Applied Sports Science newsletter – April 24, 2015

… The selection of Leonard isn’t shocking because he was undeserving; it’s more surprising because of how unlikely it was that he would win based on past voting trends and the perception of his candidacy. According to the ESPN Forecast panel, which has been pretty accurate with award predictions the past couple of years, Leonard was given only a 1 percent chance of winning the award.

As others have noted, the evaluation of defense has improved considerably in recent years. Instead of focusing almost exclusively on traditional defensive stats like blocks and rebounds (which would heavily favor Jordan this year), more in-depth measures are being considered.

As Major League Soccer has grown, its offseasons have become dominated by player acquisition news. It’s not only big name imports like Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, and Sebastian Giovinco that steal headlines but also middle-tier internationals, or the various big-named Americans returning home. The influx leaves fans and bloggers rushing to dissect the savviest moves and predict which rebuilt teams will make deep runs in the playoffs. It’s also given Major League Soccer a truly fun offseason.

But it’s usually about spring time, when teams have played just enough games that we can start to tell what they are, that fans start to say, “this guy is the one taking us to the promised land??” As any seasoned follower knows, you can’t take a new player’s adjustment for granted. Not everybody makes a seamless transition to Major League Soccer.

The other position-centric debate in the top 10 of this year’s draft was slower to develop than the one happening between Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota. At the end of the college football season, it seemed like Amari Cooper would clearly end up the first wide receiver off the board next week. Cooper racked up an absurd 1,727 yards in 2014 as the central offensive option on one of the best teams in the country. The Alabama wideout landing in the top five was supposed to be a sure thing.

Then Kevin White went to the combine.

Dres Anderson was the University of Utah Utes’ top wide receiver before he went down with a season-ending knee injury last October, but he’s worked his way back into football form and now has his sights set on an NFL career.

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Anderson drew scouts from 12 NFL teams earlier this week as he worked out, and Sunday he appeared on FOX 13 Sports Page, where he discussed his hopes for the future. See the video above for Dres Anderson’s complete interview with FOX 13 Sports’ Jeff Rhineer. [video, pre-roll + 5:13]

… This season in Golden State, the legend grows larger by the minute. Nearly every night since the All-Star Game — for which Curry was the top vote-getter and where he sank 13 straight shots to win the 3-point contest — he’s been expanding the lore of Jack’s hoop as well as the parameters by which we define point guard greatness. Yes, his stats are MVP-worthy: Through March 24, he ranked seventh in points (23.4 per game), sixth in assists (7.9) and third in steals (2.1). Yes, he has the fourth-highest 3-point percentage, 43.6 percent, in NBA history and has led the league in total 3s since 2012, if you’re counting. And yes, in six years, he has catapulted Golden State from perennial nonfactor to title favorite. But Curry’s evolution this season is about something more profound than shooting, stats or hardware. The point guard groomed by that historic hoop in Grottoes has become the game’s future.

Curry is standing at the forefront of a new era of playmaker. For the first time since Magic Johnson took an evolutionary leap for the position, we’re witnessing the ultimate embodiment of the point guard. Not a shooter like Steve Nash, a passer like John Stockton, a defender like Gary Payton or a floor general like Isiah Thomas. Someone with the ability to do it all, excelling in each category while elevating everyone around him and then topping it the very next night: basketball’s new 6-foot-3, 190-pound unstoppable force.

The role of motor uncertainty in discrete or static space tasks, such as pointing tasks, has been investigated in many experiments. These studies have shown that humans hold an internal representation of intrinsic and extrinsic motor uncertainty and compensate for this variability when planning movement. The aim of this study was to investigate how humans respond to uncertainties during movement execution in a dynamic environment despite indeterminate knowledge of the outcome of actions. Additionally, the role of errors, or lack thereof, in predicting risk was examined. In the experiment, subjects completed a driving simulation game on a two-lane road. The road contained random curves so that subjects were forced to use sensory feedback to complete the task and could not rely only on motor planning. Risk was manipulated by using horizontal perturbations to create the illusion of driving on a bumpy road, thereby imposing motor uncertainty, and altering the cost function of the road. Results suggest continual responsiveness to cost and uncertainty in a dynamic task and provide evidence that subjects avoid risk even in the absence of errors. The results suggest that humans tune their statistical motor behavior based on cost, taking into account probabilities of possible outcomes in response to environmental uncertainty.

The StatCast project that Claudio Silva worked on in conjunction with Major League Baseball went live in April and continues to earn praise.

