way, but it also made Sanders an easy target. His volunteered frankness could be re-packaged for another purpose: to fill the narrative of the fallen athlete and the deviant thug. Earlier this month, Sanders failed another drug test.

 

Iñigo Calderón has mindset to help Brighton overcome Arsenal in FA Cup | Football | The Guardian

The Guardian, Amy Lawrence from

Iñigo Calderón could scarcely bear to watch his television last Sunday as his fellow Spaniard Santi Cazorla dazzled while Arsenal defeated Manchester City. Calderón, who hails from the Basque country, not so far from the Asturias region that Cazorla calls home, is an enthusiastic admirer of his compatriot’s talent but there was a point where watching became almost too much. “I tried to switch off the TV,” Calderón says with a chuckle. “They were on fire and I tried not to destroy my confidence.”

Jokes apart, this awareness about his own confidence levels – and how they can be manipulated by external influences and personal techniques – is particularly highly tuned in a player who has become a stalwart for Brighton & Hove Albion since his arrival five years ago.

As a young player Calderón combined his sporting aspirations with education at the university in Vitoria. He spent five years soaking up the nuances of a sports science degree and when he finished he took a masters in sports psychology.

 

Vipers’ experiment on game days a success – The Monitor: RGV Vipers

The Monitor, McAllen TX from

As the Houston Rockets continue to look for a competitive edge by using their NBA D-League affiliate Vipers as a basketball laboratory, one experiment established this season has been a positive.

The Vipers scrapped the traditional game-day shootaround this season. Instead, coach Nevada Smith has elected to go with what he calls an “information-gathering session.”

 

The USMNT takes advantage of January | US Soccer Players

US National Soccer Players from

Whatever Jurgen Klinsmann’s feelings on the return of USMNT players to MLS from Europe, the US National Team coach isn’t going to miss the chance to work with his established players in January. With the new MLS season still six weeks away, Klinsmann has used January to not only overturn rocks in the search for new American talent as is the tradition, but call in the leading figures of the team.

Simply based on player availability, the January camp was the province of the unproven. Save for a few National Team veterans who might play in MLS, January was a time to call in players on the edge of the team. The goal was to identify talent who might very soon be ready to contribute to the full squad. They got an extended run within the setup and a low-pressure match or two to prove themselves.

The new influx of Americans to MLS is flipping that dynamic on its head. This year’s January camp included plenty “new” talent, but it also boasted some of the leading lights of the team.

 

Acute effects of plyometric intervention – performance improvement and related changes in sprinting gait variability.

Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research from

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a short high intensity plyometric program on the improvement of explosive power of lower extremities and sprint performance as well as changes in sprinting stride variability in male sprinters. Fourteen healthy males sprinters (mean +/- SD: age 18.07 +/- 0.73 years, body mass 73 +/-9.14 kg, height 180.57 +/- 8.16 cm and best 100 m 10.89 +/- 0.23) participated in the experiment. The experimental protocol included: vertical jumping – squat jump (SJ) and countermovement jump (CMJ) and horizontal jumps; standing long jump (SLJ) and standing triple jumps(STJ) to assess lower body power, maximal running velocity; a 20-m flying start sprint that evaluated variability of 10 running steps and 60 m starting block sprint. All analyzed parameters were obtained using the new technology of Opto-Jump-Microgate (Opto Jump, Italy). The short-term plyometric training program significantly increased the explosive power of lower extremities, both vertical and horizontal jumping improvement. However, the vertical jumps increased much more than the horizontal. The 20 m improvements were derived from an increase of stride frequency from 4.31 to 4.39 Hz, due to a decrease of ground contact time from 138 to 133 ms. This did not translate into step length changes. Therefore, the significantly increased frequency of stride (1.8%), which is a specific expression of ground contact time reduction during support phase, resulted in an increase of speed. The training volume of two weeks (with six sessions) using high intensities (between 180 and 250 jumps per session) plyometric exercises can be recommended as the short term strategy that will optimize one’s probability of reaching strong improvements in explosive power and sprint velocity performance.
 

Study Finds Memory Has a Fascinating Effect On Sleep — PsyBlog

PsyBlog from

One theory has it that memory neurons are actively trying to put us to sleep so our brains can transfer information into long-term memory.

In a new study, researchers at Brandeis University have put this to the test in fruit flies.

 

A New Vision, Platform for Youth Sports in America

The Aspen Institute from

A new report released today, “Sport for All, Play for Life: A Playbook to Get Every Kid in the Game,” offers an ambitious plan to reimagine organized youth sports, prioritizing health and inclusion, while recognizing the benefits of unstructured play. Below, Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program Director Tom Farrey explains the importance of play in children’s health and well-being.
 

