Applied Sports Science newsletter – December 22, 2015

The real-world experiences of young athletes follow a non-linear and dynamic trajectory and there is growing recognition that facing and overcoming a degree of challenge is desirable for aspiring elites and as such, should be recognized and employed. However, there are some misunderstandings of this “talent needs trauma” perspective with some research focusing excessively or incorrectly on the incidence of life and sport challenge as a feature of effective talent development. The objective of the study was to examine what factors associated with such “trauma” experiences may or may not discriminate between high, medium and low achievers in sport, classified as super-champions, champions or almosts. A series of retrospective interviews were used with matched triads (i.e., super-champions, champions or almosts) of performers (N = 54) from different sports. Data collection was organized in three phases. In the first phase, a graphic time line of each performer’s career was developed. The second phase explored the specific issues highlighted by each participant in a chronological sequence. The third phase was a retrospective reflection on “traumatic” motivators, coach/significant other inputs and psychological challenges experienced and skills employed. Data suggested qualitative differences between categories of performers, relating to several perceptual and experiential features of their development. No evidence was found for the necessity of major trauma as a feature of development. There was a lack of discrimination across categories of performers associated with the incidence of trauma and, more particularly, life or non-sport trauma. These findings suggest that differences between levels of adult achievement relate more to what performers bring to the challenges than what they experience. A periodized and progressive set of challenge, preceded and associated with specific skill development, would seem to offer the best pathway to success for the majority.

How do we go about assessing athletes and more importantly helping them develop and reach their full potential? Of course this varies considerably depending on circumstances – for example, a 10 year old in a football academy compared to the elite Olympian athlete – but the underlying theme should be the same. Physical tests, anthropometric measures, genotype, DNA profiling are all used to predetermine the likely success of a young athlete. However, without discounting the importance of these types of assessment and tests, there is one obvious drawback and that is that all the physical tests in the world can’t tell you how an athlete thinks, what his/her learning style, or anything about his instinct, ambition or leadership abilities. Given that the mental strength of an athlete can make all the difference between success and failure, it is an area that coaches and competitors are keen to know more about.

You’ve probably heard the expression ‘our habits are either our servants or our masters’. Well, it’s true. When you become aware of how habit operates in your daily life, free will seems like a big fat joke.

In fact as much as 45% of your daily activity is habit, says Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg. That means that if you don’t deliberately create your habits so that they line up with your goals, you’re going to experience a lot of frustration.

What happens at around this time every year is we resolve to change some of our habits. But somewhere between 81-92% of new years resolutions fail. Those aren’t great odds.

For anyone who has struggled on a gym mat, hands behind head, straining to touch elbows to knees, there’s good news: The sit-up’s reign as a workout standard may be ending.

People from high-profile exercise gurus to military experts are arguing that the sit-up, that staple of fitness tests, presents too great a risk of back injury.

When Chris Ash got hired as Rutgers’ head coach on Dec. 5, he knew immediately whom he wanted as the program’s strength and conditioning coach. Ash got his man on Friday, hiring Ohio State assistant strength and conditioning coach Kenny Parker as Rutgers’ head strength and conditioning coach.

“It’s as important as anything,” Ash said of the strength coach in an interview with NJ Advance Media on Thursday. “If I got a head coaching job, I knew right away what I was going to do with the strength coach. There wasn’t a lot of discussion about it. We came to a pretty quick agreement.”

… Researchers took Elite female soccer players and tracked their training load and stress markers. Training load was measured using session-RPE, while stress symptoms were measured using a mix of questionairess and physical data. They used the Daily Analysis of Life Demands and Upper Respiratory Symptom survey to measure both daily stress and whether or not people had symptoms of upper respiratory infections, which is one of the first things to occur in a suppressed state. To get a biological measure, they measured salivary SIgA , which gives you an idea of how the immune system is functioning and risk of respiratory infections.

The goal was simple. To see how the ebb and flow of their training volume and intensity impacted their immune system function and the consequences of having suppressed function (sickness).

At first glance, the Nebraska Athletic Performance Lab, created in 2013, looks nothing out of the ordinary.

Covering some 23,000 square feet on the second and third floors of East Memorial Stadium, the NAPL has some weight machines, a 50-foot mat for running, a half basketball court, another runway for sprinters and a lot of FieldTurf.

But peel back a layer — literally, if you could — and you’ll see why Nebraska’s state-of-the-art laboratory for enhancing athletes’ performances is so special.

Wearable Technologies announced the finalists of their annual Innovation World Cup. More than 450 wearable technology innovations have been submitted this year. The competition is accepting market-ready and almost market-ready wearable solutions in the categories Sports & Fitness, Healthcare & Wellness, Gaming & Lifestyle, Safety & Security, Smart Clothing, and Smart Jewelry. … The list of finalists include Antelope Club, developer of sport garments with with embedded EMS (electro muscle stimulation), Kokoon’s sleep sensing headphones, Kingii anti-drowning gadget and ADAMM (Automated Device for Asthma Monitoring and Management) by Health Care Originals, which is a wearable technology that provides a complete solution for managing your asthma.