… In 2006, I was working at the Department of Exercise Physiology of Karolinska Institute as a fellow researcher for the European Space Agency to validate the use of flywheel devices in space. A Spanish researcher and strength coach, Julio Tous, came to investigate the applications of flywheel training in sport, after successfully using this methodology at Barcelona Football Club. From his user perspective, he pointed out a gap in the market. Back then there was no performance monitoring tool sufficiently sophisticated for research environment, yet practical enough for daily training of individual athletes and teams and which could adapt to any training device ranging from conventional weights to flywheel training devices. The seed for SmartCoach was planted.

Now SmartCoach is an open, scalable range of products consisting of data acquisition hardware and planning/analysis software tools which are constantly updated by working elbow to elbow with professional strength coaches to understand their needs, collect their invaluable feedback and turn it into new features. SmartCoach has a powerful software editor to create training schedules. It provides an intuitive, real-time feedback during the exercise to guide the athlete in reaching the prescribed target while data is automatically recorded and offers a number of analysis tools to assess and monitor performance once the training session is over.

… A few key principles, experts say, are driving this business move.

First, there’s the bundling marketing strategy. For example, Adidas’ miCoach Train and Run app, which allows users to set weekly goals and create personalized training plans, is free to download on Google Play or iTunes. However, it can — and probably should — be used with Adidas’ miCoach Fit Smart armband, which retails for around $150.

To take the monetization and product-integration strategy a step further, Under Armour’s MapMyFitness app has a Gear Tracker feature that monitors users’ shoe usage and alerts them when it’s time for a new pair— complete with a link to Zappos.com to close the deal. Similarly, Adidas’ miCoach also features a Gear Section designed to track shoe usage.

Then there’s consumer engagement.

Background: Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reinjury results in worse outcomes and increases the risk of posttraumatic osteoarthritis.
Purpose: To identify the risk factors for both ipsilateral and contralateral ACL tears after primary ACL reconstruction (ACLR).
… Results: A total of 2683 subjects with average age of 27 ± 11 years (1498 men; 56%) met all study inclusion/exclusion criteria. Overall there were 4.4% ipsilateral graft tears and 3.5% contralateral ACL tears. The odds of ipsilateral ACL retear were 5.2 times greater for an allograft (P < .01) compared with a bone–patellar tendon–bone (BTB) autograft; the odds of retear were not significantly different between BTB autograft and hamstring autograft (P = .12). The odds of an ipsilateral ACL retear decreased by 0.09 for every yearly increase in age (P < .01) and increased by 0.11 for every increased point on the Marx score (P .05). The odds of a contralateral ACL tear decreased by 0.04 for every yearly increase in age (P = .04) and increased by 0.12 for every increased point on the Marx score (P .05).
Conclusion: Younger age, higher activity level, and allograft graft type were predictors of increased odds of ipsilateral graft failure. Higher activity and younger age were found to be risk factors in contralateral ACL tears.

… what can we learn from Mr. Gebrselaisse? For me, it was a big reminder that carbohydrates fuel fast performance. In a world where carbs are seen as the enemy, and sports drinks are seen as poison, Gebrselaisse’s sports nutrition plan speaks for itself. To run at the unfathomable speed that he and other world-class marathoners run, they simply cannot rely on slower-burning body fat stores.

There is a lot of debate about “training low”, low carb diets, Paleo diets, Atkins diets, fasted training, keto diets, etc. and the more traditional high carbohydrate approach. It seems that people are in one of these two camps and there is little or no middle ground. The low carb group shouts, “carbohydrate is bad”, while the high carbohydrate group, you shout “you must carboload”! The purpose of this short article is to provide some clarity. We will take an evidence based approach to the questions and start to analyse the issue. It is a difficult topic to address in 900 words and therefore I will refer the reader to my blogs on www.mysportscience.com.

The issue gets contaminated a little by the fact that people may use certain dietary approaches for different purposes. The two extremes are: an elite athlete who wants to perform well in an endurance event and a couch potato trying to eat to lose weight or be more healthy. These are completely different purposes and it would be wrong to assume that two completely different problems should be solved with one common solution.

“On a combined basis, MLS and its clubs continue to lose in excess of $100 million per year.” — MLS deputy commissioner Mark Abbott, October 28, 2014.

It was widely reported in October 2014 that LAFC agreed to pay a franchise fee of $110 million. Also that in May 2013 NYCFC agreed to pay $100 million, and that the Orlando (November 2013) and Atlanta (April 2014) expansion franchises agreed to pay $70 million each. Which raises the obvious question, by what logic do people pay large sums to enter into a commercial environment in which the existing businesses are already losing money?