Training for Masters Runners, Part 2: Block Periodization | TrainingPeaks

TrainingPeaks from

Training effectively as a runner who is over the age of forty is a balancing act. On the one hand, you need to back away to some extent from the training practices that worked best for you when you were younger. On the other hand, you don’t want to back off more than necessary or else you’ll sacrifice more fitness and performance than necessary. The challenge is to make targeted modifications to your training strategy that account for what your body has lost while also fully exploiting what your body still has.

In Part 1 of this three-part series on training for masters runners, I discussed one such modification: the extended microcycle. In this second installment I will share another one: block periodization.

 

Bulls’ Tom Thibodeau defends aggressive coaching style

USA Today from

Q: Tom, you’re getting asked about your coaching style quite a bit these days, from the managing of minutes to practice habits and all those kinds of things. Any part of you feel like there’s too much focus on that aspect of your guys’ season?

A: To me, it’s not a big deal. If you coach in this league, it’s part of the territory. They’re going to criticize you for something. You have to stand by what you believe in, and I don’t believe that we lost in the playoffs (last season) because we were out of gas. If you look at what we’ve done the second half of the season (in the past), we’ve always done extremely well the second half of the season. Now you get to the playoffs, and when you’re down a Derrick Rose and you’re down a Luol Deng and you’re down a Joakim Noah, now it’s different. Once you get to the playoffs, now it becomes more equal talent. Maybe we lost because we were shorthanded. That’s the way I look at it.

 

Redcord system tests and restores neuromuscular function

Calgary Herald from

Core stability and muscle balance has been a popular topic in health, fitness and athletic training for the past decade. The attraction can be purely for esthetics or it may be driven by injury or enhanced performance. No matter the motivation, the search for core conditioning and muscle balance techniques is common in overall health and fitness programming. … A new and innovative technique now allows therapist to help clients restore function, gain body awareness, decrease pain and strengthen the body. Physiotherapist, Ursula Paikos, assesses function based on the Neurac Redcord system to help patients activate and re-educate critical muscles for rehabilitation of injuries so patients can achieve their desired lifestyle.
 

Validity and Intra-rater Reliability of 2-Dimensional Motion Analysis Using a Hand-held Tablet Compared to Traditional 3-Dimensional Motion Analysis.

Journal of Sports Rehabilitation from

CONTENT:

Lower extremity landing mechanics have been implicated as a contributing factor in knee pain and injury, yet cost effective and clinically accessible methods for evaluating movement mechanics are limited. The identification of valid, reliable, and readily accessible technology to assess lower extremity alignment could be an important tool for clinicians, coaches, and strength and conditioning specialists.
OBJECTIVE:

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity and reliability of using a hand-held tablet and movement analysis application (app) for assessing lower extremity alignment during a drop vertical jump task.
INTERVENTION:

Subjects performed six drop vertical jumps which were recorded simultaneously using a 3D motion capture system and a hand-held tablet.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:

Angles on the tablet were calculated using a motion analysis app and from the 3D motion capture system using Visual 3D. Hip and knee angles were measured and compared between both systems.
RESULTS:

Significant correlations between the tablet and 3D measures for select frontal and sagittal plane ranges of motion (ROM) and angles at maximum knee flexion (MKF) ranged from r = 0.48 (P = .036) for frontal plane knee angle at MKF to r = .77 (P<.001) for knee flexion at MKF. CONCLUSION:

Results of this study suggest that a hand-held tablet and app may be a reliable method for assessing select lower extremity joint alignments during drop vertical jumps, but this technology should not be used to measure absolute joint angles. However, sports medicine specialists could use a hand-held tablet to reliably record and evaluate lower extremity movement patterns on the field or in the clinic.

 

Who Should Have Access to Your DNA?

Medium, Backchannel from

A year after the FDA shut down 23andMe’s genetic testing service, personal genomics is coming back. But this time, you should own your own data.
 

‘ShotTracker’ monitors your basketball shooting skills

PSFK from

ShotTracker senses shot attempts, makes and misses to create a personalised profile for each user

When you play sports, fitness wearables track how hard your body works but they don’t usually monitor how well you play the game. A new device promises to change all that for basketball aficionados, by tracking every shot attempt, hit and miss to create a customized shooting profile.

ShotTracker comprises three pieces, a net sensor, a wearable that slides into a wristband or compression sleeve, and an app that records all the action on court. Kansas-based basketball and technology experts Davyeon Ross and Bruce Ianni co-founded ShotTracker to create an affordable wearable to help players improve their shooting.

 

With a Few Bits of Data, Researchers Identify ‘Anonymous’ People – NYTimes.com

The New York Times, Bits blog from

Even when real names and other personal information are stripped from big data sets, it is often possible to use just a few pieces of the information to identify a specific person, according to a study to be published Friday in the journal Science.

