Applied Sports Science newsletter – January 6, 2016

Sky Sports reporter Geoff Shreeves visited the former Manchester United captain ahead of the big game to see how he has adapted to life in the dugout.
Gary Neville exclusive interview

From the training ground, where meticulous preparation was taking place days ahead of the match, to the reaction and fall out to Valencia’s impressive performance and 2-2 draw, he got a behind-the-scenes look at Neville’s work in Spain.

The fitness world is never dull. Recently, we’ve seen the emergence (and in some cases, the decline) of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), CrossFit, Soul Cycle, Hot Yoga, the Bar Method, Zumba, Body Pump, the list goes on and on. Some of these programs stress intensity: just a few minutes of hard exercise every day. Others emphasize volume: more is better, even if that means an easier effort. Add to this endless “recovery” products, and it’s easy to see why so many athletes are confused.

“Every few years, people try to reinvent the wheel,” says Steve Magness, exercise scientist, University of Houston track and cross country coach, and author of The Science of Running. But, he says, they are either doing one of two things: selling a quick fix that simply won’t work or repackaging something that’s already been tried before.

Once a week, early in the morning, Maryann Gong straps on a backpack and runs a mile and a half to the Trader Joe’s in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) junior fills her bag with groceries, conscious of not making it too heavy for her run back. She usually makes two three-mile trips before her 10 a.m. engineering class. … Gong and others in college have mastered the art of time management—and their tips are useful for anyone trying to balance serious training and a life overflowing with commitments.

Back in 1996 I received a call from the father of a prospective top round NFL draftee who said he was interested in me representing his son. “One last question–what is your training program?” The question took me aback, we didn’t have a training program. I said, “From 1989 to 1995 I represented the very first pick in the first round of the NFL Draft, can we agree it is not possible to go higher in the draft than that? They all stayed on their campuses, used their college coaches, the strength coach, and were in charge of their own training.” The father replied, “Sorry, but we found an agency that has a training facility and we are going to use them.” That was the year that a booming new industry was born–a hypercompetitive nationwide set of facilities specializing in the training of college football players to excel in the testing process leading to the NFL Draft.

Virtually every single college football player hoping to be drafted in April is heading to a training facility now that college Bowl games are over for all but two teams. They will live in a variety of housing adjacent to the facility. Nutrition has evolved into a highly specialized science. Food is seen as a tool to promote energy and endurance. Players are screened and tested for food “allergies” and individualized diets are prepared. Some players are looking to gain healthy weight, others to lose. All want their bodies to appear more muscular and “cut.” Meals are actually delivered to the facilities at the appropriate times so all guess work is eliminated.

I am often asked how to get better at something. It is a great honor for someone else to recognize a set of skills that I work hard to hone, but I honestly want to answer “the hell if I know.” Last week I talked with someone that was interested in strengthening their programming skills and perhaps converting some of their home grown code into a package for others to use. For the first time I answered honestly, “You’re going to suck, but it will get better.”

… AltisWorld is run by coaches for the good of athletes and the sport of track and field athletics. One of the most striking features of the organisation is that there are no layers of management and administration. These responsibilities are shared between the staff; however with few exceptions each member of the staff is a coach (or practitioner) first and foremost. There is no legion of management and administration staff that you find with equivalent sized concerns (in terms of athlete numbers) such as national governing bodies and national sport institutes.

This is not only refreshing, but more importantly proves that such cumbersome machinery and layers of staff that suck up precious resources and funding yet rarely come into direct contact with coaches and athletes are clearly not essential for an elite organisation to function. Moreover, it may be that the lack of dilution and clouding of purpose when such non essential staff are absent are part of what makes an organisation truly elite.

