Applied Sports Science newsletter – July 2, 2015

While it helps to be from a big, rich country, the secret to the success of Carli Lloyd and the Americans is simple: years of hard work.

… B/R: This leads me to the fact you played for some very interesting personalities in Pete Carroll, Tom Coughlin and now Chip Kelly. Can you explain the differences between them, since each can be typecast by those of us on the outside? For example, Carroll is ultra-competitive. Coughlin is a disciplinarian. And Kelly is a modern mad scientist.

Thurmond: I’ll start by saying they all have one thing in common: They are driven to win a championship. And they believe with every fiber in their bodies all the way to their core in their philosophies. They realize some coaches would belittle the situation once the playoffs came by just trying to win this or that game. When the coach is confident in saying, “We’re here to win a championship, and that’s our sole purpose,” I think guys react that way.

Michigan State coach Ken Mannie has played an integral part in the success of Spartans’ football program. Mannie has been apart of the Spartan program for 21 years from Nick Saban to Mark Dantonio.

Mannie’s ability to retain his job despite the once caravan of coaches rolling through MSU proves his worth. He is one of the most heralded strength and conditioning coaches in the game and today happens to be his birthday.

Nebraska’s Boyd Epley can still remember the weight-room phone call during a warm August afternoon in 1969. He didn’t know the brief talk would forever alter the college football landscape.

For months Epley, a no-name pole-vaulter from a no-name Arizona junior college, had trained — almost inadvertently — the Huskers’ injured football players. Epley lifted weights to strengthen his injured back — using techniques he picked up from a body-building friend in high school — and the Huskers’ football players mimicked him.

Tom Osborne, then a first-year offensive coordinator at Nebraska, noticed that those injured players returned to the gridiron even better than before, so he wondered what kind of impact strength training would have on healthy players. Why couldn’t Epley work his magic on the entire Huskers team? Why not call down to the weight room and hire him as the nation’s first full-time strength and conditioning coach?

“If you’re looking for the most impactful change, in terms of progression, Nebraska’s coaches coming onto the scene like that — that was probably the single most important event,” said Dr. Peter Weyand, an SMU professor of applied physiology and biomechanics, and one of the nation’s foremost experts on human performance.

Despite the available literature addressing the placebo effect’s role in mediating human performance, there is a paucity of research addressing the possibility of a placebo effect both within and between bouts of repeated sprint performance on consecutive days. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine whether the administration of a placebo influences recovery during sessions of intermittent sprinting. Ten subjects performed 4 repeated sprint tests under 2 different conditions; 2 while being administered a control beverage separated by 24 hours of recovery and the other 2 with a placebo beverage separated by 24 hours of recovery. Before each sprint test, subjects provided perceived recovery status (PRS). Ratings of perceived exertion were recorded within 5 seconds after each sprint. After each repeated sprint protocol, subjects were asked to provide a rating of perceived exertion (RPE), rate their pain, and provided a blood lactate sample. Power was recorded throughout each session from a nonmotorized treadmill to analyze changes in sprinting performance. Repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to determine significant differences in peak and mean power, PRS, RPE, pain, and blood lactate. The placebo trial produced significantly higher peak (p 0.05). In conclusion, it seems that the administration of a placebo can attenuate the decline in performance as fatigue increases during repeated sprinting bouts.

We determined the effects of ‘periodized nutrition’ on skeletal muscle and whole-body responses to a bout of prolonged exercise the following morning. Seven cyclists completed two trials receiving isoenergetic diets differing in the timing of ingestion: They consumed either 8 g•kg-1 BM of CHO before undertaking an evening session of high-intensity training (HIT) and slept without eating (FASTED), or 4 g•kg-1 BM of CHO before HIT then 4 g•kg-1 BM of CHO before sleeping (FED). The next morning subjects completed 2 h cycling (120SS) while overnight fasted. Muscle biopsies were taken on day 1 (D1) before and 2 h after HIT and on Day 2 (D2) pre-, post-, and 4 h after 120SS. Muscle [glycogen] was higher in FED at all times post-HIT (P< 0.001). HIT increased PGC1? mRNA (P< 0.01) while PDK4 mRNA was elevated to a greater extent in FASTED (P< 0.05). Resting phosphorylation of AMPKThr172, p38MAPKThr180/Tyr182 and p-ACCSer79 (D2) was greater in FASTED (P< 0.05). Fat oxidation during 120SS was higher in FASTED (P< 0.01) coinciding with increases in ACCSer79 and CPT1, as well as mRNA expression of CD36 and FABP3 (P< 0.05). Methylation on the gene promoter for COX4I1 and FABP3 increased 4 h after 120SS in both trials, while methylation of the PPAR? promoter increased only in FASTED. We provide evidence for shifts in DNA methylation that correspond with inverse changes in transcription for metabolically adaptive genes, although delaying post-exercise feeding failed to augment markers of mitochondrial biogenesis.

Context: Lower extremity injuries are common in basketball, yet it is unclear how prophylactic interventions affect lower extremity injury incidence rates.

Objective: To analyze the effectiveness of current lower extremity injury prevention programs in basketball athletes, focusing on injury rates of (1) general lower extremity injuries, (2) ankle sprains, and (3) anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears.
…
Results: Meta-analyses were performed independently for each injury classification. Results indicate that prophylactic programs significantly reduced the incidence of general lower extremity injuries (odds ratio [OR], 0.69; 95% CI, 0.57-0.85; P < 0.001) and ankle sprains (OR, 0.45; 95% CI, 0.29-0.69; P < 0.001), yet not ACL ruptures (OR, 1.09; 95% CI, 0.36-3.29; P = 0.87) in basketball athletes.