In the study, titled “Unique in the Shopping Mall: On the Reidentifiability of Credit Card Metadata,” a group of data scientists analyzed credit card transactions made by 1.1 million people in 10,000 stores over a three-month period. The data set contained details including the date of each transaction, amount charged and name of the store.

 

Bio-Enhanced Repair of the Anterior Cruciate Ligament – Arthroscopy

Arthroscopy from

Suture repair of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) has been widely abandoned in favor of ACL reconstruction, largely because of the high rates of failure and unreliability of the outcomes after suture repair. However, there have been recent basic science studies that suggest that combining a suture repair with a biological adjunct may improve the results of suture repair of the ACL, with several studies in large animal models showing equivalent strength of an ACL treated with bio-enhanced repaired to that of an ACL graft at 3, 6, and 12 months after surgery. In addition, the groups treated with bio-enhanced repair had significantly less osteoarthritis when compared with the animals undergoing ACL reconstruction. These findings have led to a renewed interest in bio-enhanced primary repair as a way to make repair of the ACL a viable option for a select group of patients in the future.
 

Curse or myth – do periods affect performance?

BBC Sport from

… has what many describe as ‘the last taboo’ now been broken?

Britain’s number one tennis player Heather Watson blamed “girl things” on her first-round defeat at the Australian Open this week and ever since there has been non-stop chatter about monthly cycles, stomach cramps and their impact on professional athletes.

Are periods a problem for elite sportswomen? Does it affect performance? We talk to women’s marathon record holder Paula Radcliffe, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, physiologist, Professor John Brewer, and gymnastics coach Helen Potter.

 

New Study Shows Protein Distribution within the Human Body

GEN from

The first in-depth analysis of the Human Protein Atlas project was released today that included a detailed display of systemic protein expression. In particular, this study highlighted proteins that have been linked to cancer, the number of circulating proteins within the bloodstream, and the targets for all currently marketed drugs.

The Human Protein Atlas is a multinational research project that contains an open-source database with millions of high-resolution images that show the spatial distribution of proteins from 44 diverse normal human tissues and 20 different cancer types, as well as 46 different human cell lines. November of 2014 saw the launch of the tissue-specific interactive map, which began to outline the distribution of human proteins in all primary tissues and organs of the body.

 

Blog – A Tale of Two Moments: Varying Experiences With Torn ACL Symptoms

Rothman Institute Orthopaedics from

With between 70,000 and 80,000 incidents reported annually in the U.S., it’s no wonder anterior cruciate ligament injuries have become one of the most recognizable – and most dreaded – knee injuries. Though they do often occur in the context of impact sports, a tear to the ACL can happen to anyone during a variety of different movements, including pivoting, sudden stopping or twisting, and jumping.

Torn ACL symptoms can look similar to other knee ligament injuries and, in fact, sometimes occur in conjunction with associated injuries within the knee joint (for example, a torn meniscus). While a quick pivoting motion during a high-intensity sport such as soccer, basketball or football is a more common setting for this type of injury, ACL tears can occur during simple, non-athletic activity as well.

The two stories below indicate the different possible settings, while also highlighting the similarities that are often found in symptoms and treatments of ACL injury cases.

 

Treatment of professional footballers

The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy from

The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) will be making changes to the CSP PLI scheme from 1 July 2015 that will affect members who work with certain professional footballers.

The CSP will be amending the terms of the main CSP PLI scheme for members. From 1 July 2015. The policy will exclude cover for the treatment of professional footballers from clubs within the top two divisions of UK Football Association leagues and worldwide overseas clubs. This includes Academy players and those on loan to lower league clubs. It will also exclude cover for players with UK and worldwide National teams of all age groups. The facility for members to purchase individual top-up indemnity for the treatment of professional footballers is also being withdrawn.

The CSP insurance brokers have worked with an alternative indemnity provider SEMPRIS to arrange an alternative PLI scheme for affected members, subject to individual application. Other schemes may also be available from other insurance providers.

 

Current controversies in sports nutrition

European Journal of Sport Science from

Of all of the sub-disciplines of sports and exercise science, it is sports nutrition that has perhaps undergone the most significant developments in the last decade. Whereas the discipline has largely adopted a competition and performance-based approach to research and practice (traditionally based on carbohydrate), sports physiologists and nutritionists now readily appreciate the role that nutrition can play in promoting training adaption, especially that of how manipulation of macronutrient and micronutrient availability (carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamin D, etc.) can (or may) modulate nutrient-gene interactions.
 

