Applied Sports Science newsletter – August 15, 2015

“Signs of regression” served as the announced reason for Kevin Durant to undergo a third surgery on his right foot March 31, officially ending a season that saw the former MVP play 27 games.

Now that he has returned to the court with the dynamic force he brought back Wednesday on the second day of USA Basketball minicamp, Durant has no fear in acknowledging the severe state he found his fifth metatarsal in despite the two prior surgeries.

“It had a crack in it,” Durant told Bleacher Report.

… My hands-down favorite place for a camp is the National Training Center in Clermont, Florida. The weather is consistently lovely, and Orlando Airport is just 40 minutes away. Cristy Snellgroves and Lance Brauman at PURE Athletics are experts at hosting visiting teams. They have everything you need (from sleds and plyo boxes to massage tables) so you can leave your bag of tricks at home.

Over the years, I’ve made loads of mistakes in my training camps. Slowly but surely by trial and (lots of) error, I have settled on seven guiding principles for hosting a kickass camp.

Sleep is pretty darn important. From helping you deal with stress and maintain a healthy weight to solving your problems, getting enough sleep is crucial to your health.

So, how well do you know your sleep facts? Do you know what it does to your body and mind? Do you know what the different stages of sleep are? Do you know how much sleep you need? If the answer to any of these questions is no, look no further than infographics below, provided by HubSpot.

As you might expect from someone with the nickname of ‘caveman’, Conrad Stoltz is not into fads when it comes to recovery. Not for him ice baths and compression socks. He prefers to do what’s proven. Train right, eat right and rest properly.

So why don’t you like ice baths?

I’ve reverted back to old school! I used to do the ice bath thing or jumping in a cold river after training. But getting in a freezing river after training is not worth it to me! Science hasn’t really proven that ice baths help.

… In my years of executive coaching and research about behavioral change, I have learned one key lesson, which has near-universal applicability: We do not get better without structure. Structure is a major contributor to successful behavioral change, whether you’re trying to change your own behavior, or your team’s. When either asking for or providing feedback, structure can make the process a positive encounter for both parties.

To determine the mechanisms causing task failure during incremental exercise to exhaustion (IE) sprint performance (10 s all-out isokinetic) and muscle metabolites were measured before (control) and immediately after IE in normoxia (Nx, PI O2 :143 mmHg) and hypoxia (Hyp, PI O2 :73 mmHg) in 22 men (22 ± 3 years). After IE, subjects recovered for either 10 or 60 s, with open circulation or bilateral leg occlusion (OC, 300 mmHg) in random order. This was followed by a 10 s sprint with open circulation. Post-IE peak power output (Wpeak) was higher than IE-Wmax (P < 0.05). After 10 and 60 s recovery in Nx, Wpeak was reduced by 38 ± 9 and 22 ± 10% without OC, and 61 ± 8 and 47 ± 10% with OC (P < 0.05). Following 10 s OC, Wpeak was 20% higher in Hyp than Nx (P < 0.05), despite similar muscle lactate accumulation ([La]) and phosphocreatine and ATP reduction. Sprint performance and anaerobic ATP resynthesis were greater after 60 than 10 s occlusions, despite the higher [La] and [H+ ] after 60 s than 10 s OC recovery (P < 0.05). The mean rate of ATP turnover during the 60 s OC was 0.180 ± 0.133 mmol.kg wet.-1 .s-1 , i.e. equivalent to 32% of leg VO2 peak (ion pumps expended energy). A greater degree of recovery is achieved, however, without occlusion.In conclusion, during incremental exercise task failure is not due to metabolite accumulation or lack of energy resources. Anaerobic metabolism, despite the accumulation of lactate and H+ , facilitates early recovery even in anoxia. This points to central mechanisms as the principal determinants of task failure both in normoxia and hypoxia, with lower peripheral contribution in hypoxia.

In my experience, many runners who set about making more drastic changes to form fail to ‘make them stick’ in the longer term. Conversely, more subtle targeted changes prove consistently to be more achievable and sustainable. [video, 6:09]

FROM exploring “rifle” spin in golf to creating apps and devising dashboards of player stats for the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU), SportsViz specialises in sports data analysis.

Mixing computer science, sports science and engineering, the Swansea University spin-out company began as a three-year research project in 2010.

