Applied Sports Science newsletter – December 8, 2015

Many felt the departure of Robin van Persie last summer would enable Rooney to once again step into the breach and occupy the position with similar success.

But anyone who has watched him regularly can see that it just isn’t happening this time.

Why is the England striker performing so poorly?

LeBron James did not play against his former team as the Cleveland Cavaliers fell 99-84 to the Miami Heat on Saturday.

“We’re going to hold LeBron out this evening,” Cavaliers coach David Blatt said before the game. “It was a tough game [Friday] night — [45] minutes, very short turnaround … Just thinking long term here, being conscious of taking care of him and taking care of the team going forward.”

Richard Petty, a psychology professor at Ohio State University has spent decades studying confidence. He defines confidence as this: the stuff that turns thoughts into action. Why? Because confidence first turns our thoughts into judgements about what we are capable of, and then transforms those judgements into actions.

According to purists, the best supplementary workout for runners is more running. There’s some truth to this, but many top athletes also strength-train. By working weak muscles and correcting imbalances, these runners hope to reduce their injury risk, which will allow them to run even more. More subtly, strength-training boosts running economy, allowing you to hold the same pace while burning less oxygen. And all of this becomes even more important once you reach your mid-30s and start fighting age-related muscle loss.

The challenge is that endurance and strength-training place competing demands on your body. To get the most out of your strength sessions without compromising your running, keep the following guidelines in mind.

The phrase “no pain no gain” is used so often in sports it should be called The First Commandment of Training. Born from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s equally oft-repeated maxim “That which does not kill us makes us stronger,” what it’s really saying is this: you must suffer to reach your potential, both in sports and in life.

That is why, after outlining a most poetic history of suffering in cycling, it was surprising to see VeloNews author Ryan Newill conclude that the word “suffering” should have no place in the sport. Newill’s issue? The word is best reserved for athletes with severe mental health issues, like the late Marco Pantani, or people who have experienced terrible accidents, such as the families of cyclists killed on their bikes, rather than athletes who regularly find joy after a finite period of self-inflicted pain.

There is one big problem with this assumption, however: suffering is not absolute.

Accelerate Basketball Training works with Warriors players to enhance neuromuscular efficiency and skill development.

Researchers report that boosting signaling of a certain receptor in the brain with a small molecule can enhance these cellular changes and improve learning in people.

Stress tracking, blood pressure monitoring, and new fashion partnerships are all possibilities

Fitbit’s fitness trackers already gather tons of information about users’ activity. Depending on the device, they know how many steps they’ve taken, how many flights of stairs they’ve climbed in a day, how many hours they’ve slept the night before and more. Next, CEO James Park says the company is looking at ways to start collecting other kinds of health data, too.

… In March 2013, the NFL, GE and Under Armour announced their “Head Health Challenge,” which would provide funding for innovations to understand and prevent concussions. The first round of the challenge focused on the diagnosis and treatment of injuries. The second round was aimed toward technology that would make the game safer.

Round two winners were announced last week, and on Thursday the technology was on display at NFL headquarters in Manhattan. The three winning products — an under-layer for turf field to soften impact, a tether to attach to helmets and shoulder pads to prevent the head from snapping backward and slamming into the ground and a helmet to absorb more of the impact of a hit and keep the head and neck in line — are expected to be ready for commercialization soon, meaning a safer game from youth football through the NFL is close.

One of the hot topics in sports medicine at the moment is tendon injuries. Explosive sports, especially basketball, involve excessive tendon recruitment, which can lead to problems in the kneecap area or jumper’s knee. These injuries have a history of being misunderstood, causing problems to recur over and over again.

An NBA review of injuries noted that front-knee inflammation accounted for the greatest number of practices and games missed. Interestingly, time loss is probably a poor measure of a tendon injury, because so many athletes play through pain, albeit with reduced function. A good example is Cleveland Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving. In last year’s NBA Playoffs, he was hampered by “knee tendonitis,” but despite increased stress on his knee joint, he kept playing and ultimately ruptured his tendon.

Background: Factors and details regarding return to play in elite, collegiate female soccer athletes after an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury and reconstruction have not been well studied.

Purpose: To evaluate return to play among collegiate female soccer players, specifically examining the effect of surgical and individual athlete characteristics on the return-to-play rate.

Study Design: Descriptive epidemiology study.

Methods: Sports medicine and athletic training staff at institutions from the National Collegiate Athletic Association Southeastern Conference (SEC) were contacted to request participation in the study. All institutions were sent a standardized spreadsheet with response choices and instructions regarding athlete inclusion criteria. Athlete, injury, surgical technique, and return-to-play data were requested for ACL reconstructions performed on female soccer athletes at the participating institutions over the previous 8 years. ?2 analyses were used to compare the return-to-play rate by year in school, scholarship status, position, depth chart status, procedure, graft type, graft fixation, concomitant procedures, and previous ACL injuries.

Results: All 14 of the SEC institutions chose to participate and provided data. A total of 80 ACL injuries were reported, with 79 surgical reconstructions and return-to-play data for 78 collegiate soccer athletes. The overall return-to-play rate was 85%. There was a statistical significance in return-to-play rates favoring athletes in earlier years of eligibility versus later years (P < .001). Athletes in eligibility years 4 and 5 combined had a return-to-play rate of only 40%. Scholarship status likewise showed significance (P < .001), demonstrating a higher return-to-play rate for scholarship athletes (91%) versus nonscholarship athletes (46%). No significant differences in return-to-play rates were observed based on surgical factors, including concomitant knee procedures, graft type, and graft fixation method.

Conclusion: Collegiate female soccer athletes have a high initial return-to-play rate. Undergoing ACL reconstruction earlier in the college career as well as the presence of a scholarship had a positive effect on return to play. Surgical factors including graft type, fixation method, tunnel placement technique, concomitant knee surgeries, and revision status demonstrated no significant effect on the return-to-play rate.

The NBA is continuing to take steps to learn more about injuries affecting its league and the greater world of basketball.

As part of its partnership with General Electric Healthcare, which began in July, the NBA on Monday announced that it has opened the doors to researchers and made a call for research proposals on a problem area for NBA athletes: tendinopathy, or injuries related to tendon inflammation and pain.

Sport tends to be an unforgiving activity for all sorts of reasons. That’s why it’s so exciting: it stretches us, demands challenges from us, takes us to extremes and, with heightened adrenaline, we find ourselves doing things we wouldn’t do otherwise. It allows us to tap into our competitive instinct, but it can hurt and lead to mental and physical degeneration.

From a physical standpoint, sports involve unique and sometimes odd movements that put us under pressure by asking us to be in difficult positions. When we play a tough game for the first time in two months, the muscles scream to the point that getting out of bed is hard work.

The good thing about being a professional athlete in this age is that sports science advisors and experts know a lot more about the conditioning needed to withstand all these unnatural forces.

Going into Thursday night, NFL injuries are down slightly this season.

Barring a rash of injuries during the last five weeks of the regular season, missed starts because of injuries will drop below the 1,855 I counted last year.

… MLS is getting better at creating systems that not only aspire toward youth, but inspire others to do the same. The Whitecaps and FC Dallas are ground zero, shrinking the paradigm with which we view true playing youth in MLS. FCD’s average age was around 24 in the playoffs this year, which is a tremendous thing when the soccer is good.

But it is equally true that in soccer’s true halls of power on other shores, ever younger players are given substantive playing time in pinnacle prestige competitions to sharpen the axe. Teenagers. We are talking teenagers.