Applied Sports Science newsletter – January 16, 2016

Sue Campbell is on a mission to transport women’s football in England to sport’s sunlit uplands. “It’s in a good place now but the aim is to move it to a really iconic place,” she says. “That’s something Martin Glenn’s determined to achieve.” Appropriately enough, the Football Association’s chief executive has taken a significant stride towards fulfilling this ambition by making Lady Campbell his new head of women’s football.

As chair of UK Sport she presided over Team GB and ParalympicsGB’s unprecedented medal haul at the 2012 London Olympics and Glenn believes Campbell possesses the clout needed to ensure the momentum gained by England’s bronze-medal finish at last summer’s World Cup in Canada will not be allowed to evaporate.

TO TALK OF ARSÈNE WENGER’S EFFECT on Arsenal Football Club would be to talk of man who led the club into the brave new world of the Premier League just four years after its inception. It would be to talk of a man who changed the club’s philosophy, looked inwards for talent and grew it out of the despairing reigns of Bruce Rioch and Stewart Houston.

Going back further, it would be to understand the change Wenger implemented at Arsenal after the pragmatic but often challenging rule of authoritarian George Graham. The Frenchman’s time at Arsenal has been long and eventful. But would his time in North London alone constitute him being considered a mastermind? Probably not.

However, to talk about Arsène Wenger’s impact on the wider Premier League would be to discuss the single greatest foreign influence in British football history. A man who revolutionised the game alongside his nemesis Sir Alex Ferguson.

Sprinting seven miles down a 9,000-foot mountain and then running back up to do it again may not appeal to even the most self-punishing of athletes, but Ryan Hall believes it is the kind of “experimental workout” that transformed him into the fastest American distance runner in history.

It is also the kind of extreme training that is now driving him to abruptly retire, two decades into an audacious career that produced national milestones — his time of 2 hours 4 minutes 58 seconds at the 2011 Boston Marathon is by far the fastest for an American runner — but never a victory in a major race.

Hall, 33, who was one of the last remaining hopes for an American front-runner in this summer’s Olympic marathon, is succumbing to chronically low testosterone levels and fatigue so extreme, he says, that he can barely log 12 easy miles a week.

When the Australian Open begins in Melbourne next week, tennis fans should brace themselves for the impossible: Novak Djokovic, the dominant No. 1 player in the world, might be better than ever.

Djokovic had one of the finest seasons in history in 2015. He won three Grand Slam titles and lost in the final of the fourth. He won 11 titles overall. He reached 15 consecutive finals. He ripped top-10 opponents to bits and pieces, compiling a 31-5 record against them. He became the second man ever to beat Rafael Nadal at the French Open. If not for an inspired Stan Wawrinka, who beat Djokovic at the French Open, Djokovic would have become the first man since Rod Laver in 1969 to win all four Grand Slam singles titles in a season.

Can the 28-year-old Djokovic possibly do better this year?

Sport, especially English sport, has a blind spot about intelligence. It often misinterprets intellectual curiosity as uncommitted dilettantism, mistakenly assumes that sport and intellectual life are entirely separate and misses the reality that elite games require high-level thinking.

Kudos to Duncan Watmore, Sunderland’s bright prospect, who recently graduated with a First in economics and business management from Newcastle University. There are lessons here for professional sport, for education and for the way we think about applied intelligence.

Both sports teams and universities indulge in time-wasting on an epic scale. One aspect of professionalisation is padding out commitments to fill the diary. But even the most dedicated athlete cannot train properly for more than four or five hours a day (and often far less than that). What about the rest of the day? Studying doesn’t have to eat into training – it can replace PlayStation.

The clubs own players’ bodies and yet they allow minds t

Within the context of the debate on minimalistic running shoes is the question of proper form. A running shoe with a massive heel suggests that it’s best to heel-strike, or that we’re designed to heel strike. The minimalist shoe (or barefoot runner type) might argue that we were designed to run with mechanics that depend on a mid-foot/fore-foot strike.

This question was recently tweeted for examination by Brian MacKenzie, author of the book Unbreakable Runner and the founder of CrossFit Endurance, with the following video.

Paul Brice is a Senior Biomechanist at the English Institute of Sport, responsible for coodination, management and delivery of biomechanical support to elite Olympic track and field programs.

World Sport visits the Centre For Health and Human Performance in Harley Street, London, to discuss Sports Science and Human Performance Science with co-founder Greg Whyte OBE

… The new model is part of the strategic plan, recently approved by the Board of Directors, which is essentially a road map for the Club for the next six years. It is based on five strategic areas — sporting excellence, maximum social involvement, development of sporting infrastructure, global brand recognition, and sustainable economic management.

