Applied Sports Science newsletter – December 14, 2015

… The main reason they finally lost Saturday night to the Milwaukee Bucks, 108-95, was the schedule. The Warriors had been on the road for two weeks, pushed themselves extraordinarily to win in double overtime in Boston the night before and thus mentally and physically weren’t in position to perform to their standard.

The Warriors get that, which is why they were disappointed but not crushed about losing under the circumstances.

… While receiving his knee treatment, Noel spoke with the NBPA on all things Sixers, including the process of maintaining focus and handling emotion during a challenging season. Noel also chimed in on the team’s unique effort chart, learning to finish games, adjusting to life on the road as a tall player and much more.

Jared Zwerling: How’s the season progression going for you?

Nerlens Noel: I think it’s been going well—rebounding, double situations, just feeling out playing with Jahlil [Okafor] and figuring some things out. We have; it’s coming together. I’m starting to feel more aggressive and figuring the spacing out and everything.
– See more at: http://nbpa.com/qa-nerlens-noel-on-sixers-future-staying-patient-charting-effort-and-more/#sthash.bFWO7BLm.dpuf

When Auston Matthews was asked to consider the most substantial challenge he faced as an 18-year-old prodigy from Arizona spending a year playing professional hockey in Switzerland, one particular obstacle came to mind quickly.

It was not the speed of the Swiss league (though that is significant), nor was it the expectations that come with being a top N.H.L. draft pick in waiting (though those are considerable). Rather, the complication that Matthews was thinking of was something that requires concentration, diligence and on-the-fly thinking, not to mention some measure of tactile dexterity.

“This might seem a little weird,” he said during a recent interview, “but the recycling here is intense. I mean, like, intense.”

Sergio Aguero faces a race against time to be fit for Manchester City’s key game at Arsenal later this month.

Aguero, who has missed City’s last three games with an ankle injury, will sit out Saturday’s home match against struggling Swansea.

The Argentine is set to return to training next week and manager Manuel Pellegrini is optimistic he will be fit to feature against the Gunners on Dec 21.

At the core of the Atlanta Hawks’ philosophy is a simple substance: vitamins. Though those are typically found in pill form, the team doesn’t limit its players to the digestible variety.

“Before the basketball vitamin—the individual skills sessions—we have the body vitamin,” says Hawks director of rehabilitation Mike Roncarati. “It doesn’t matter if you’re injured or not. Each player gets 10 to 20 minutes of rehab treatment to work on things that may have been forgone in training.”

Coach Mike Budenholzer’s emphasis on the body’s daily nourishment has translated into every aspect of the team’s preparation, from practicing fundamental skills such as shooting mechanics or footwork on pick-and-rolls to post-workout treatment and rehab.

Sam Hinkie, the Sixers’ besieged general manager, wonders how the past six weeks might have unfolded had Kendall Marshall been healthy — whether Philly would have won more games, stayed off TMZ and avoided a shocking, league-brokered internal shake-up.

Marshall’s four-year, $8 million deal in September — partially guaranteed, of course — is an NBA footnote, but for Hinkie, it represented the path to normalcy. During the signing process, Philly’s experts concluded Marshall — who was recovering from a torn ACL — could be available for opening night, Hinkie says. Instead, he’s making his debut tonight for a 1-22 laughingstock.

“We predicted it wrong,” Hinkie says. “That’s my fault. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, and I’m sure I’ll make more.”

Fresh from his World Cup triumph, All Black coach Steve Hansen was in Auckland last week as keynote speaker at the Connecting Coaches convention. Dylan Cleaver caught up with him for a chat on the Art of Coaching.

In modern head coaching, how much of it is technical know-how and how much of it is amateur psychology?

There’s a component of man-management, which is massively important as a head coach. You’re managing a group of people, you’re trying to get them all aligned on the same page and trying to get them to do the same thing, which is to perform to such a level that you win test matches.

I detect signs — long-awaited signs — that things are changing in English soccer. I mean real fundamental change. Not the glossy superficial marketing tripe that is constantly fed to us as evidence that something, anything, is new, and therefore must be an improvement. Usually it is just the packaging that is new, gaudily disguising the fact that the product itself hasn’t changed at all.

