Applied Sports Science newsletter – May 8, 2015

… We should dispatch a bouquet to Barcelona to acknowledge the purity of his game and the talent he applies so exquisitely. And most of all, we should revere the little genius for showing that – contrary to an increasingly obnoxious counter argument – football is so much more about personality and individuality than it is about logarithms, statistics and formations. Messi shows us football is an art, not a science, and for those of us who believe the game a feast for the eyes rather than a series of equations, he is a gift from the footballing Gods.

The football industry has become so bogged down in its own self-importance, it needs players like Messi to cut through the bull and show you that ultimately, it always has been and always will be about the talent in those boots.

Kings.com sat down with second-year guard Ray McCallum to discuss his offseason, how he plans to improve for next season, NBA Playoffs and more!

Forty-eight hours after sending the defending champion Spurs home for the playoffs, the Clippers pulled off an even more astonishing victory when they knocked off the Rockets in Houston without Chris Paul. No one gave the Clips a chance of winning Game 1 without CP3, but the game had a familiar feel to veteran observers of Doc Rivers’ teams.

During his run in Los Angeles, it’s been difficult to separate Coach Rivers from GM Doc. The skills he brought to the sidelines have been overshadowed by shortsighted personnel moves that have undercut the team’s on-court progress. In the playoffs, roster deficiencies can be both minimized (through shorter rotations) and exploited (through more thorough preparation). This is where Doc as a coach is at his best.

… FREELAP USA: Olympic-style lifts are very specific to body types and technique, making them more than just a simple summary of peak or average output. Besides using feedback for motivation and accountability, what else can be done to use the data beyond estimating work?

MLADEN JOVANOVI?: There are some “fractal dimensions” to this question, since the answer would depend on the level/scale of the implementation. In other words, it depends on who we are talking about: team-sport athletes using Olympic lifts to develop power, or Olympic lifters trying to get better at their discipline. The amount of details and their “ruggedness” at different levels makes this a “fractal problem.” … The “problem” with Olympic lifting and LPTs compared to, for example, jump squats or hex bar jump squats, is that it is NOT “open-ended”—the bar needs to end up at a certain height with a certain “rhythm” regardless of the weight used. Some Olympic lifting coaches might even say that the lift should look the same regardless of whether you use 90% or 60% of your best lift.

Hence the velocity variability between different loads should be minimized. This is, in my opinion, completely different than “open- ended” lifts such as the jump squat where one tries to jump as high and/or fast as possible. In this case, feedback such as height and or velocity of the lift is motivational and will increase the power/effort and the technique will not be affected as with Olympic lifting, where the goal is to perform skillful movements at a specific rhythm rather than maximally.

When England’s seniors were staying at St George’s Park earlier this season, yelps of excitement could be heard emanating from one of the rooms on the first floor of the hotel. John Peacock, the coach of the Under-17s who were also in residence, decided to investigate.

“England were on the second floor and we were with the 17s on the first,’’ recalled Peacock. “I heard this noise, about 7.30 in the evening, in the room next to mine.” The room was occupied by Reece Oxford, Peacock’s captain and West Ham United’s highly-rated centre-back. “So I knocked on the door, it opened and in I go. Reece was there with three of our lads and Raheem Sterling, all playing on Fifa.”

A Few years ago, one of our teams at Stanford University had an increase in fall injuries to their upper extremities. My co-worker requested me to come in and advise the team on risk reduction strategies. I was introduced to the team after warm up, and I started to teach basic break-falls. This is an important skill judo participants learn before learning how to throw. The progression is quite simple, starting with a backward fall – first from lying supine, then squatting and falling back, and lastly from standing to falling back. The key fundamentals are that the head stays off the ground and arms stay by the body. Human instinct is to post the arm out and “CRACK” off it goes! Next step was to perform side break-falls while keeping the same fundamentals. Here as well, the athletes did excellent. The next set of skills were break-fall rolls, but first I had to assess the athletes’ rolling abilities. It was a comedy show! Very skilled NCAA Division I collegiate athletes had rolling and tumbling illiteracy. One does not need to be considered a ninja, but definitely should know how to perform a basic tumble and roll when falling. In this case, I suspect these ATHLETES had very limited movement variety experience at an early age (early specialization).

Flexibility is a hot-button topic for runners. We used to think it was always better to be more flexible. In recent years there’s been a pendulum swing, with evidence that stiffer runners (as measured by a sit-and-reach test) have better running economy, and pre-run stretching makes you slower. The idea is that the muscles and tendons in our legs act like springs, storing and releasing energy with each stride, and a tightly coiled spring can store more energy.

That’s a nice theory, but it would be a mistake to think that the issue is settled. There are lots of different muscles and tendons in the legs, each with different roles, which are affected in varying ways by the demands of running.

