Applied Sports Science newsletter – December 24, 2015

One question seemingly hovered over the Knicks franchise before the season: How would this team toe the difficult line between development and dedication to winning now, while star Carmelo Anthony, at the age of 31, enjoys the last year or two of his prime?

For a while, with the unexpectedly strong play of 20-year-old rookie Kristaps Porzingis, the issue became moot. But lately, with Porzingis shooting 29% in the past seven games, and the team fighting to stay afloat in a strengthened Eastern Conference with a 14-15 record, the line has become blurred again in terms of which path the Knicks are taking.

That dilemma—between letting Porzingis ride out what could be a tough learning curve or taking a more conservative approach with him and leaning more heavily on veterans—was on display Monday, when the Knicks lost to Orlando, 107-99.

Every morning before breakfast I do my uphill cardio walk on the treadmill to start my day. I’ve discovered that this is when I do some of my best thinking. I usually take calls, review emails, listen to audio books or motivational speakers to pass the time. Sometimes I find myself reviewing my career in my head, evaluating what I would change if I could do it all over again, and what I think I did well, etc.

This morning was kind of strange because I was thinking back to my 1998 NBA Draft experience and the decision to leave college after just three years. I’ve always thought that I made the right decision leaving early, but today I’ve come to the conclusion that I wish I had stayed in school for my senior year. Of course hindsight is always 20/20, and many may think when reading this, “Why in the hell would you change anything after winning an NBA Championship, making millions of dollars, and playing 17 years in the NBA?” Having a much better grasp of how the NBA works and what it takes to succeed in it has led me to this unexpected revelation.

Let me explain…

… [Marcus] Smart resumed individual on-court activities last week and the Celtics said he’s expected to engage in “light to limited” participation during the team’s morning shootaround on Wednesday.

While Smart doesn’t seem likely to be back on the court for a bit longer, it seems fair to start wondering how exactly coach Brad Stevens will reintegrate him. Stevens has said he’s likely to utilize Smart in a bench role upon his initial return, in part to help limit his minutes while ramping back up his activity after an extended absence.

A new mouse-model study shows that exercise causes muscle to release a peptide that increases the muscle’s energy production and physical endurance, supporting longer and more intense exercise.

The findings establish that the peptide, called musclin, is an “exercise factor”—a hormone-like substance made by skeletal muscle in response to exercise and released into the bloodstream. The study shows that increased levels of circulating musclin trigger a signaling cascade that improves muscle performance and promotes production of mitochondria in muscle cells. The study was published online the week of Dec. 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition.

I get asked all the time “Are you an FMS guy? Do you use the SFMA? Which one is better? I thought you were a TPI guy why would you use the FMS?” The answer to these questions is YES! I use the FMS, SFMA and TPI screens, as well as a ton of other screens that I have learned over the years, with each and every client I see. Which one do I use most? The one that will give me the information I am looking for at that time to help me make a positive change in the performance of my client.

When is it appropriate to use the SFMA, FMS and when do I know when it’s time to take my client through the TPI Level 1 Screen? This article will walk you through how I use these screening and assessment tools and how they have helped me be a better fitness professional.

Students could soon be helping legendary footballer Lionel Messi improve his game – after getting a unique opportunity to work with FC Barcelona.

Staffordshire University has teamed up with the UEFA Champions League winners to explore the science behind sporting success.

Eight students on sports science-related degree courses have already been to visit the club, where they watched its star players in action against Roma.

During the four-day trip, they also got exclusive behind-the-scenes access to Barcelona’s training ground and met the technical, coaching and medical staff there.

It has become a cultural cliché that raising adolescents is the most difficult part of parenting. It’s common to joke that when kids are in their teens they are sullen, uncommunicative, more interested in their phones than in their parents and generally hard to take. But this negative trope about adolescents misses the incredible opportunity to positively shape a kid’s brain and future life course during this period of development.

“[Adolescence is] a stage of life when we can really thrive, but we need to take advantage of the opportunity,” said Temple University neuroscientist Laurence Steinberg at a Learning and the Brain conference in Boston.

Scouting football players as young as five, persuading an 11-year-old to sign a contract with private school education or offering a teenager’s parents a house.

These are some of the things English clubs are doing to secure the country’s best youngsters in an increasingly desperate fight to beat rivals to sign potential stars.

“Money talks,” sighs Sheffield United’s chief academy scout Luke Fedorenko as he describes how he has just lost two 11-year-olds to Manchester City. “But we must be doing something right.”

Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX) and the New York Football Giants today made it official: Giants’ players are now using Quest’s baseline athletic performance testing service “Blueprint for Athletes,” which has been a major factor for the Giants’ training and preparation for NFL games this season.

Algorithms could learn to recognize objects from a few examples, not millions; may better model human cognition.

Have you had a suspicion that your GPS app is overestimating the distance traveled? If so you are probably correct but the reason isn’t an algorithmic glitch. The answer lies in the statistics and it is a strange story.

he return to sport from injury is a difficult multifactorial decision, and risk of reinjury is an important component. Most protocols for ascertaining the return to play status involve assessment of the healing status of the original injury and functional tests which have little proven predictive ability. Little attention has been paid to ascertaining whether an athlete has completed sufficient training to be prepared for competition. Recently, we have completed a series of studies in cricket, rugby league and Australian rules football that have shown that when an athlete’s training and playing load for a given week (acute load) spikes above what they have been doing on average over the past 4?weeks (chronic load), they are more likely to be injured. This spike in the acute:chronic workload ratio may be from an unusual week or an ebbing of the athlete’s training load over a period of time as in recuperation from injury. Our findings demonstrate a strong predictive (R2=0.53) polynomial relationship between acute:chronic workload ratio and injury likelihood. In the elite team setting, it is possible to quantify the loads we are expecting athletes to endure when returning to sport, so assessment of the acute:chronic workload ratio should be included in the return to play decision-making process.

Earlier this year, Jeanette, a 17-year-old high school senior, came to my office after her third “concussion” in three years.

She had been bumped in the head during volleyball practice, but not knocked out, and then developed headaches that went away after two weeks. A nurse practitioner in her pediatrician’s office benched her for the season. But Jeanette wanted to play; it was her senior year, after all.

I have been a pediatric neurologist for 40 years, and over the past five years, I have evaluated dozens of children for potential neurological complications of concussion. Most, like Jeanette, had no serious problems. Obviously, concussions are a real concern. But what’s also worrisome is that excessive fear of concussions may discourage parents and medical professionals from letting kids play healthy team sports.

… The NFL might indeed be a league of denial, but others have accepted the concussion issue. New technology is working to thwart the prevalence of mild brain injuries. Improved safety protocols have standardized the methods of monitoring and treating concussions. I don’t know if kids should stop playing football or other high-contact sports, but the science is clear—it’s dangerous. On the other hand, so are a lot of things.

It’s good that attention is being brought to this issue. Measures are being taken to start mitigating some of the risk. But there is another, deadlier condition disproportionately affecting young athletes—and it hasn’t received nearly the same type of exposure as the concussion issue. Young men and women—many of whom are in otherwise immaculate physical shape—are dropping dead from undetected or unreported heart conditions.

The Knowledge Project interview with Philip Tetlock deconstructs our ability to make accurate predictions into specific components. He learned through his work on The Good Judgment Project.

In Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, Tetlock and Dan Gardner (his co-author), set out to distill the ten key themes that have been “experimentally demonstrated to boost accuracy” in the real-world.