Conclusion: In basketball players, prophylactic programs may be effective in reducing the risk of general lower extremity injuries and ankle sprains, yet not ACL injuries.

Background: A reduced range of hip internal rotation is associated with increased peak anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) strain and risk for injury. It is unknown, however, whether limiting the available range of internal femoral rotation increases the susceptibility of the ACL to fatigue failure.

Hypothesis: Risk of ACL failure is significantly greater in female knee specimens with a limited range of internal femoral rotation, smaller femoral-ACL attachment angle, and smaller tibial eminence volume during repeated in vitro simulated single-leg pivot landings.
… Methods: A custom-built testing apparatus was used to simulate repeated single-leg pivot landings with a 4×-body weight impulsive load that induces knee compression, knee flexion, and internal tibial torque in 32 paired human knee specimens from 8 male and 8 female donors. These test loads were applied to each pair of specimens, in one knee with limited internal femoral rotation and in the contralateral knee with femoral rotation resisted by 2 springs to simulate the active hip rotator muscles’ resistance to stretch. The landings were repeated until ACL failure occurred or until a minimum of 100 trials were executed. The angle at which the ACL originates from the femur and the tibial eminence volume were measured on magnetic resonance images.

Results: The final Cox regression model (P = .024) revealed that range of internal femoral rotation and sex of donor were significant factors in determining risk of ACL fatigue failure. The specimens with limited range of internal femoral rotation had a failure risk 17.1 times higher than did the specimens with free rotation (P = .016). The female knee specimens had a risk of ACL failure 26.9 times higher than the male specimens (P = .055).

Conclusion: Limiting the range of internal femoral rotation during repetitive pivot landings increases the risk of an ACL fatigue failure in comparison with free rotation in a cadaveric model.

Clinical Relevance: Screening for restricted internal rotation at the hip in ACL injury prevention programs as well as in individuals with ACL injuries and/or reconstructions is warranted.

On the precipice of NBA free agency, it’s important to take one more look at the 2014-15 season. Expect instead of focusing on Golden State’s historical run to the title or LeBron James’ first year back in a Cavaliers jersey, let’s take a look at the injuries that helped shape the season.

As a whole, 4,665 man games were lost to injury or illness. While the number may appear staggering, it’s actually 324 games less than the previous season and just the 4th highest total since the league adopted the game-to-game inactive list prior to the start of the 2005-06 season. However the impact of these injuries may have been higher when the amount of money tied to the lost games is weighed. The 4000+ games lost to injury or illness came with a $344 million price tag, a shade lower than the 2013-14 sum of $358 million. That’s an astronomical $11.5 million lost per team.

As discussed in a previous blog, recovery is a broad term that refers to restoration of performance capacity. After a workout you are fatigued and performance capacity is down. In the hours and days after the workout you “recover” and performance capacity returns to normal (and can even become better). The time course of this process depends on many factors including – of course – how hard the workout was. This blog will give a very brief overview of what is important for rapid recovery from a nutrition point of view. Rapid recovery here is defined as the 1-6 hours after exercise.

They call it the “Mainz-way” and it works. For the past six seasons, moderately sized 1.FSV Mainz 05 have held their own in the Bundesliga and provided an excellent model as to how to run a football club.

There is a philosophy behind the club and they won’t compromise their principles. But philosophy and principles can only take you so far, you need people to lead the club and put the club’s ethos into practice. In the case of the ‘Carnival Club’ that figure is the oft under-rated sporting director Christian Heidel.

… Each year, (almost) every basketball program has an incoming freshman class. The players in the class have been evaluated by several national recruiting/ranking companies (e.g. Rivals, Scout, etc…). In theory, these evaluations provide a measure of the player’s talent or quality. Each year, we also observe which players get drafted by the NBA. Thus, we can measure conversion rates over time for each college. Conversion rates may be indicative of the school’s ability to coach-up talent, to identify talent, or to invest in players. These rates may also depend on the talent composition of all of the players on the team. This last factor is particularly important from a recruiting standpoint. Should players flock to places that other highly ranked players have selected? Should they look for places where they have a higher probability of getting on the court quickly?

Older athletes can be much younger, physically, than they are in real life, according to a new study of participants in the coming Senior Olympics. The study found that the athletes’ fitness age is typically 20 years or more younger than their chronological age, providing a clear inspiration to the rest of us to get out and start moving more.

I wrote last year about fitness age, a concept developed by researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim who had taken note of epidemiological data showing that people with above-average cardiovascular fitness generally had longer life spans than people with lower aerobic fitness. So at any given age, fit people were relatively younger than were people who were out of shape.

But the researchers decided that their insight was not useful unless people could easily determine their fitness age.

The aims of the present study were to examine 1) the validity and reliability of a new timing system to assess running kinematics during change of direction (COD), and 2) the determinants of COD-speed. Twelve young soccer players performed three 20-m sprints, either in straight line or with one 45º- or 90º-COD. Sprints were monitored using timing gates and two synchronized 100-Hz laser guns, to track players’ velocities before, during and after the COD. The validity analysis revealed trivial-to-small biases and smallto-moderate typical errors of the estimate with the lasers compared with the timing gates. The reliability was variable-dependent, with trivial- (distance at peak speed) to-large (distance at peak deceleration) typical errors. Kinematic variables were angle-dependent, with likely lower peak speed, almost-certainly slower minimum speed during the COD and almost-certainly greater deceleration reached for 90º-COD vs. 45º-COD sprints. The minimum speed during the COD was largely correlated with sprint performance for both sprint angles. Correlations with most of the other independent variables were unclear. The new timing system showed acceptable levels of validity and reliability to assess some of the selected running kinematics during COD sprints. The ability to maintain a high speed during the COD may be the determinant for COD-speed.