What I’m looking at here does, I think, suggest that new ideas — new to the English soccer brain, that is — are at last forcing their way into the English game.

Textile technology and the “Internet of Things” shook hands last month in the heart of Silicon Valley. But the meeting wasn’t so much about silicon as it was about conductive inks and stretchable circuit-printed films.

Materials suppliers, component makers, and apparel developers gathered at a printed-electronics conference in Santa Clara, Calif., within a short drive of tech giants such as Google and Apple, to compare notes on embedding electronics into the routines of daily life. A notable theme was the effort to stealthily place sensors on exercise shirts, socks, and shoe soles so that athletes and fitness buffs can wirelessly track their workouts and doctors can monitor the health of their patients.

“Wearable technology is becoming more wearable,” said Raghu Das, chief executive officer of IDTechEx, the consulting firm that organized the conference.

Kentucky Athletics will be creating a new Sports Science Research Institute as a part of a $600,000 renovation of the current football practice facilities.

Those renovations to the Nutter Football Training Facility, which will be voted on by the University Board of Trustees on Tuesday, also will include an academic center, coaches offices and space for various other teams on campus.

The Sports Science Research Institute will be a “multidisciplinary scientific center focused on contemporary approaches to prevention and treatment of sports injuries and concussions, performance optimization, musculoskeletal health and rehabilitation, metabolism and nuero cognition, according to the agenda item.

… According to [Arsenal IT director Hywel] Sloman, the two most important pieces of technology for Arsenal are these:

The turnstiles. Without these, none of the 60,000 attendees would be able to get in. Sloman said these are what “keeps me up at night.” There has never been a failure with the technology, but this is the main area of concern before, during, and after a match.

Arséne Wenger’s iPad. The manager of Arsenal has an iPad and uses it to track various statistics about his players and the game. “One of the things that I hope to make clear is that everything we do is to help the club win football games,” said Sloman. “Arsene’s iPad could well impact our ability to win football.”

Ghosts are not your typical cell biology research subjects. But scientists at the Carnegie Institute for Science and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) who developed a technique to observe muscle stem/progenitor cells migrating within injury sites in live mice, report that “ghost fibers,” remnants of the old extracellular matrix left by dying muscle fibers, guide the cells into position for healing to begin. Using intravital two-photon imaging combined with second-harmonic generation (SHG) microscopy, the Carnegie’s Micah Webster and Chen-Ming Fan and the NICHD’s Uri Manor and Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz observed these cells riding to the rescue, using the long axis of these ghost fibers to spread out and orient themselves. The study will be posted online today by the journal Cell Stem Cell ahead of publication in the February 4 issue. Webster will present the ghost fiber work at ASCB 2015 in San Diego on Sunday, December 13.

Background: The lateral ankle sprain (LAS) is the most common injury suffered in sports, especially in football. While suggested in some studies, a predictive role of clinical tests for LAS has not been established.

Purpose: To determine which clinical tests, focused on potentially modifiable factors of movement patterns and body mass index (BMI), could best demonstrate risk of LAS among high school and collegiate football players.

Study Design: Case-control study; Level of evidence, 3.

Methods: A total of 539 high school and collegiate football players were evaluated during the preseason with the Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT) and Functional Movement Screen as well as BMI. Results were compared between players who did and did not suffer an LAS during the season. Logistic regression analyses and calculated odds ratios were used to determine which measures predicted risk of LAS.

Results: The LAS group performed worse on the SEBT–anterior reaching direction (SEBT-ANT) and had higher BMI as compared with the noninjured group (P < .001). The strongest prediction models corresponded with the SEBT-ANT.

Conclusion: Low performance on the SEBT-ANT predicted a risk of LAS in football players. BMI was also significantly higher in football players who sustained an LAS. Identifying clinical tools for successful LAS injury risk prediction will be a critical step toward the creation of effective prevention programs to reduce risk of sustaining an LAS during participation in football.

… For [Jeremy] Kerley, migraines are the silent menace that constantly lurks. They ambush him almost once a month, even though he rarely talks about it. He knew his grandfather got them; only recently, he discovered that his dad did, too. He just never knows when they will affect him.

“It’s luck of the draw, I guess,” Kerley said. “It’s a crazy thing.”