Applied Sports Science newsletter – August 28, 2015

Bayern midfielder Thiago Alcantara has taken to Facebook to give fans a peak … He was out of action for a year and missed World Cup. … gives fans an emotional behind the scenes view of his battle to return

Manchester United captain Wayne Rooney has made a miserable start to the season. Is he just going through a bad moment, or is all the football he’s played starting to catch up with him?

New Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman is a notorious late-night emailer, and catcher A.J. Ellis will sometimes awake to a series of messages in his inbox from the boss with detailed scouting reports.

Ellis said he’s appreciative of the insights, which range from how opposing hitters are reacting to Los Angeles’ staff to different pitch sequences he and starting catcher Yasmani Grandal could consider.

“The information is always available to us,” Ellis said. “It’s not pushed upon us as ‘you have to do this,’ but it’s presented to us and it’s up to us to really implement it into our game plan and into our game calling.”

With a collective annual salary of £8.7m, Frank Lampard, Andrea Pirlo and David Villa could easily afford to travel first-class on a six-hour flight from New York to Los Angeles.

Yet they may not have the option as they make the trip for Sunday’s first Major League Soccer encounter between Lampard and former England team-mate Steven Gerrard.

If New York City FC decide the 2,448-mile journey from east to west coast is not one of the four away trips a season they charter a flight for under MLS rules, City’s three worldwide stars will be travelling in economy.

It is one of the quirks of the MLS, brought in to try to level the playing field between the rich and less wealthy clubs.

As a child growing up in Ohio, Nate O’Reilly loved football, basketball, and baseball. But the sounds of a coach or a P.E. teacher barking at him and other students with orders to run, typically when misbehavior occurred, still ring in his ears.

Despite the punitive laps, O’Reilly grew to love running after signing up for shorter races with family members, and he eventually became a marathoner himself. Today, as a P.E. teacher at P.S. 452 in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the 37-year-old is determined to not to pass on his running-related trauma to his students.

Something I find interesting is the rationalization of using “correctives” in a program is by placing them in the Warmup. My train of thought at this time suggests this positioning as a mistake and both detracts from the Warmup and the goal or intent of these drills to begin with. By default, choosing drills that are best positioned as motor skill acquisition for fundamental skills, such as mobility and stability, are really just being mailed in not delivering on the adjustments or adaptations that they are ideally used for in the first place.
The Train of Thought from Inside Out kinda looks like Mater.

So in mixing the principles of the warmup and motor skill acquisition, I’ll give my view on how these are categorized in the systematic model of training and rehab.

Avatar. Pick your Sim. The entertainment world has done an amazing job developing software that generates animated characters with strikingly realistic movement. But scientists have taken this one step further to create models that can help kids with cerebral palsy walk better, delay the onset of osteoarthritis, and even answer a question in the minds of children of all ages: How exactly did T. rex run?

That’s what the researchers behind this video—an entrant in the NIH Common Fund’s recent video competition—have done. They’ve developed OpenSim: a free software tool that combines state-of-the-art musculoskeletal modeling and dynamic computer simulations to produce highly accurate representations of the underlying biomechanics of motion. OpenSim was designed at the NIH-supported center for physics-based Simulation of Biological Structures (Simbios) at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA. And now, researchers around the world are using OpenSim to find more effective interventions for a variety of movement disorders.

New insights into the genetics of sport performance lead to new areas of application. One area is the use of genetic tests to identify athletic talent. Athletic performances involve a high number of complex phenotypical traits. Based on the ACCE model (review of Analytic and Clinical validity, Clinical utility, and Ethical, legal and social implications), a critique is offered of the lack of validity and predictive power of genetic tests for talent. Based on the ideal of children’s right to an open future, a moral argument is given against such tests on children and young athletes. A possible role of genetic tests in sport is proposed in terms of identifying predisposition for injury. In meeting ACCE requirements, such tests could improve individualised injury prevention and increase athlete health. More generally, limitations of science are discussed in the identification of talent and in the understanding of complex human performance phenotypes. An alternative approach to talent identification is proposed in terms of ethically sensitive, systematic and evidence-based holistic observation over time of relevant phenotypical traits by experienced observers. Talent identification in sport should be based on the primacy of the phenotype.

The two dreaded “A’s” seem to dominate the injury headlines. Both are typically non-contact injuries that end a player’s year with surgery and could change a team’s fortune.

The Panthers had the misfortune this week of experiencing both injuries. Star wide receiver Kelvin Benjamin tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and projected starting defensive end Frank Alexander ruptured his Achilles tendon. ACL tears are still the leading season-ender, but Achilles is the new ACL and a close second. Over half the clubs have already suffered an ACL tear and almost half of teams experienced Achilles tendon ruptures.