At the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Sensoria Inc., a fitness wearables company, announced updates to its Smart Running System, the expansion of its smart upper body clothes line, and the debut of its new wearables platform, the Sensoria Development Kit.

The Smart Running System, which is currently the only open and connected multi-garment fitness wearable system, will now be able to record data for foot impact score and average stride length, and it will also include heart rate zone and variability tracking. The system’s updated web dashboard will also allow users to analyze more in-depth information, like comparing shoes with usual metrics, and long-term user trends.

Although the idea of smart clothing has floated around for a few years, little has come of it, until now. Big-name companies like Samsung, Google, OMSignal, Hexo Skin, and Under Armour have begun thinking about ways to make the clothes on your back as smart as the phone in your pocket. Since most wearables are fitness-focused, most smart clothing so far has followed in those footsteps with incredibly accurate fitness metrics and detailed analysis of workouts. Thankfully, many companies are beginning to think beyond gym rats, and the smart clothes they are working on may be the future of wearable tech.

No matter your age, gender, or fitness level, you have one choice every day: wear clothes or get arrested for indecent exposure. This is why smart clothes are wearables for everyone.

It is now the year 2016, and everything is connected. Watches, glasses and even shoes have evolved to the point that they can communicate with our smartphones and laptop computers to keep us more informed about how our body is interacting with the world around us. With that evolution in mind, New Balance announced its new Digital Sport division at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week.

“New Balance has a 110-year heritage of product development and innovation in the running category, and, our new Digital Sport division represents our newest commitment to invest in athletes and runners around the world in their pursuit of extraordinary physical feats,” said Rob DeMartini, President and CEO of New Balance.

We spoke to Mark Gainey, CEO and cofounder of Strava, a social network for athletes that makes use of GPS devices and other wearables to create what they call a “social fitness” experience. Strava uses the vast amounts of data being collected by various connected devices to provide motivation, track stats, record maintenance, and status of gear and equipment, and encourage camaraderie among its members.

In this interview, Gainey explained why he thinks wearables will continue to make fitness a more enjoyable and seamless part of our everyday lives.

The new genetic tool has the potential to increase resistance to muscular injury or stress fractures—even produce stronger, faster athletes—but it’s a puzzle that could take decades to solve.

The Kansas City Royals didn’t need any additional help in order to win the 2015 World Series. Regardless, it looks like they are trying to get an edge now in an attempt to keep players extra healthy. They’ve teamed up with Atlanta-based Impact Cryotherapy to treat players.

Although it’s becoming more widespread, with athletes like LeBron James and Shaquille O’Neal getting on board, cryotherapy systems are still raising some question marks from skeptics.

Aspetar Tuesday Lecture Series : Recovery in Youth Athletes: An Aspire Perspective by Mr. Andrew Murray
Senior Sports Physiologist @ Aspire Academy (primarily with athletics).

Different groups of neurons “predict” the body’s subsequent looking and reaching movements, suggesting an orchestration among distinct parts of the brain, a team of neuroscientists has found. The study enhances our understanding of the decision-making process, potentially offering insights into different forms of mental illness—afflictions in which this dynamic is typically impaired.

“Identifying which neurons are involved in looking and reaching actions means we can actually see them firing before these decisions are made, offering a crystal ball of sorts into subsequent movements,” said Bijan Pesaran, an associate professor at NYU’s Center for Neural Science, member of NYU’s Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Decision Making, and the study’s senior author.

Strengthening and weakening the connections between neurons, known as synapses, is vital to the brain’s development and everyday function. One way that neurons weaken their synapses is by swallowing up receptors on their surfaces that normally respond to glutamate, one of the brain’s excitatory chemicals.

In a new study, MIT neuroscientists have detailed how this receptor reabsorption takes place, allowing neurons to get rid of unwanted connections and to dampen their sensitivity in cases of overexcitation.

One of the most interesting stories in pro sports over the last couple of years has been the hiring of Becky Hammon as an assistant coach by the San Antonio Spurs. Men coaching high-level women are nothing new but with a few exceptions, in such sports as swimming, it is unusual for elite men to be coached by women.

When it comes to sports medicine providers, and especially to the orthopedic surgeons who take care of elite athletes, it has mostly been a men’s game as well. This is changing, however, and my Mayo Clinic colleague Dr. Diane Dahm is caring for the Minnesota Twins and the Minnesota Timberwolves. Dr. Dahm is a professor of orthopedic surgery and has published numerous research papers in medical journals that have advanced the field of sports medicine. Last month we exchanged questions and answers via e-mail and then followed up with a visit as I learned more what it was like to be a medical Becky Hammon.