Soft Drink Dangers: 8 Ways Soda Negatively Affects Your Health

Medical Daily, Pulse from

Soda is one of the most consumed beverages in the United States, second only to water. Here in the States, Americans guzzle 57 gallons of soda per person every year, as if it wasn’t full of sugary calories. But what’s happening inside the bodies of soda consumers with each sip?

As soon as soda’s swallowed, the pancreas is notified and rapidly begins to create insulin in response to the sugar. Insulin is a hormone the body uses to move sugar from food or drink into the bloodstream, where cells are then able to use sugar for energy. Within just 20 minutes, blood sugar levels spike and the liver responds to the insulin by turning sugar into fat for storage.

 

LAFC wishlist: Don’t cut corners on matters like player nutrition – The Goat Parade

SB Nation, The Goat Parade from

You’re a professional athlete, going to training sessions nearly every morning, and your team provides you with healthy food for breakfast and lunch while you’re preparing for the week, right?

Not always, at least in MLS. Kurt Larson had an interesting article in the Toronto Sun on Thursday that mostly focused on the ongoing Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations between the MLS Players Union and the league, but included a pretty fascinating tidbit from new Toronto FC defender Eriq Zavaleta.

 

Six quick tips to improve your regression modeling

Andrew Gelman from

It’s Appendix A of ARM:

A.1. Fit many models

Think of a series of models, starting with the too-simple and continuing through to the hopelessly messy. Generally it’s a good idea to start simple. Or start complex if you’d like, but prepare to quickly drop things out and move to the simpler model to help understand what’s going on. Working with simple models is not a research goal—in the problems we work on, we usually find complicated models more believable—but rather a technique to help understand the fitting process.

 

Late 20s Are The New Early 20s For Tennis Breakthroughs

FiveThirtyEight from

… Wawrinka has looked a lot less fluky this year in Melbourne. He has advanced to a semifinal meeting Friday with No. 1 Novak Djokovic, whom he upset last year. If Wawrinka can repeat that feat, he’ll play the final against either Andy Murray or Tomas Berdych — two opponents who haven’t beaten him over seven matches going back to April 2013.

Since 1968, the year when the majors opened up to professional players, it’s been rare for any man or woman to win a first singles Grand Slam title past age 28. It’s been rarer for any of them to win a second. Four men and four women were older than Wawrinka when they broke through at a major, according to data provided by Jeff Sackmann of Tennis Abstract: Goran Ivanisevic, Petr Korda, Andres Gomez, Andres Gimeno, Kerry Reid, Jana Novotna, Francesca Schiavone and Li Na.

 

Total and lower extremity lean mass percentage positively correlates with jump performance.

Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research from

Strength and power have been identified as valuable components in both athletic performance and daily function. A major component of strength and power is the muscle mass, which can be assessed with dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA). The primary purpose of this study was to quantify the relationship between total body lean mass percentage (TBLM%) and lower extremity lean mass percentage (LELM%) and lower extremity force/power production during a countermovement jump (CMJ) in a general population. Researchers performed a DXA analysis on 40 younger participants aged 18-35 years, 28 middle-aged participants aged 36-55 years, and 34 older participants aged 56-75 years. Participants performed three CMJ on force platforms. Correlations revealed significant and strong relationships between TBLM% and LELM% compared with CMJ normalized peak vertical ground reaction force (p < 0.001, r = 0.59), normalized peak vertical power (p < 0.001, r = 0.73), and jump height (p < 0.001, r = 0.74) for the combined age groups. Most relationships were also strong within each age group, with some relationships being relatively weaker in the middle-aged and older groups. Minimal difference was found between correlation coefficients of TBLM% and LELM%. Coefficients of determination were all below 0.6 for the combined group, indicating that between-participant variability in CMJ measures cannot be completely explained by lean mass percentages. The findings have implications in including DXA-assessed lean mass percentage as a component for evaluating lower extremity strength and power. A paired DXA analysis and CMJ jump test may be useful for identifying neuromuscular deficits that limit performance.
 

Premier League given a grim warning by the FA Cup fairytales | Sean Ingle | Football | The Guardian

The Guardian, Sean Ingle from

Deloitte’s report showed the Premier League is the richest in the world. So shouldn’t its teams be doing better in the FA Cup and in European competitions?
 

Inclusiveness key as USTA searches for new development director, new champs

USA Today from

This much is clear for the future of American tennis: Communication is key to generate its next big star.

Much has been written about the U.S. Tennis Association’s struggle to produce the next generation of champions, but as Patrick McEnroe vacates his position as head of player development, it’s clear his successor will have to navigate a system that has grown more complicated in its mix of national and private coaches.

With eight Americans advancing to at least the third round at the Australian Open, U.S. tennis seems to be on the upswing at the year’s first Grand Slam.

 


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