People who suffer from serious allergies — to foods such as peanuts or to bee stings, say — often have to rely on the help of friends, family, and bystanders who can notice their distress and administer lifesaving medication. That medication, typically delivered through an epinephrine-injection device called an EpiPen, needs to be carried with them at all times.

A group of Harvard researchers, supported by the family of one Massachusetts teenager who lost her life to an allergic reaction, has announced a new project to one day turn those emergency adrenaline shots into an automatic injection device that people wear on their bodies. While a marketable solution is likely still years away, scientists at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering think advances in wearable tech could give them a head start on the ambitious project.

Background: The Functional Movement Screen (FMS) is a series of 7 tests used to assess the injury risk in active populations.

Purpose: To determine the association of the FMS with the injury risk, assess predictive values, and identify optimal cut points using 3 injury types.

Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 2.

Methods: Physically active male soldiers aged 18 to 57 years (N = 2476) completed the FMS. Demographic and fitness data were collected by survey. Medical record data for overuse injuries, traumatic injuries, and any injury 6 months after the FMS assessment were obtained. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) were calculated along with the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) to determine the area under the curve (AUC) and identify optimal cut points for the risk assessment. Risks, risk ratios (RRs), odds ratios (ORs), and 95% CIs were calculated to assess injury risks.

Results: Soldiers who scored ?14 were at a greater risk for injuries compared with those who scored >14 using the composite score for overuse injuries (RR, 1.84; 95% CI, 1.63-2.09), traumatic injuries (RR, 1.26; 95% CI, 1.03-1.54), and any injury (RR, 1.60; 95% CI, 1.45-1.77). When controlling for other known injury risk factors, multivariate logistic regression analysis identified poor FMS performance (OR [score ?14/19-21], 2.00; 95% CI, 1.42-2.81) as an independent risk factor for injuries. A cut point of ?14 registered low measures of predictive value for all 3 injury types (sensitivity, 28%-37%; PPV, 19%-52%; AUC, 54%-61%). Shifting the injury risk cut point of ?14 to the optimal cut points indicated by the ROC did not appreciably improve sensitivity or the PPV.

Conclusion: Although poor FMS performance was associated with a higher risk of injuries, it displayed low sensitivity, PPV, and AUC. On the basis of these findings, the use of the FMS to screen for the injury risk is not recommended in this population because of the low predictive value and misclassification of the injury risk.

This time, “Moneyball” meets medicine for real.

Major League Baseball executive Paul DePodesta, widely known as the man who brought advanced data analytics to the sport, is joining the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, California, as an assistant professor of bioinformatics. There, he will work with the analytics team on various research projects that are attempting to translate genetics and digital health technologies into healthcare diagnostics and treatments.

“This is a chance to really make a difference,” DePodesta said Monday. DePodesta noted that he has four young children whom he obviously wants to see grow up to be as healthy and productive as possible. Healthcare offers opportunities to change people’s lives like few other industries.

When you’re an endurance athlete, you know (and possibly even learned the hard way) that what you put into your body to keep it moving on race day is almost as important as the training you do leading up to it. From natural nutrition such as bananas, honey, and coconut water to commercially available specially concocted drinks and serums, the choice is often based on trial and gastrointestinal error, or a crapshoot based on what’s available on the course that day. But what if there’s a better way to choose fuel for maximum performance and minimal gut trouble? Researchers at the University of Bath in England may be honing in on an answer.

… Leicester’s improbable rise and Chelsea’s unprecedented fall have certainly been the biggest shocks of the 2015-16 season. But they are far from the only ones. Plucky West Ham have beaten Arsenal (at odds of 11 to one), Manchester City (11 to one) and Liverpool (eight to one) away from home. In the last fortnight, tiny Bournemouth have vanquished Manchester United and Chelsea, whilst struggling Newcastle have beaten both Tottenham and Liverpool—combinations that according to bookmakers were respectively 3% and 2% likely. Perhaps the only predictable feature of the Premier League in 2015-16 has been the regularity with which pundits have described it as the most unpredictable season ever. According to the betting lines, 42 of 160 games (26%) thus far have been won by the underdogs; since the turn of the century, no Premier League season has ended with the unfavoured teams winning more than 23% of matches (see chart below).

It again is time to dissect the past season’s disabled list (DL) information. I’ve been at this for quite some time. If you’ve never read this post before, or would just like to take a gander at the old data, check out the handy box at the right with my past work on the subject. Besides just looking at the 2015 data, I have decided to go a little Tableau crazy and add three interactive tables. The Tommy John surgery and comparing days lost per team graphs have been around in some form previously. The big addition is the time missed per injury. This interactive table is a great way to find the average and median days lost for any injury.

I collected DL information from MLB.com’s transaction list as I have for the past six seasons using data provided by FanGraphs and my own updates. I will start the data digging by looking at the overall year-to-year trend. Let the graphs begin.