Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 12, 2015

… “I didn’t expect to stay (long term), no,” Favors says, more than four years after the trade and two years after he signed a four-year contract extension with the Jazz. “Utah was so different, I was so new to it. I didn’t expect to stay.

“But as the years have gone on, I’ve grown to love it. I got used to it. I just started feeling comfortable,” he says. “I like how calm and chill it is in Utah. It’s a good thing and it’s a bad thing. The bad part is, maybe after a big game you want to go out and hang out or whatever, and there’s really not too many spots like that in Utah. Down here, you could go anywhere. Out in Utah, it’s chill, laid-back. There’s not a lot of rah-rah stuff going on. You can focus on your job, your career, whatever else you have going on.”

With the dawn of a new World Cup cycle, national team coaches are afforded the time and elasticity to introduce prospects, to reinstate the experienced for another look and, to some extent, set a fresh course with the player pool.

For U.S. Coach Jurgen Klinsmann, that process has allowed for the discovery and ascent of Gyasi Zardes, a 24-year-old attacker with bleached hair from the Los Angeles Galaxy. He made his national team debut in January and has played in all but one of 15 matches; only World Cup holdovers Michael Bradley and DeAndre Yedlin have logged as many appearances.

The story about how Jurgen Klinsmann came to casually dismiss MLS in that manner of his that sweats ebullient nonchalance is codified in Reddit’s MLS scrolls now. He skirted the edge of things, dancing upon its razor by neither overtly diving in nor staying out entirely. Klinsmann is a curling eyebrow in the midst of an overheated argument about Donald Trump in a Shriners backroom in Des Moines, Iowa. He is inviting you to see into the layers he’s creating but never implicating himself directly. He knows the ramifications of speaking directly, and so he does not.

So when he says Bradley “has to prove he hasn’t lost a bit” by going to Toronto FC, he was neither saying TFC was beneficial to his development nor overtly detrimental. He is playing to his base without kneecapping his wider bloc. He is politicking.

The story, though, was not about Klinsmann’s comment. It was about Bradley’s body language.

… Andrew Luck approaches. But before he can talk, he asks for a moment. He needs to liberate his feet. “My cleats are killing me,” he said. “I’m a man of comfort. You know, you always need to be comfortable.” A smile creases his face as the cleats slide off.

You always need to be comfortable. If Luck had a life motto, this would be it. How else would one explain the aesthetically challenging neckbeard he wore all of last season because he doesn’t like to shave (but he did trim this spring at the insistence of his mom)?

On Sunday, Taiwan’s Wei-Ling Hsu was learning that she’d won $32,537 with her eighth place, 11-under performance at the Yokohama Tire LPGA Classic golf tournament in Prattville, Alabama, but by Monday morning, she was in the weightroom in East Tennessee State University’s minidome, learning how she could improve with the help of the U.S. Olympic Development Site’s very own Dr. Kimi Sato.

“It’s so good,” Sato said, encouraging the Taiwanese 20-year old’s mechanics. “That’s why she’s so good.”

Sato, a strength and conditioning coach and sports scientist, taught and oversaw several of Hsu’s exercises, which included emphasis on the way she rotates her torso and hips, a big factor in the way she uses her driver. In fact, Sato had the talented athlete use a driver during a few balance activities, all which took place under a banner that marked ETSU as a U.S. Olympic Development Site.

Jimmy Graham, an all-star tight end, quickly learned things were different with the Seattle Seahawks after he arrived this spring from the New Orleans Saints in an off-season trade.

After he dropped a pass during practice, Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll came bounding over to him — not with a torrent of invective, as might happen on other football fields, but with fatherly counsel not to worry and just to focus more.

He soon found that the soft touch did not stop there. He had arrived on a team in which cursing is frowned upon, a former competitive surfer turned “human optimization specialist” enlightens players in the “arc of the journey” rather than the arc of the pass, and — after one of the most spectacular losses in Super Bowl history — despair is defeated by New Age-style platitudes urging players to be mindful and seek “high-quality moments.”

When we think about and discuss ways to enhance player development we often jump straight to coaches/coaching…

“better coaches = better players”

However this is misguided. The starting point is to understand the learner and (influences on) learning of the perceptions~cognitions~actions required for a particular sport. This inevitably uncovers a multitude of interacting factors (across “time and place”) that will influence the quality of player development outcomes.

… One theory is that the best way to improve economy is simply to run a lot (which Radcliffe certainly did during those years). Jones was coauthor on another study a few years ago that measured running economy in beginning runners before and after a 10-week training program. With no specific instruction and no exercise other than running, economy improved by about eight percent, and the improvements were correlated with subtle changes in running stride (e.g. a less extended knee at toe-off). With practice, your body automatically seeks the most efficient way to move.

But improving economy gets trickier with experienced runners. Of the ideas out there, the one with the best evidence is probably strength training. Over the years, various forms of strength training, often emphasizing heavy weights or explosive movements to maximize neuromuscular recruitment, have been shown to improve running economy. None of these studies has provided a definitive smoking gun, but together they’re at least suggestive.

… Martin: During one of your apprenticeship programs you said “Many coaches have a very large toolbox but cannot decide what to do because they don’t have a philosophy.” You can’t have any programming, periodization, or other elements of training until you understand your philosophy. How would you describe your training philosophy?

Dan: I think that training should be enjoyable, educational, and mechanical efficiency should drive the bus. The more mechanically efficient you are the less injuries you will have and that increases productivity. We strive for designing programs that allow you to learn and grow and be excited and find it interesting. They allow for accountability, transparency, and good communication. And that moves things forward from the mechanical efficiency standpoint. If it doesn’t address those areas then why is it in there?

