Applied Sports Science newsletter – July 6, 2015

John Terry is taking hints from the world of basketball to get ahead of the competition in the Barclays Premier League as the Chelsea captain trains in the gym before returning for pre-season.

Skipper Terry has already been back at the Blues’ Cobham training base ahead of schedule to steal a march on his team-mates and the hard work keeps on coming in the form of intense gym sessions twice a day while on holiday in Portugal.

Alongside the 34-year-old as he works out is Tim S Grover’s book ‘Jump Attack’, a training programme employed by the likes of NBA icons Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. [commercial video autoplays]

… Eight years later, and Renken is a long way from those bright lights.

Now 21, he’s back in Edwardsville, living at home and playing under Schilly at first-year St. Louis FC. He isn’t supposed to be here. We – the American soccer public, forever looking for our breakthrough star – expected him to be a significant first-division player by now. A shoo-in for the Gold Cup preliminary roster that his former residency teammates Brek Shea, Juan Agudelo, Perry Kitchen and Greg Garza were recently named to by Jurgen Klinsmann.

But injuries – he tore the ACL in his right knee twice, first in January 2008 and again in March 2009 – seemed to rob him of his quickness and derailed his fledgling career at Bundesiga side Hoffenheim. When healthy, he appeared regularly for the club’s U-19 squad but never managed to break into the first team in two years in Germany.

… Wambach believes that the success of her time in soccer, the end of which feels that much closer as the team prepares to face Japan in Sunday’s final, would not have been possible without her exploits on the hardwood in her youth.

“Playing basketball had a significant impact on the way I play the game of soccer,” Wambach said. “I am a taller player in soccer, in basketball I was a power forward and I would go up and rebound the ball. So learning the timing of your jump, learning the trajectory of the ball coming off the rim, all those things play a massive role.”

… According to 247Sports’ composite rankings, five of Ohio State’s 22 projected starters for the 2015 season were three-star recruits. That number would jump to six should Cardale Jones win the starting quarterback position. Thirteen of the Buckeyes’ starters were four-star prospects in high school. Should J.T. Barrett win the starting job at quarterback, that number would jump to 14. And, finally, three of Ohio State’s projected starters were five-star recruits. There would be four if Braxton Miller winds up as the Buckeyes’ signal caller.

Team Sky mastermind Dave Brailsford and psychologist Steve Peters are both highly competitive risk takers – and they bring out the best in each other.

Perhaps you’ve read or heard about the NFL’s dip into virtual reality training. The Dallas Cowboys are on it. So are the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who hope it can speed quarterback Jameis Winston’s development. Other teams see similar value in creating a lifelike environment for players by having them wear custom vision visors to train off the field.

These systems, and their successors, promise an incremental impact on the game. Public interest in them, however, has hidden the sea change that virtual reality augurs for another area of the sport.

Within a few years, advocates predict, fans of the NFL and other leagues will have the option to “attend” games while sitting at home or anywhere else in the world. They’ll have a choice of stadium position — 50-yard line, field-level sideline, or perhaps right behind the quarterback — and will be able to toggle the view using a tablet. The Los Angeles-based OTOY Inc. tested an early version of the technology at an outdoor NHL game in February, receiving positive reviews, and the NFL acknowledged it is exploring the possibilities as well.

A revolution is upon us, and you can feel it. Literally.

Haptics–haptic means “related to the sense of touch”–are begin­ning to rework the way we interact with gadgets and devices. You’ve probably already encountered them in one of their basic forms: actuators–tiny motors–in your Cadillac that vibrate your seat if you aren’t watching the road. Likewise, your Apple Watch features what Cupertino cutely calls a “taptic engine,” which issues gentle reminders with taps or buzzes.

But imagine a world where remote employees can “touch” machines in a distant factory, or a surgical resident can feel what it’s like to operate on a human brain–minus any danger to a real patient. Haptics can also create the sensation of a raised keyboard on your iPhone or allow you to feel a suit you might buy online.

… This is just the beginning of virtual reality, and it will be surely tweaked or overhauled in years to come. But Cuban brought it to his alma mater.

“It’s less than a handful of even pro teams,” [Indiana University Athletic Director, Fred] Glass said. “But they are all going toward it. It is going to distinguish us from pretty much any other university in the country.”

A friend of mine asked me the other day what equipment to buy for his team. They got a budget and they want to invest in buying equipment. This got me thinking, so I decided to try and put some of my thoughts on paper regarding this issue.

International sports competition is inevitably linked to overseas travel. With Australia being so globally isolated from prominent sporting events often occurring in the northern hemisphere, our athletes are undertaking extended flights and expected to compete optimally days later. Furthermore, many Australian athletes are travelling more frequently for exposure to environmental stressors such as heat and altitude in the attempt to enhance performance. The repercussions of extended flights are a general nuisance to the tourist traveller. For the elite athlete, rapid time zone travel undoubtedly impairs their potential in competition and in some instances can severely compromise performance.

Poor sleep habits can have a negative effect on self-control, which presents risks to individuals’ personal and professional lives, according to Clemson University researchers.

In a study titled “Interactions between Sleep Habits and Self-Control,” Clemson psychologists concluded a sleep-deprived individual is at increased risk for succumbing to impulsive desires, inattentiveness and questionable decision-making

Discussing teamwork without identifying its incentives is akin to debating effective diets while ignoring willpower: The most important ingredient may be missing.

Organisations that truly want their people to work better together need to explicitly acknowledge and embrace the productive relationships that elevate the individuals who make them. What makes teams – and teamwork – work goes beyond the time and talents of committed individuals striving toward a desired outcome. People need to feel that the benefits of being team players measurably outweigh the perceived and real costs of compromise and self-sacrifice. That’s the incentive for taking incentives more seriously.

I’m going to be a bad scientist and accept something without proper proof. I’m going to assume that “the clubhouse guy” exists and is a real phenomenon. I say that I don’t have proper proof only in the numerical sense. I don’t have a measure called ENZYME to tell me which players are chemically enhanced, and I can’t tell you how many WARs it’s worth. At least not yet.

Much has been made of the Eagles’ sports science program ever since Chip Kelly was hired. But how effective is it?

Luckily for you, James Keane has already covered the answer to this question here at Bleeding Green Nation. Spoiler alert: evidence would suggest Philadelphia’s sports science program has been able to keep the team very healthy. So healthy, in fact, that the Eagles are the healthiest team in the NFL the past two seasons.