Japanese scientists have a gut instinct that micro-organisms can play a key role in winning gold at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

While athletes have long depended on nutritionists to put together the ideal diet to enhance their performance on the track, in the pool or on a court, a research team is delving deeper.

“If we can determine what the ideal composition of micro-organisms within the intestinal tract is for Japanese based on their diet, it could help improve the performance of athletes,” said team leader Hidetoshi Morita, a professor of applied studies into micro-organisms at Okayama University’s Graduate School of Environmental and Life Sciences.

Tom Brady’s diet is making headlines after his personal chef told Boston.com the details of what he eats. Brady is apparently so diligent about nutrition that he avoids white sugar, white flour, iodized salt, eggplant, tomatoes, and fruit.

I love Touchdown Tommy. I’m a generational Patriots fan. But as a nutrition Ph.D., I was embarrassed to read about his diet.

Here’s the thing: Brady’s diet and training is managed by a man named Alex Guerrero, who is not a nutritionist or a doctor. Guerrero did, however, get in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission for pretending to be a doctor on TV while trying to sell a greens supplement that “cured terminal cancer.”

… Research increasingly suggests that each of us is unique in the way we absorb and metabolize nutrients. This dawning realization has scientists, and entrepreneurs, scrambling to provide more effective nutritional advice based on such distinguishing factors as genetic makeup, gut bacteria, body type and chemical exposures.

“The same dietary advice cannot be good for everyone, because we are all different,” said Eran Elinav, an immunologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. “This is why we have failed so miserably at controlling the obesity epidemic.”

Whey and soy are two of the most popular protein powders out there. But which one is the better choice for you? Below we look at the research on how these two proteins stack up against each other in helping you meet three common goals: shedding body fat, building muscle, and boosting testosterone.

In need of inspiration for your new-year diet? We caught up with Head of Sports Science Alek Gross to discuss the eating habits of Southampton’s players.

Based on NFL game data we try to predict the outcome of a play in multiple different ways. An application of this is the following: by plugging in various play options one could determine the best play for a given situation in real time. While the outcome of a play can be described in many ways we had the most promising results with a newly defined measure that we call “progress”. We see this work as a first step to include predictive analysis into NFL playcalling.

Researchers found that an estimated 63.8% of college sports-related injuries occurred during practices, according to data published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

CDC and external researchers reviewed injury data from the academic years of 2009 to 2010 through 2013 to 2014 and also identified sports in which injuries were more common.

“Data from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Injury Surveillance Program indicate that, among men’s sports, the highest injury rates are in football and wrestling,” Zachary Y. Kerr, PhD, MPH, an injury epidemiologist and director of the NCAA Injury Surveillance Program, and colleagues wrote. “For women, the highest injury rates are in soccer and gymnastics.”

… [Jim] Pinkerton’s working philosophy, which he later captured in his book What Comes Next, was also about building new models. Specifically, it centered around one question: If we weren’t already doing it this way, do you think this is the way we would do it? It was the first time in DePodesta’s life that he had thought about the world in such a way, and it would become the underlying premise of his whole career.

Pinkerton intended his ideology to reimagine government and the economy, but for the past two decades DePodesta has used it to build a new way of understanding baseball. As an assistant general manager to Billy Beane with the Oakland Athletics, he was a central figure in Moneyball, the book that became an animating force for a new generation of sports minds and executives. Labeled a sabermetric whiz, he spent the past five years at the helm of the Mets’ farm system, shuttling around the country to scout amateur players—the kind of old-school grunt work that Moneyball was supposed to make obsolete. Last week, he moved to the NFL, as the new chief strategy officer for the Cleveland Browns. While the news shocked most, the new position fits DePodesta well. His grander worldview—he’s also dabbled in healthcare and finance—has always pushed him out of baseball; this is just his latest challenge.

“I always felt those other things were informing me and making me a better executive,” DePodesta told VICE Sports this week in his first interview since joining the Browns.

Wharton’s Katherine Milkman talks to author Richard Thaler about the history of behavioral economics.

In the new book Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, Richard Thaler, coauthor of Nudge and a behavioral science and economics professor at the University of Chicago, recounts his struggle to change the way traditional economists look at the impact of human psychology on economics. Wharton operations, information and decisions professor Katherine Milkman recently spoke with Thaler about why he wrote the book, where behavioral economics has had the most impact, and which decision-making bias he would remove if he had a magic wand. [audio, 19:12]

This article discusses recent cases of alleged misappropriation, infringement, and/or theft of sports analytics intellectual property. First, it discusses the federal court case National Football Scouting v. Rang and analyzes the copyright and trade secret disputes at issue in that case. Second, it discusses the recent hacking of and theft from the Houston Astros’ proprietary database and analyzes the potential legal ramifications of the same under trade secret law and the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.