One of the problems with current sport is that people have lost the concept of play and fun and why they are doing it. I ask incoming athletes all the time: “Why are you doing this?” And they often answer “What?” They never really think about it; they just get on the train and before they know it they are here.

At its upcoming iPhone-centric event on September 9, Apple will debut new Apple Watch Sport bands in a variety of new colors, MacRumors can confirm. News of the new bands was shared by 9to5Mac this morning, and we’ve also been hearing similar rumors about Apple’s plans to introduce additional band options.

It is not clear what colors Apple is planning to introduce, but it’s possible the company will focus on darker colors to complement the neon-like shades of the existing Apple Watch Sport bands, which come in bright pink, green, and blue, along with black and white.

The latest cutting edge facility enhancement for Oregon athletics is designed to improve performance for all UO student-athletes, while honoring the legacy of their most distinguished recent colleague.

On Thursday, the university’s Board of Trustees was presented with documentation of the proposed Marcus Mariota Sports Performance Complex. The enhancement to 29,000 square feet of the Casanova Center’s first floor would refurbish the equipment room while transforming existing locker room and storage space into a state-of-the-art sports science facility.

There are many algorithms with implementations that scale to large data sets (this list includes matrix factorization, SVM, logistic regression, LASSO, and many others). In fact, machine learning experts are fond of pointing out: if you can pose your problem as a simple optimization problem then you’re almost done.

Of course, in practice, most machine learning projects can’t be reduced to simple optimization problems. Data scientists have to manage and maintain complex data projects, and the analytic problems they need to tackle usually involve specialized machine learning pipelines. Decisions at one stage affect things that happen downstream, so interactions between parts of a pipeline are an area of active research.

The mHealth market is making a big splash in the healthcare industry, as more individuals are using wearables, mobile apps, remote monitoring tools, and telehealth technology to maintain their health and wellness throughout their life. This large market impacts a large sect of this country’s population, which means mobile health regulations remain a priority of stakeholders and healthcare providers as well as the public sector.

A few years ago, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began adopting more mobile health regulations and developing greater oversight over this new market, according to a report from pwc. Many nations are creating more aggressive policies against mobile health despite the fact that mobile health apps could be non-intrusive and not as dangerous as issues of other medical devices.

Interested in new technology that pushes the envelope in strength, speed, and power training? Then this article is for you. It’s the story of how Malmö Sports Academy (MIA) in Sweden became one of the first users of the 1080 Quantum system. Today MIA uses the Quantum’s robotic resistance technology to train a group of 50 elite-level athletes across 17 different sports. Welcome to Sweden and the Malmö Sports Academy, the home of iconic trainer and coach Kenneth Riggberger and visionary general manager Jan-Olov Jakobsson.

In 2011, MIA and the then-startup company 1080 Motion agreed to deploy the first version of the Quantum system for comprehensive use. If you are unfamiliar with robotic resistance, Quantum technology requires some explanation. There are no weights, air cylinders, or other traditional hardware inside the unit. Instead, it has a powerful electric servo motor controlled by a computer. The result is a resistance training and testing device in which you control and manipulate resistance type, load, and movement speed to create training modalities not possible with other types of equipment.

The pop of a catcher’s mitt is one of baseball’s most natural sounds. Pitch after pitch, the ball travels 60 feet, 6 inches to home plate, finding its way into the catcher’s padded leather glove with a resounding thud.

The pitching motion itself is unnatural—a whirlwind of moving parts unique to each individual who toes the rubber. The more a pitcher throws, the more wear and tear he puts on his arm, and the greater the likelihood that his elbow—not the catcher’s mitt—will pop.

And when that happens, all a pitcher can do is wait for the doctor to come into the room and say the three words nobody in baseball wants to hear: Tommy John surgery.

Since 2000, the number of Tommy John surgeries being performed across the country has skyrocketed—including a troubling rise among amateur pitchers—and just this past year, three Blue Devils were among that group. But a former Duke pitcher may hold one of the keys to slowing down a major threat to the national pastime.

Every movement you make, from jumping up and down to clicking on this article, is the result of a complex electrical circuit between your brain and your muscles. To find out more, exercise your nervous system by clicking on the symbols below. Each one will bring you to a different article about the neuroscience of movement.

If you’re looking for the fastest way to gain lean muscle mass in a hurry, getting your nutrition locked down is a MUST. There’s no doubt about it: when it comes to achieving safe muscle gain that sticks, you simply can’t do it without eating properly. If you don’t provide your body with the right raw materials at the right times, you may get stronger, but you definitely are not going to be getting any larger.

In my previous three articles, we went over how to figure out your target caloric intake, as well as how to assess your bioenergetics needs (carbohydrate, protein, and fat needs) and finding the best sources of those macronutrients. In this article, I want to talk about timing: how long should it take you to gain muscle, how much muscle can you expect to gain, and how frequently to time your meals for optimal muscle growth. Then, I’ll take you through an entire performance needs nutritional profile for a fictional athlete, to help you put into practice what we’ve learned so far about building lean muscle.

Software quality is an often-overlooked development parameter, making way for those items that resonate outside of the engineering team – a faster schedule and an on-budget project. Joost Visser, Head of Research at Software Improvement Group (SIG) sat down with me to explain how a focus on quality helps to achieve the fastest possible schedules and lowest possible cost of development and maintenance. [audio, 21:58]