Applied Sports Science newsletter – April 22, 2015

At 1pm every afternoon, the hustle and bustle of Real Madrid’s Valdebebas training ground grinds to a halt and the facility resembles a ghost town.

A silence descends over the complex for the following two hours as players and staff close their eyes and drift into a siesta before waking and resuming their day – but they’re not sleeping on the job.

The scene is a window into football’s relentless pursuit of marginal gains as clubs across Europe turn to technology, purpose-built facilities and sleep experts to recharge their multi-million pound assets and gain a competitive advantage.

… In the time between Oregon’s final game and the NFL draft on Apr. 30, Mariota has put a renewed focus on preparation—physically and mentally.

“I’m about focus on what’s going to make me better. Right now I’m working on strengthening some weaknesses from my college skill set and,” he says, “ultimately, turning those into strengths.”

Despite popular opinion, the Mavericks can dispel one myth about Dwight Howard.

“He’s not the strongest guy in the league,” Amar’e Stoudemire said Tuesday.

Stoudemire listed Minnesota’s Nikola Pekovic as his vote for the NBA’s strongest player in the paint, but saying that it’s not Howard was a bit surprising, particularly after Howard had said earlier that he was going to have to scale back his physical play to avoid foul trouble.

The criterion which coaches use to judge their peers are extremely pertinent to the study and enhancement of coach development. The aim of this two-part study was to offer insight into how a sample of British sub-elite coaches judged coaching prowess and perceived the nature of the expertise possessed (or perceived to be possessed) by their own self-selected role model coaches. Data from field notes and transcribed conversations with 143 coaches, drawn from over 15 years of conversations, were interpreted following an inductive analysis. Subsequently, follow up focus group interviews involving 15 level three coaches in a range of sports were used to augment and, if appropriate, question these data. Results yielded an array of personal characteristics, which participants used to describe “what” role model coaches did or were like, as opposed to professional or behavioural characteristics that explained “how” they worked. Consideration of these findings offers some areas for immediate exploitation, alongside some key concerns which must be addressed if the trend for social learning based coach development initiatives are to have optimum benefit.

Have you ever seen anyone run nearly 30 mph?

I did recently over at the applied biomechanics lab on the University of Colorado campus, and it was quite impressive, especially because the runner, Richard Browne, is a single below-the-knee amputee.

Apparel maker Under Armour believes connected fitness is the future in an increasingly digital world. While athletes are increasingly on board with this vision, investors need more convincing.

Photography, telephony, music, journalism, pocket calculators. The list of industries thrown off course by the iPhone is long. Now, with the Apple Watch, it seems as if the California tech industry is at last coming for one of the oldest of old-world trades: fashion.

What we call fashion is, of course, vast and varied. It includes sneakers and sweaters, wedding rings and workout wear. Even if Apple sells as many watches as it has sold phones (an unlikely proposition), the company will directly influence only one narrow part of our attire. Still, the new watch heralds a broader convergence between the things we use and the things we wear. In a series of conversations, designers, engineers, and futurists told me that they expect many pieces of technology to look more like fashion going forward—worn on our bodies, designed to make a personal statement, subject to fads. At the same time, they said, old-fashioned fashion will become technologized. The look and feel of future clothing won’t be influenced by Apple Watch–style glass and steel as much as by standard business practices applied in a new way. Boring, buzzword?y supply-chain management—and innovative manufacturing techniques, too—might just bring you new pieces of custom jewelry each day, or pants that are truly your size.

Just a few days before the first units start shipping, Apple has posted some support documents that pull back the curtain on some of the technical details of its heart rate monitor, and also give some insight into steps Apple has taken to head off potential skin irritation issues. Apple blog 9to5Mac first spotted the two new pages.

According to the new heart rate page, Apple Watch monitors the user’s heart rate every 10 minutes and stores the data in the Health app. This data is stored as it’s own metric, but also used in calculating workout intensity and calories burned. The page also explains the specific method the Watch uses to track heart rate, based on green LEDs.

Amid all the hype about the Apple Watch, expected to start shipping later this week, a Cambridge startup working on a smartwatch of its own has stayed very quiet. But that will change on Friday, when Quanttus unveils the design of its first product on Friday at the Wired Health conference in London. Quanttus became the best-funded local startup working on wearable devices after it raised $19 million last February, which brought its total funding to about $22 million — but there have recently been a few high-profile departures at the company.

… So now the general public think Marathoners were skinny, but 400m sprinters are “skinnier”? This kind of absurdity led to interval training being the best (or only) way to lose fat, and all that Tabata protocol hype.

It’s true… 400m sprinters do a lot of interval and circuit training, and it’s not uncommon for a typical 400m recovery workout to be 30 x 100m (or 15 x 200m, or even 10 x 300m, totalling 3000m) of low intensity tempo running. (see my clarification on Tempo Running here, plus other sample Tempo Workouts for Sprinters) Some coaches do a lot of butt-lock lactic-acid medium intensity interval work, but we’ll also save that discussion for another day, because I’ve covered that topic in several short-to-long vs long-to-short arguments.

It’s also true you’ll burn more calories doing 3000m of interval work than 3000m of aerobic cardio running. But that’s the volume x intensity logic, with intervals being higher intensity over easy jogging. Same distance, higher intensity. Plus let us not forget about EPOC: exercise post oxygen consumption.

… For any sprinter, especially 400m sprinters, any excess non-functional weight should be removed, unless you are strong for your weight.

At 85 kg or 188 lbs, and at 6 feet tall, I was one of the biggest guys out there. I’m certainly no Jeremy Wariner. I was always single digits in body fat (or just barely), always below 10% but never near 5% like Elite athletes. But I never broke 7 seconds for 60m, and only ran sub 11 once. There was a lot of mass, but I didn’t flip truck tires or do Farmer’s walk. I was strong, but not strong for my weight.

… We feel that one of the greatest markers of a great coach is how many of their athletes are “buying in” to their program. In other words, how many of a coach’s athletes believe fully in the information they are receiving and are putting it to use on a consistent basis? One of the best ways to track buy in is for athletes to log their own work outs. We believe that shifting the responsibility of tracking progress shows that the athletes see the works as their own, and not the coaches. Devising a way for athletes to easily log their own workouts can be tricky, smart phones can be a great way to aid in this type of data gathering as it is a personal device and always with the athlete. You can get a feel for buy in by measuring the percentage of athletes who regularly log their own workouts. Don’t be shocked by the results, as we have found that percentage be be surprisingly low.

Our research has found 50% compliance or more is excellent, and above 80% is unachievable