Background

The use of global positioning system (GPS) devices with the inclusion of microsenor technology in rugby league enables measurement of player activity profiles to understand the demands of match-play and optimise on-field performance.
Objective

The aim of this review was to systematically review the use of GPS and microsensor technology to quantify player activity profiles in match-play, and conduct a meta-analysis of relevant movement variables in order to present the contemporary and emerging themes within rugby league.
Methods

A systematic search of electronic databases (MEDLINE, SPORTDiscus, CINAHL, Web of Science, Scopus, ScienceDirect, EMBASE, and Google Scholar) from the earliest record to February 2015 was conducted. Permutations of key words included GPS, microtechnology, activity profiles, match demands (movement or physical demands), and rugby league. A meta-analysis was conducted to provide a pooled mean and confidence intervals on comparable data from at least three studies.
Results

Twenty-seven studies met the eligibility criteria and included 1270 male participants. The studies reported on GPS use in elite competition (n = 16) with limited representation of other competition standards: sub-elite (n = 6), amateur (n = 1) and junior (n = 3). All studies reported on movement variables (distance, relative distance, speed and accelerations), with studies analysing movement at high speed (n = 18, 66.7 %), evaluating collision or impact variables (n = 15, 55.6 %) and determining the metabolic energy (n = 2, 7.4 %) associated with rugby league match-play. Activity profiles of varying positions, positional groups and levels of rugby league competition were described. Meta-analysis indicated that the total distance covered by backs and adjustables were both greater than forward positions, but adjustables covered greater relative distance than forwards and backs. Speed zones were typically categorised into six speed zones ranging from 0 to 36 km·h?1, or into low- and high-intensity movement. Vast inconsistencies were apparent across studies in categorising movement at high speed, posing difficulties for comparison. Meta-analysis indicated that, although the number of repeated high-intensity effort (RHIE) bouts in elite players were similar to sub-elite (and both greater than juniors), the number of efforts per RHIE were significantly greater in elite than sub-elite players. Differential pacing strategies were adopted according to player selection (whole-match vs. interchange), time period within match-play and match outcome, in order to maintain high-intensity performance or to challenge for a win. Sizeable inconsistencies were also identified in the definitions of reported collisions (classified as mild, moderate and heavy) and impacts (six zone categories provided by manufacturer), making comparisons across studies difficult. Collision profiles were different between competition standard and position where elite players and forwards sustained more moderate- and high-intensity collisions than sub-elite players and backs, respectively. The recent inclusion of GPS-derived metabolic indices to activity profiles has also accentuated the distinctive workloads of positional groups during match-play where adjustables demonstrate the highest energy expenditure and metabolic power.
Conclusions

This review and the results of the meta-analysis have demonstrated that positional groups have varied kinematic and metabolic demands. During match play, forwards sustain the greatest number of collisions and RHIE bouts, outside backs participate in more high-speed running and cover the greatest distance, and adjustables work at high intensity covering the greatest relative distance with the highest metabolic cost. Therefore, specific training for each positional group should address their match requirements. In addition, sub-elite players exhibit lower intensity of play compared with elite players, as indicated by lower relative distance and less number of efforts per RHIE bout despite similarities in total distance covered and number of RHIE bouts. To prepare them for elite-level play, their training should incorporate higher intensity drills in which greater relative distance and number of efforts per RHIE bout are performed. Furthermore, the lack of consistency in the definition of speed zones, high-intensity movement, collisions and impacts, underscores the difficulties encountered in meaningful comparisons of player activity profiles between studies. Consensus of these definitions would facilitate direct comparisons within rugby league.

Halifax, Nova Scotia-based Athletigen Technologies Inc, a sports genetics company, has secured $1.55 million in seed funding. Exponential Partners led the round. In addition to the funding, Pat Wilkison of Exponential Partners, has been named to Athletigen’s board of directors.

Under Armour was founded on a simple idea: Make athletes better. To do that, it’s turning human performance into a big data problem. The company is betting on the notion that the right hardware, the biggest dataset, a lot of machine learning, and powerful motivational tools can make everyone better, faster, and stronger. It’s betting that technology doesn’t exist solely to make us lazy, to bring everything to our door with the push of a button.