SportsViz technical director Iwan Griffiths said: “There has been a tremendous increase in the amount of data available in sport — performance data, physiological data and psychological data.

When Toronto FC sports science director Jim Liston started with the L.A. Galaxy in 1997, the club owned three watches with heart-rate monitors. … Eighteen years later Liston won’t even start practice until every player straps on two pieces of wearable technology — a heart-rate monitor and a GPS unit that tracks speed and distance — each connected to a laptop that logs all the data in real time. Together, the monitoring systems cost the club about $40,000.

For U.S. Olympic champion and decathlon world record holder Ashton Eaton, every perceivable advantage counts. In a competition that extends two days, Eaton seeks to maximize each break between the 10 events to ultimately speed up his recovery time.

“A perfect scenario would be to feel like you’ve just started on every event. The more you do, the more attrition you experience. Rather than realizing immediate physiological gain, the challenge is more about reducing the mental attrition from the two days to maximize each event,” explains Eaton. “After asking questions about current recovery techniques, the conversation prompted me to ask myself: Why does it feel good, after running, to pour a bottle of water over your head? I don’t know the physiological answer, but the fact that it does feel better makes me perform better. ”

After assessing his personal needs and following continual conversations with Nike, Eaton thought critically about thermoregulation. Reflecting on the Nike PreCool Vest — designed in 2004 to cool core temperature — the athlete queried whether a product could reduce heat around the face and head, a problem he experienced when competing in hot and humid conditions.

As part of a new partnership with the National Basketball Association, Under Armour will help the sporting organization develop a new consumer app, called NBA Fit.

The deal is mostly an expanded sponsorship for Under Armour, which has worked with the NBA as a league partner since 2011. Under Armour will be the title partner of the NBA Draft Combine, an invite-only showcase game series for leading NBA draft prospects, and presenting partner of the Jr. NBA, the league’s youth basketball program. But in the same announcement, the two companies also announced the NBA FIT app, which will integrate with UA Record, the app Under Armour has developed to serve as a hub for its various fitness app offerings.

Three of Washington’s pro sports teams are going 3-D.

The Washington Wizards, Capitals and Mystics are adding virtual reality technology from Pasadena-based STRIVR Labs Inc. to their player-development training programs.

Fans will take part, too, though, the teams’ owner, Monumental Sports & Entertainment, hasn’t quite decided how yet. The technology will be rolled out in the new VIP club at Verizon Center we recently told you about, as well as in the arena.

After a number of years (and delays) in development, WKO4 has finally hit a desktop near you. The once flagship desktop app had seen quiet times over the last roughly half a decade, but development was restarted a few years ago back in the summer of 2012. The development though essentially had two different pieces to it.

First was the more complex piece of coming up with new algorithms and new metrics. These new metrics ultimately would enable either better training or racing strategies, or perhaps just more efficient ways to identify existing metrics. That development was primarily led by Dr. Andrew Coggan and Hunter Allen. This includes new ways to identify one’s FTP (Functional Threshold Power) without having to do FTP tests (called mFTP for modeled FTP). Though that’s really only one of numerous new metrics or ways to surface up information.

The second piece is the development of the actual software app itself. That piece is heavily reliant on the rest of the TrainingPeaks software development team, but is essentially no different than other software development effort. Which means that it had its highs and lows (read: delays).

… Exum’s injury is the latest injury to occur during international play but it’s hardly the first. Last year Indiana Pacers forward Paul George infamously fractured his leg during a Team USA scrimmage in Las Vegas. Pacers teammate Ian Mahinmi suffered a dislocated shoulder during a team practice for the FIBA World Cup just a few weeks later. Spurs guard Tony Parker has endured several minor injuries playing for France and Pau Gasol has needed two surgeries to fix injuries sustained while with the Spanish National team. Former Rockets center Yao Ming rushed his recovery from a navicular fracture to take part in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and would play in just 82 games over the next three NBA seasons as reoccurring foot injuries prematurely ended his career.

Former National Football League (NFL) players who started playing tackle football before the age of 12 were found to have a higher risk of altered brain development compared to those who started playing at a later age. The study is the first to demonstrate a link between early exposure to repetitive head impacts and later life structural brain changes.

Led by researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), the study appears online in the Journal of Neurotrauma.

