Applied Sports Science newsletter – December 17, 2015

… Wambach said she was satisfied not to receive much playing time in the last World Cup because it proved that the team’s young players had surpassed her abilities. She recalled the tactics when she first started playing for the national team: long balls toward her head, which she would try to knock down for Mia Hamm to put in the net. The game, she said, was faster and more intricate now.

“There are players that are better than I am that will take this game into the next decade,” Wambach said of women’s soccer.

… Four years ago, Ledecky was a relative unknown at this meet, a promising athlete with a couple of national age group records and a trio of junior national titles to her name. What has changed since that meet, when a 14-year-old Ledecky raced to three individual victories before sparse crowds not overly interested in the protracted distance freestyle events that are her specialty?

“Not much,” said Bruce Gemmell, Ledecky’s coach.

What about the gold medal eight months later in London? What about the 10 world records and nine world titles in the years after?

Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles told Sports Illustrated that he recently had stem-cell treatment as part of his recovery from a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee.

Charles, who is on injured reserve, said this is the first time he has used the procedure. When he tore his ACL in 2011, he did not use the treatment but did so this time because he believes it can help him return to the field quicker. Charles says he had stem cells injected during his ligament-repair surgery and again six weeks later. The treatment involves taking a patient’s bone marrow, extracting the stem cells and then injecting them into the injured part of the body.

“We’re now in the orthobiologic era,” said Dr. Bert Mandelbaum, an orthopedic surgeon at Santa Monica Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Group in Santa Monica, Calif. “We’re trying to seek the best formula, the best cocktail, for the athlete to make them better, quicker and more efficient in what we’re doing. We do it all the time, and we think it’s a very important area, especially when we’re dealing with the elite athletes.”

US based College Coach, Gary Curneen takes us through 9 key factors in successfully coaching the modern player in order to maximise their potential.

In an incredibly inspiring speech, National Women’s Soccer Coach John Herdman breaks down the Canadian anthem to give life lessons, asking the question, “what’s your true north?” Recorded at TEDxVancouver at Rogers Arena on November 14, 2015.

Background

Agility is an important characteristic of team sports athletes. There is a growing interest in the factors that influence agility performance as well as appropriate testing protocols and training strategies to assess and improve this quality.
Objective

The objective of this systematic review was to (1) evaluate the reliability and validity of agility tests in team sports, (2) detail factors that may influence agility performance, and (3) identify the effects of different interventions on agility performance.
Methods

The review was undertaken in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. We conducted a search of PubMed, Google Scholar, Science Direct, and SPORTDiscus databases. We assessed the methodological quality of intervention studies using a customized checklist of assessment criteria.
Results

Intraclass correlation coefficient values were 0.80–0.91, 0.10–0.81, and 0.81–0.99 for test time using light, video, and human stimuli. A low-level reliability was reported for youth athletes using the video stimulus (0.10–0.30). Higher-level participants were shown to be, on average, 7.5 % faster than their lower level counterparts. Reaction time and accuracy, foot placement, and in-line lunge movement have been shown to be related to agility performance. The contribution of strength remains unclear. Efficacy of interventions on agility performance ranged from 1 % (vibration training) to 7.5 % (small-sided games training).
Conclusions

Agility tests generally offer good reliability, although this may be compromised in younger participants responding to various scenarios. A human and/or video stimulus seems the most appropriate method to discriminate between standard of playing ability. Decision-making and perceptual factors are often propositioned as discriminant factors; however, the underlying mechanisms are relatively unknown. Research has focused predominantly on the physical element of agility. Small-sided games and video training may offer effective methods of improving agility, although practical issues may hinder the latter.

Polar has announced that it’s partnering with Strava to integrate workout data from its running watches into the popular service.

It means anyone using the Polar Flow app can sync runs and cycles with the sports service and take advantage of features such as Strava Segments, which lets you virtually race against other users as you appear on their turf.

Billy Beane made his mark in baseball, literature and movies as the statistical wizard who built the Oakland A’s into winners by playing “moneyball.”

Now Kitman Labs — which has developed a statistically based system to help coaches and players reduce the risk of sports injuries — has named the A’s executive vice president of baseball operations to its advisory board.

… The all-new Wilson X Connected basketball and app, which uses technology inside the ball that synchs with your phone to track every shot you take, works to do many of those things. The Wilson X has four game modes which, when paired with your smart phone, can track your shooting accuracy from various ranges, indoor or out. It then creates a nice display, charting your shots on your phone in a way that can be easily shared with coaches, teammates, or whoever. Plus, there are no chords to trip over. (Wouldn’t that be embarrassing.)

… Often considered a sixth sense, proprioception is much less understood than the other five—researchers have identified molecules related to taste and smell, for example, but research on proprioception has lagged behind.

But it’s finally catching up. In a study recently published in the journal Nature, Woo and her colleagues from Scripps, Columbia University, and San Jose State University identified the key molecule that governs proprioception: the protein Piezo2, found in the membranes of special nerve cells in our muscles and tendons called proprioceptors.

Entrepreneurs looking to cash in on public anxiety over concussions are flooding the market with pricey products that have no scientific merit — and opening concussion clinics staffed by “specialists” with no expertise in brain trauma.

Hundreds of these clinics have sprung up across the country, some of them run by dermatologists, orthopedists, chiropractors, and physical therapists.

“It’s so Wild West right now,” said Rosemarie Scolaro Moser, a neuropsychologist who has been treating and researching concussion for more than two decades at the Sports Concussion Center of New Jersey. “I would say buyer beware.”

… Consider the race to optimal health on.

Radar systems track a pitcher’s velocity and release point to gauge fatigue. Elbow sleeves log the strain of every throw. Functional movement screenings are routine tests. Biomechanics data can be delivered in real-time. Medical research papers on the epidemiology of common baseball injuries and based on a league-wide injury database are nearing publication.

In November, after an injury-ravaged roster fell short of an expected playoff berth, the Washington Nationals introduced a revamped medical staff and first-of-its-kind advisory board with new executive director Harvey Sharman, who oversaw the medical program at Leeds United, an English soccer club where analytics are more in use. At the press conference, general manager Mike Rizzo called it “maybe the next Moneyball,” summoning the imagery of the book that made Beane famous.

Injuries can quite literally stop a runner in his or her tracks. Recent research suggests that half of sports injuries lead to an average of three weeks without training or competing. Consequently, for a runner eager to return to the streets and trails, any intervention that can increase healing and decrease down time is important.

Cross-training, physical therapy and biomechanical assessments are well-established aspects of the treatment process, but often overlooked is the role of nutrition in the recovery from injury. Dr. Keith Baar, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, believes that nutritional support is a critical element of recovery.

“A greater understanding of the role of nutrition in healing has evolved in the past three to five years, with much of that coming from studies dealing with the recovery of muscle strength and return to play in elite athletes after ACL surgery,” says Dr. Baar. In one such case study, by following an injury-specific nutritional program, the athlete displayed half of the muscle atrophy in the immobilized leg that was expected. Since a return to running after injury is often dictated by the rate of muscle function, maintaining muscle size and strength may significantly hasten recovery.

The NBA and its players entered the 2015-16 with a renewed commitment to improving player health. Both sides formed committees in the offseason dedicated to supporting medical research intended to protect and progress the health of its players. Furthermore, the NBA front office proactively made alterations to the schedules, reducing the number of league wide back-to-backs. With a quarter of the 2015-16 NBA season over, the early returns are encouraging as time lost to injuries is down when compared to last season.

Through the first 20 games of the season the league total for games missed to injury sits at 950, 138 games less than last year’s total.