Applied Sports Science newsletter – July 31, 2015

Luke Shaw believes not playing for England Under-21s at the European Championship has improved his chances of staying injury-free for Manchester United.

Shaw was left out of the squad at the 11th hour by Gareth Southgate to accede to the wish of Louis van Gaal that the left-back should be rested. While Southgate stated Shaw was “not medically fit” to participate in the Euros in the Czech Republic, the precise problem was never clarified.

The 20-year-old, who suffered nine different injuries in his debut campaign for Manchester United, is certain that having a break will be of benefit. “Yeah, definitely. I have come back to this pre-season in much better shape than I did last season. The rest has done me really well, the trip to Dubai helped also and I feel good,” he told manutd.com.

… The result is a football program in which innovations are immediately apparent from the moment you walk through the doors of the NovaCare Center. The fast food that previous coach Andy Reid had served in the team’s cafeteria has been replaced by healthy meals and charts about nutritious food groups. (Reporters love to mock the customized protein shakes as “special smoothies.”) The Eagles break with NFL tradition by having vigorous workouts the day before a game, and taking off the day after (Monday, instead of the usual Tuesday).

Practices are extremely fast, filled with blaring music and separated into 26 short periods announced by a robotic voice. Each is dedicated to specific tasks: stretching, special teams seven-on-seven scrimmages, passing drills or (very rarely) instruction. The team uses a variety of gadgets to teach key skills, from remote-controlled cars to three garbage cans stacked on top of each other at an angle to the bizarre-looking “bug men.”

… how do you make the leap from a hazy notion to one that is spelled out in practical details? Newly published research points to one simple technique that may do the trick.

The study finds that using mental imagery to recall specific elements of a recent experience can put one into a detail-oriented state of mind. This subsequently leads to higher scores on a standard test of creative thinking.

Such an exercise “affects a process tapped by both memory and imagining,” a research team led by Harvard University psychologist Kevin Madore writes in the journal Psychological Science. The researchers report the technique does not boost all indicators of creativity, but does enhance one that is often used as a marker: the ability to come up with non-obvious uses for common objects.

… What research has shown is that what the basic foundation allows us to do is establish more connections. The wider base of support, or knowledge in this case, the more connections we can make. The key is the wide-ranging base of support, and not skipping the foundation. If we skip the foundation and “boring work” and just go for instant gratification of what interests us at that moment, we miss an opportunity to expand our future horizons.

As we grow our knowledge in multiple domains, we can begin to connect seemingly unrelated concepts and ideas back to our own specialty. Curiosity kicks in as this motivating force that comes about by having enough familiarity with a subject by just enough incongruence to drive us towards finding an answer.

Every head coach says they have the best strength and conditioning coach in the country, but Urban Meyer took that to another level Thursday at Big Ten Media Days.

Asked about sports performance on Big Ten Network, Meyer said he wouldn’t have returned to coaching without assistant athletic director for football sports performance Mickey Marotti.

“Here’s the deal-breaker,” Meyer said. “When the Ohio State job was offered, I don’t go do that unless I can go get Coach Mick with me. I’m at the point in my career where I don’t want to retrain a guy. This guy means more to me and our football team (than anything).”

Have you ever wondered why certain countries seem to stand head and shoulders above others in a particular sport? Rasmus Ankersen, CEO of Danish football club FC Midtjylland, travelled across the world to answer that question. He recorded his observations in a book called The Gold Mine Effect: Crack the Secrets of High Performance (2012) and identified certain ingredients that talent hotbeds around the world share. Using the same theories, CONQA Sport explores how a high school in the middle of South Africa can stake a claim as being the most productive gold mine in world rugby.