CONTEXT:

Knee injuries commonly occur in later stages of competition indicating that fatigue may influence dynamic knee stability. Force sense (FS) is a submodality of proprioception influenced by muscle mechanoreceptors, and, if negatively affected by fatigue, may results in less effective neuromuscular control.
OBJECTIVES:

To determine the effects of peripheral fatigue on FS of the quadriceps and hamstrings.
DESIGN:

Quasi-experimental study design.
PARTICIPANTS:

Twenty healthy and physically active females and males (age: 23.4±2.7 years, mass: 69.5±10.9kg, height: 169.7±9.4cm) participated.
INTERVENTIONS:

Fatigue was induced during a protocol with two sets of 40 repetitions, and the last set truncated at 90 repetitions or stopped if torque production dropped below 25% of peak torque.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:

FS of the hamstrings and quadriceps was tested on separate days before and after three sets of isokinetic knee flexion and extension to fatigue by examining the ability to produce a target isometric torque (15% MVIC) with and without visual feedback (FS Error). Electromyographic data of the tested musculature were collected in order to calculate and determine median frequency shift. T-tests and Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests were conducted to examine pre-fatigue and post-fatigue FS Error for flexion and extension.
RESULTS:

Despite verification of fatigue via torque production decrement and shift in median frequency, no significant differences were observed in FS Error for either knee flexion (pre=0.54±2.28 N·m; post=0.47±1.62 N·m) or extension (pre=-0.28±2.69 N·m; post=-0.21±1.78 N·m) pre-fatigue compared to the post-fatigue condition.
CONCLUSIONS:

Although previous research has demonstrated that peripheral fatigue negatively affects TTDPM, it did not affect FS as measured in this study. The peripheral fatigue protocol may have a greater effect on the mechanoreceptors responsible for TTDPM than those responsible for FS. Further investigation into the effects of fatigue across various modes of proprioception is warranted.

… “You can reduce risk [of non-contact ACL injuries in the NFL] somewhere between 50 and 70 percent,” according to Dr. Timothy Hewett, director of biomechanics and sports medicine research at the Mayo Clinic, who has researched knee injuries for over 20 years.

This drastic reduction does not involve abolishing preseason games, eliminating joint practices or boxing players in packing peanuts until the opening-day kickoff. All it takes is an open-minded approach to proven medical research, a minor shakeup of the traditional NFL practice routine and maybe a few plastic milk crates.

Students, faculty, industry members, and anyone interested in learning more about statistical analysis in hockey are welcome to attend. There will be time for discussion and networking, as well as an informal social gathering to watch the evening’s NHL games.

Registration will be capped at 200 attendees. Please use the registration form below to reserve your spot, and please only register if you plan to attend. There is no fee, but we will be accepting donations at the event to help with food costs.

Saturday, October 10, 2015. All day until 5 p.m.

It is well established that the use of sports analytics and sports science by professional and college sports teams is necessary to maintain a competitive advantage. Here are 10 key factors for establishing a successful sports analytics operation.

1. Aligned leadership. Top line leadership needs to set the sports analytics vision for the team and set expectations for down line management to execute it. Management alignment at all levels about the methods used in making key decisions is critical for a sustained, consistent approach. The NBA Dallas Mavericks were one of the first teams to align around analytics by hiring well-known analyst Roland Beech who sat on the bench during games in their 2011 NBA championship season.

PURPOSE:

We investigated whether anthropometric profiles and fitness measures vary according to birth date distribution in the German national youth soccer teams. It was further analysed if there is a difference in the chance of becoming a professional soccer player depending on birth quarter (BQ).
METHODS:

554 players were divided into 6 age groups (U16-U21), each subdivided into 4 BQs. Every player performed at least one 30m-Sprint, Counter-Movement Jump (CMJ) and an incremental test to determine individual anaerobic threshold (IAT). For players performing more than one test within a team, the best one was included. Since some players were part of several different teams, a total of 832 data sets from 495 individual soccer players, all born between 1987 and 1995 divided into six age categories (U16 to U21) were included.
RESULTS:

Overall, more players were born in BQ1 compared with players in all other BQs. No significant difference between BQ could be observed in any anthropometric or performance characteristics. Players born in BQ4 were more likely to become professional compared to BQ1 (odds ratio: 3.04; Cl: 1.53-6.06).
CONCLUSION:

A relative age effect exists in elite German youth soccer but it is not explained by an advantage in anthropometric or performance-related parameters. Younger players selected into national teams have a greater chance to become professional later in their career.