… I am most definitely not a manager or a coach. My role in a team is to ensure the health, safety and welfare of the players both on and off the pitch. I have been fortunate enough to work in the sport that I love for the past 7 years. I have been pitch-side to provide physiotherapy cover at matches ranging from an U12s women’s soccer tournament to a UEFA U17s Finals qualifier (where the Irish Women’s’ U17s dispatched England 2-0 at home) to the Premier Division promotion play off with League Of Ireland Men’s team UCD F.C in 2009 (Yes, we went up).

Pitch-side, the pressure is always on. The medical team must be ever vigilant. It is our job to distinguish between a player exaggerating an injury to run the clock out and a player who is suffering from a life threatening injury or medical condition that requires urgent attention.

A $2.5 million donation from the National Football League (NFL) will kick off the newly formed University of Washington Medicine Sports Health and Safety Institute aimed at advancing research, education and advocacy to prevent sports-related concussions.

The center, announced Wednesday at Husky Stadium, also will bring together experts from across the Seattle campus to share insights about ways to make sports safer and healthier for people of all ages. It has a larger fundraising goal of $10.5?million.

… At the LA Galaxy, we conduct blood tests to identify each player’s key micronutrient deficiency.

Individualized nutrition cards are given to each player identifying their deficiencies and what foods they need to eat to correct them. [video, 0:30]

PhilaU basketball player Jordan DeCicco and his brother Jake, a football player at Georgetown, use natural ingredients and added protein to target health-conscious consumers. Blackstone LaunchPad is helping them take the product to market.

… Remember miCoach? Just over three years ago the miCoach system was launched by adidas as a “professional soccer team tracking system, the next step in player performance analysis technology … [providing] coaches with real time performance metrics on the field of play, including player position, power output, speed, distance covered, intensity of play, acceleration and GPS heat mapping.”

That was the official adidas description, and you don’t have to read very far before you know that you’re not listening to the scientists who created this scheme, nor to the soccer coaches who — supposedly — cried out for it. Those words “the next step” tell you immediately, this is marketing talk.

Which to me, means beware.

OK then. The aim of metrics in soccer is to improve player performance. After that, the problems begin. The miCoach program lists some of the things that it can improve — player position, power output, speed, distance covered, intensity of play, acceleration and GPS heat mapping. And those awful TV commercials told us that “This is how the fast get faster, the strong get stronger …”

These are basically physical, measurable attributes. But is it logical to assume that faster, stronger players are going to give us better soccer? How to define “better,” or even “good” soccer anyway?

Which is where miCoach and all similar soccer programs suddenly look rather hollow.

Nehad Makhadmeh’s research into women’s football has taken me back to look at chronological age and place in birth year discussions in football.

I am tracking the performance of three Premier League teams this season and so I thought I might take a snapshot of birth year in Round 1 games played by Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City.

… I’m the type of person that likes to use as many resources as possible when evaluating a team or individual. Part of that is to weigh the analytics behind their performance, as well as what I see from them on the ice. I’m probably the furthest thing from a statistician as you can get, but I’m continuously digging into the available metrics and interpreting them to the best of my ability. I can honestly say that I’m constantly learning something new about how to measure this data, and it’s actually quite fun.

I have a piece of advice for both sides of this debate. First, you have to realize that analytics in hockey are here to stay. The use of this information may be in it’s infancy, but NHL GM’s are catching on and realizing the potential here. Traditional media types are doing a lot to try and curb the interest in this information, but it’s a losing effort.

Whether you’re a scientist, an engineer, a researcher, a statistician, data analyst, or some other subject matter expert, the more challenging problems typically require a collection of subject matter experts to build the most useful models, achieve the greatest insight and create the most value.

Many organizations don’t see statistics as a team sport. As a result, their quantitative talent is often underutilized, and many decisions may suffer. Under new leadership, the Houston Astros have evolved their culture to make more strategic use of data and analysis.

We expect the immediate outcome of events to represent the broader outcomes expected from a large number of trials. We believe that chance events will immediately self-correct and that small sample sizes are representative of the populations from which they are drawn. All of these beliefs lead us astray.

Trust matters whether it’s love, money or another part of our everyday lives that requires risk, and a new study by a Dartmouth brain researcher and his collaborators sheds light on what motivates people to make that leap of faith.