The present study investigated the changes in contractile rate of force development (RFD) and the neural drive following a single bout of eccentric exercise. Twenty-four subjects performed 15?×?10 maximal isokinetic eccentric knee extensor contractions. Prior to and at 24, 48, 72, 96, and 168?h during post-exercise recovery, isometric RFD (30, 50 100, and 200?ms), normalized RFD [1/6,1/2, and 2/3 of maximal voluntary contraction (MVC)] and rate of electromyography rise (RER; 30, 50, and 75?ms) were measured. RFD decreased by 28–42% peaking at 48?h (P?<?0.01–P?<?0.001) and remained depressed at 168?h (P?<?0.05). Normalized RFD at 2/3 of MVC decreased by 22–39% (P?<?0.01), peaked at 72?h and returned to baseline at 168?h. These changes in RFD were associated with a decrease in RER at 48?h–96?h (P?<?0.05–P?<?0.001). Accumulated changes (area under curve) revealed a greater relative decrease in accumulated RFD at 100?ms by ?2727?±?309 (%h; P?<?0.05) and 200?ms by ?3035?±?271 (%h; P?<?0.001) compared with MVC, which decreased, by ?1956?±?234 (%h). In conclusion, RFD and RER are both markedly reduced following a bout of maximal eccentric exercise. This association suggests that exercise-induced decrements in RFD can, in part, be explained decrements in neural drive.

PURPOSE:
The present study examined the sleep, travel and recovery responses of elite footballers during and following long-haul international air travel, with a further description of these responses over the ensuing competitive tour (including two matches).
METHODS:
In an observational design, 15 elite male football players undertook 18 h of predominately westward international air travel from the United Kingdom to South America (-4 h time-zone shift) for a 10-day tour. Objective sleep parameters, external and internal training loads, subjective player match performance, technical match data and perceptual jet-lag and recovery measures were collected.
RESULTS:
Significant differences were evident between outbound travel and recovery night 1 (night of arrival; P<0.001) for sleep duration. Sleep efficiency was also significantly reduced during outbound travel compared to recovery nights 1 (P=0.001) and 2 (P=0.004). Furthermore, both match nights (5 and 10), showed significantly less sleep than non-match nights 2-4 and 7-9 (all P0.05); although large effects were evident for jet-lag on Day 2 (two days after arrival).
CONCLUSIONS:
Sleep duration is truncated during long-haul international travel with a 4 h time-zone delay, and following night matches in elite footballers. However this lost sleep appeared to have a limited effect on perceptual recovery, which may be explained by a westbound flight and a relatively small change in time-zones, in addition to the significant increase in sleep duration on the night of arrival following the long-haul flight.

… [Jeff] Hawkins believes that the brain’s structure holds the keys for the next generation of computers that will interpret our world with far more insight than our eyes and ears ever could. I chatted with Hawkins recently about how the biggest opportunities in deep learning all circle back to the human brain.

If you see something advertised as an injury-prevention tool and Arsenal one of the teams using it, it is but normal to be suspicious of the product. But quips aside, one of the ways that football is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the modern age is via performance-monitoring technology.

To follow up on the El País story published about FC Barcelona players wearing monitoring vests as part of an overall training and injury prevention program, it seemed worth digging a bit deeper into the STATSports product, to know what it does and try to explain just a bit about why it can work.

… The Yanomami people agreed to have the microbes in their mouths, on their skin and in their faeces analysed by the international research team.

Dr Dominguez-Bellow was surprised by some of the findings – the microbes from their skin and gut were 40% more diverse than those of modern, urbanised people.

… FFA chief executive David Gallop admitted that it was a wish list as much as a strategic plan, acknowledging it was deliberately conceived without restraints.

“We wanted to do something where we said, ‘Ok, if we had our druthers, where would we want to be in 20 years’ time?’ It’s now our job to go away to work out the revenue and cost implications for getting there in 20 years time,” Gallop said. “We’ve engaged Boston Consulting to help us with our first four-year strategy and that will certainly be all about making investment choices for the game that will get us on the steepest growth path towards the 20-year vision.”

This study sought to determine the level of association between bilateral force production symmetry assessment methods (standing weight distribution (WtD), unloaded and lightly loaded jumps, and isometric strength) as well as to determine if the amount of symmetry carry-over between these tasks differs for strong and weak athletes. Subjects for this study included male (n=31) and female (n=32) athletes from NCAA Division I sports. Athletes performed WtD, unloaded and lightly loaded (20 kg) static (SJ) and countermovement jumps (CMJ), and isometric mid-thigh pull (IMTP) assessments on two adjacent force plates. Ground reaction force data were used to calculate symmetry variables and performance-related variables. Using Pearson zero order correlations, evaluations of the amount of symmetry carry-over were made. WtD correlated strongly with jump peak force (PF) (r = 0.628-0.664). Strong relationships were also observed between loading conditions for jump variables (r = 0.568-0.957) as were the relationships between jump types for PF, peak power, and net impulse (r = 0.506-0.834). Based on the pooled sample, there was a lack of association between IMTP and WtD for jump symmetry variables. However, when examining strong and weak groups, rate of force development showed moderate to strong symmetry carry-over in the strongest athletes (r = 0.416-0.589). Stronger athletes appear to display similar explosive strength symmetry characteristics in dynamic and isometric assessments, unlike weaker athletes. Strength appears to influence the amount of force production symmetry carry-over between bilateral assessments. There may be optimal loads and variables for symmetry assessment, but these may differ based on population characteristics.