Applied Sports Science newsletter – January 15, 2016

… [Wesley] Matthews, who earned the nickname “Iron Man” in Portland, wasn’t the only mad Maverick the morning after Dallas’ overtime loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Carlisle also made the call to rest three other starters – Dirk Nowitzki, Chandler Parsons and Deron Williams — and none of them was exactly thrilled.

They shouldn’t have been surprised. Carlisle made a similar call a week ago, sitting all the starters except for Parsons in New Orleans the night after Dallas’ double-overtime win over the Sacramento Kings. The Mavs still managed to beat the Pelicans, but the Thunder represents a quantum leap up in competition.

Carlisle is as competitive as anyone, but it’s part of his job description to consider the grand scheme during the course of an 82-game regular season, especially with 18 games on the schedule this month for the Mavs, who are in the midst of playing five times in seven nights.

On the day after the Seattle Seahawks returned home from the Super Bowl last year, assistant head coach/defense Rocky Seto got back on a plane and headed to California.

He had made a commitment to the California Interscholastic Federation to talk to high school coaches about a topic he’s become an expert on: tackling.

Seto coached 11 seasons at USC before joining Pete Carroll’s staff in Seattle in 2010. He has been at the forefront of the team’s mission to promote a new way of tackling, a rugby-type style the coaches believe is more fundamentally sound and safer than traditional methods.

Is Canada still the best hockey country in the world?

If we are, we are barely clinging to the moniker. From a simple statistics view, we should be the best, hands down. Canada isn’t a big country. Yet, Hockey Canada reports 721,504 players. That’s almost 10 times the Finnish Hockey Association’s 75,871 players, with Russia and Sweden reporting similar numbers (99,172 and 60,089, respectively). There are over 2,631 indoor rinks in Canada. In Finland, there are 260 rinks. In Russia, there are only 450, and in Sweden, 358.

The Army Research Lab continues to develop technology aimed at protecting soldiers, athletes and others from impact related head injury.

Its rate-activated helmet-strap can prevent violent head motions, while permitting (necessary) voluntary head motion. The material stretches with low, elastic force at slower speeds, and resists with high force when pulled quickly upon impact.

In a few months, the first iteration of modern consumer virtual reality headsets are going to start shipping. A lot is rapidly changing and new applications are being discovered every week.

I present three stories that use VR technology to push our crafts beyond what was possible. Each story is focused around an amazing short video that is very much worth watching.

Introduction:

Quantifying human movement during sporting activities is of great interest since it allows trainers to assess the athlete’s performance, their rehabilitation and injury recovery. Due to the environment limitations of laboratory testing, research has been focused on the development of Micro electromechanical (MEMS) based inertial sensors with the objective of reducing the sensors in size and power requirements, and making the technology widely available at low cost. The aim of this paper is to present an analysis about the growth of wearable technology, notably, inertial sensors, and the use of a common base platform for different sports application fields including research, education, commercial and servicing.

Methods:

The ongoing trends in the inertial sensor technology development through collaborative activity is discussed in this paper. In particular the convergence of several research tools of a three-axial accelerometer/gyroscope and a digital magnetometer, combined with wireless connectivity that allows the control of multiple sensors through a Matlab-based software toolkit are discussed.

Applications fields:

The sensor technology has been adopted as an educational tool, as a tool for sports science research, as a base for the development of commercial applications and as a tool that can be used in routing servicing.

Discussion:

This paper has examined the growing usage and adoption of inertial sensors in the sports science community, through the vignette of the local development of research tools. It surveyed the current directions of human monitoring using inertial sensors for different sports applications. The research outcomes have subsequently be taken up as commercial products, making sensor use widely available to the general public.

About a year ago, on a frigid January day, I visited a research group at the University of Illinois. Led by University of Illinois professor John Rogers, the researchers were developing electronics that stretched, bent, and had most of the general characteristics of skin. As a result, once you attached them to your skin, you couldn’t really feel them sitting there. I saw skin-wearables that communicated, measured vitals such as temperature and heart rate, as well as muscle activity, chemicals in sweat, and more. The idea was that eventually, they could be made cheaply enough to be a mass-market product—in some cases, cheaply enough to be disposable. I wrote about the technology under development last June, and since then, have been waiting for it to start migrating into products.

At CES 2016, held last week in Las Vegas, that wait ended. Two companies—MC10, a Boston-based company founded in 2008 to commercialize the flexible circuitry and sensors created by Roberts and his team, and L’Oréal, the French skin care and cosmetics behemoth—launched the first commercial products based on the technology developed by Rogers’ team.

A new study presented in the journal Nature could change the view of the role of motor neurons. Motor neurons, which extend from the spinal cord to muscles and other organs, have always been considered passive recipients of signals from interneuronal circuits. Now, however, researchers from Karolinska Institutet have demonstrated a new, direct signalling pathway through which motor neurons influence the locomotor circuits that generate rhythmic movements.