The centerpiece of that bet is a $400 kit, announced today, called Healthbox, that provides a scale, an activity tracker wearable, and a chest strap for measuring your heart rate. The company also is updating Record, its mobile app, making it a 24/7 real-time barometer of your fitness and health. These tools, combined with three apps Under Armour has purchased in recent years, provide the most comprehensive ecosystem of fitness products yet made.

This represents a huge investment for the company, which started 20 years ago in a basement in Washington, DC.

The SENtrace application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designed for consumer services from locating lost children to enhancing activity tracking accuracy for fitness enthusiasts was an Innovations Award Honoree (runner-up) at this week’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2016, January 6-9, Las Vegas).

SENtrace enables wearables to track locations within one meter per 100 meters traveled while cutting power by 10-fold, according to Becky Oh, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of PNI Sensor Corp. (Santa Rosa, Calif.)

Injuries have been a huge problem for the Los Angeles Lakers in recent years. In fact, in each of the last two seasons, the Lakers led the NBA in games lost due to injury. Last season, their players missed a combined 339 games; the season before, they missed 319.

And while those figures were certainly inflated because of several Lakers who suffered season-ending injuries, the team nonetheless had many players banged up throughout each season.

But this season, the Lakers so far have been remarkably healthy.

Background Vertical ground reaction force (VGRF) parameters have been implicated as a cause of several running-related injuries. However, no systematic review has examined this relationship.

Aim We systematically reviewed evidence for a relation between VGRF parameters and specific running-related injuries.

Methods MEDLINE, Web of Science and EMBASE databases were searched. Two independent assessors screened the articles and rated the methodological quality. The 3 key VGRF parameters we measured were vertical loading rate, impact/passive peak (Fz1) and propulsive/active peak (Fz2). Standardised mean differences of these parameters were calculated using a random-effects model. Meta-regression was performed using injury type, study type and methodological quality as factors.

Results The search yielded 2016 citations and 18 met the inclusion criteria for the systematic review. The loading rate was higher in studies that included patients with a history of stress fractures and patients with all injury types, both compared with controls. Only studies that included patients with a history of symptoms at the time of kinetic data collection showed higher loading rates overall in cases than in controls. There were no differences between injured subjects and controls for the active and passive peaks of the VGRF.

Summary The loading rate is higher in respondents with a history of stress fractures than in respondents without running injuries. Owing to the absence of prospective studies on other injury types, it is not possible to draw definite conclusions regarding their relation with loading rate.

The Cleveland Browns are either trying to revolutionize the NFL, or they are just so sick of losing they are willing to branch out and try as many different ideas and methods as they can.

Perhaps it’s a combination of both.

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The hiring of Paul DePodesta as the team's chief strategy officer brings the model for the Jonah Hill character in "Moneyball" to Berea. DePodesta was the guy who convinced Billy Beane that analytics and numbers and run production were more important than traditional scouting methods.( That approach has caught on in baseball, where numbers are more clearly defined and easier to assess.

After a thorough judging process, six speakers have been selected to present at the 2016 OptaPro Analytics Forum, taking place on 10th February in central London.

Now in its third year, the OptaPro Analytics Forum offers a unique platform for some of the most talented amateur analysts, bloggers and academics working with football data to share their research with those working within the professional game, offering theories that can be applied and used by clubs in their own day-to-day analysis.

The invite-only event will be attended by over 150 delegates, many of whom are currently working within leading clubs and federations from across the globe.

… Despite the major pro sports leagues having different systems, their level of parity may not be that different. It may be that if NFL players commanded the kind of income that NBA players do, or if the NHL had the kind of salary cap MLB does, these graphs would look very different. I can’t say for sure.

Still, they’re striking. And they suggest something about the myth of parity.

It’s in the NFL’s interest, of course, to make the public think that its handling of players — who, despite playing the game that generates by far the most revenue of any American sport, have by far the lowest salaries, shortest careers, worst prospects of serious injury, and the most non-guaranteed contracts — is necessary to achieve some noble ideal.