We examined the effectiveness of video-based decision training in national youth handball teams. Extending previous research, we tested in Study 1 whether a three-dimensional (3D) video training group would outperform a two-dimensional (2D) group. In Study 2, a 3D training group was compared to a control group and a group trained with a traditional tactic board. In both studies, training duration was 6 weeks. Performance was measured in a pre- to post-retention design. The tests consisted of a decision-making task measuring quality of decisions (first and best option) and decision time (time for first and best option). The results of Study 1 showed learning effects and revealed that the 3D video group made faster first-option choices than the 2D group, but differences in the quality of options were not pronounced. The results of Study 2 revealed learning effects for both training groups compared to the control group, and faster choices in the 3D group compared to both other groups. Together, the results show that 3D video training is the most useful tool for improving choices in handball, but only in reference to decision time and not decision quality. We discuss the usefulness of a 3D video tool for training of decision-making skills outside the laboratory or gym.

If you’re looking for that perfect pair of running shoes, Nike has some new technology at its re-designed downtown store in Seattle that can help you out.

The shoe giant re-opened its store — formerly called Niketown and now simply “Nike Seattle” — at Sixth Avenue and Pike Street on Thursday and one of the new features is a run analysis station that uses a treadmill and an iPad to assess an individual’s stride and recommend the proper shoe.

Fitness startup Apex Resistance and Conditioning has invented what co-founder Adrian Cornish refers to as “the world’s first wearable gym,” a pair of futuristic looking shorts paired with resistance bands dubbed the Bionic Resistance Shorts.

The Bionic Resistance Shorts add resistance to the wearer’s movements using elastic bands and sturdy fabrics to enhance workouts. Cornish and co-founder Nathan Roy launched sales of the $99.99 shorts three weeks ago out of the Louisiana Business and Technology Center at the LSU Innovation Park. So far, they’ve sold about 60 pairs with essentially no marketing beyond a website.

… The brain is basically, in many cases, a Rube Goldberg machine. We’ve got this limited set of evolutionary building blocks that we are able to use to get to a sort of very complex end state. We need to be able to extract when that’s relevant and integrate relevant neural processing strategies when it’s applicable. We also want to be able to identify that there are opportunities to be more efficient and more relevant. I think of it as table manners. You have to know all the rules before you can break them. That’s the big difference between being really cool or being a complete heathen. The same thing kind of exists in this area. How we get to the end state, we may be able to compromise, but we absolutely need to be thinking about what matters in neural function for perception. From my world, where we can’t compromise is on the output. I really feel like we need a lot more work in this area.

… When the neuromuscular system (your nerves plus muscles) works in sync, your exercise routine can continue for hours. You feel unstoppable. But when the system is perturbed by low blood glucose, muscle glycogen depletion, dehydration, accumulated muscle damage, high body temperature, severe salt loss, accumulation of metabolites, or reduced muscle blood flow, fatigue will gradually or suddenly sets in. The neuromuscular system becomes unstable. Muscle cramps are often associated with fatigue, a painful example of a failure in neuromuscular performance.

As a fuller picture of the etiology (cause) of muscle cramps is emerging through studies by researchers such as Dr. Rod MacKinnon, a Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist, there are new insights that will help prevent or minimize cramps. First, the cramp is not your fault. Most likely, your cramp had nothing to do with preparation or fitness. As we’re learning, the breakthrough in solving the cramp mystery is in understanding the root of the problem. It’s not the muscle; it’s the nerve.

Active release techniques are used extensively to improve performance and reduce injury, writes sports chiropractor Tom Feeney

Recent positive drug tests by two cyclists suggest there is a new, cutting-edge substance making its way to athletes looking for performance-enhancement: FG-4592, an experimental drug that increases production of red blood cells but has not yet been approved for human consumption.

Athletes have long found surreptitious means of obtaining banned performance-enhancing drugs, but with FG-4592, there actually may be a far more straightforward way — simply by ordering it from chemical-supply companies online.

And that, said Don Catlin, an expert on testing for banned substances, is something new to him. Athletes have gotten banned drugs from websites in China, he said, but what they receive is not always what they tried to order. The companies selling FG-4592 are not marketing it to athletes or individuals who want to take it; they emphasize that what they are selling is a chemical that is intended only for researchers.