Background

More than half of the recurrent hamstring injuries occur within the first month after return-to-play (RTP). Although there are numerous studies on RTP, comparisons are hampered by the numerous definitions of RTP used. Moreover, there is no consensus on the criteria used to determine when a person can start playing again. These criteria need to be critically evaluated, in an attempt to reduce recurrence rates and optimize RTP.
Objective

To carry out a systematic review of the literature on (1) definitions of RTP used in hamstring research and (2) criteria for RTP after hamstring injuries.
Study Design

Systematic review.
Methods

Seven databases (PubMed, EMBASE/MEDLINE, CINAHL, PEDro, Cochrane, SPORTDiscus, Scopus) were searched for articles that provided a definition of, or criteria for, RTP after hamstring injury. There were no limitations on the methodological design or quality of articles. Content analysis was used to record and analyze definitions and criteria for RTP after hamstring injury.
Results

Twenty-five papers fulfilled inclusion criteria, of which 13 provided a definition of RTP and 23 described criteria to support the RTP decision. “Reaching the athlete’s pre-injury level” and “being able to perform full sport activities” were the primary content categories used to define RTP. “Absence of pain”, “similar strength”, “similar flexibility”, “medical staff clearance”, and “functional performance” were core themes to describe criteria to support the RTP decision after hamstring injury.
Conclusion

Only half of the included studies provided some definition of RTP after hamstring injury, of which reaching the athlete’s pre-injury level and being able to perform full sport activities were the most important. A wide variety of criteria are used to support the RTP decision, none of which have been validated. More research is needed to reach a consensus on the definition of RTP and to provide validated RTP criteria to facilitate hamstring injury management and reduce hamstring injury recurrence.

Introduction/Purpose: The relative age effect (RAE) has been described as the consequence of differences in ages between individuals within the same age group. In youth sports, relatively older children may have a physical and developmental advantage over younger children. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between relative age and sports injury in a cohort of pediatric athletes.

Methods: A probability sample (n=1,997) of children between 5-17 years of age with sports injuries were extracted from a regional hospital database. Relative age was defined as a child’s birth month relative to the month that his/her activity uses as an arbitrary age cutoff. The main outcome measure was an activity-specific birth month ratio (ASBMR), which was developed and compared with birth month data for the state. Linear regression models were employed to determine over- and under-representation of sports injuries for pre-pubescent (5-13 years old) and pubescent (14-17 years old) groups separately.

Results: Among pre-pubescent patients, the linear regression model indicated a significant RAE on sports injury (R2 = .037), where those born in or right after the cutoff month for their sports were underrepresented in the study cohort relative to their representation in the general population. For the pubescent group, the RAE was reversed, where those born closest, but prior to the age cutoff date for their sports were the least represented relative to the general population (R2 = .096).

Conclusion: These results demonstrate a RAE on youth sport injury risk in a cohort of pediatric athletes with sports related injuries. These findings may be used to inform safe practices within sports participation among youth athletes.

BACKGROUND:

There is dogma that higher training load causes higher injury rates. However, there is also evidence that training has a protective effect against injury. For example, team sport athletes who performed more than 18?weeks of training before sustaining their initial injuries were at reduced risk of sustaining a subsequent injury, while high chronic workloads have been shown to decrease the risk of injury. Second, across a wide range of sports, well-developed physical qualities are associated with a reduced risk of injury. Clearly, for athletes to develop the physical capacities required to provide a protective effect against injury, they must be prepared to train hard. Finally, there is also evidence that under-training may increase injury risk. Collectively, these results emphasise that reductions in workloads may not always be the best approach to protect against injury.
MAIN THESIS:

This paper describes the ‘Training-Injury Prevention Paradox’ model; a phenomenon whereby athletes accustomed to high training loads have fewer injuries than athletes training at lower workloads. The Model is based on evidence that non-contact injuries are not caused by training per se, but more likely by an inappropriate training programme. Excessive and rapid increases in training loads are likely responsible for a large proportion of non-contact, soft-tissue injuries. If training load is an important determinant of injury, it must be accurately measured up to twice daily and over periods of weeks and months (a season). This paper outlines ways of monitoring training load (‘internal’ and ‘external’ loads) and suggests capturing both recent (‘acute’) training loads and more medium-term (‘chronic’) training loads to best capture the player’s training burden. I describe the critical variable-acute:chronic workload ratio)-as a best practice predictor of training-related injuries. This provides the foundation for interventions to reduce players risk, and thus, time-loss injuries.
SUMMARY:

The appropriately graded prescription of high training loads should improve players’ fitness, which in turn may protect against injury, ultimately leading to (1) greater physical outputs and resilience in competition, and (2) a greater proportion of the squad available for selection each week.

Senior Vice President and General Manager Brett O’Brien talks sports tech innovation, the brand’s strategy for the future, and more.

Fatigue is a factor in NBA scheduling, and fatigue leads to a higher risk or injury. This is not a revelation by any means; however, there still seems to be some resistance to the value of rest despite many peer reviewed research projects on the topic. In my hope to add to this academic collection. This past semester, I was given the opportunity to devote some type for a deeper look at the effects of fatigue on the NBA game.

We know from said previous research that days of rest between games and traveling time zones (particularly from east to west) are significant factors in determining the outcome of games. We also know that teams are now investing in a diverse selection of fatigue measuring technologies, ranging from Catapult GPS trackers on players to watches that track sleep to full body scanners searching for hidden stresses in a player’s posture. We know that the NBA is attempting to build in additional rest through an extended mid-season All-Star break while some teams1 are opting to rest crucial players during regular season games in hopes of strengthening their post-season prospects as well as the long-term of their players2.

However, what I could not find is empirical research on the specific and significant effects of fatigue on game play, so, naturally, I tried to answer this question.