Applied Sports Science newsletter – January 27, 2016

… “I can guard Draymond,” Gobert said. “And then he has to guard me. We are quick enough to play against lineups like that.”

The sports science is encouraging. Favors and Gobert are among the two best athletic specimens officials ever seen at the P3 clinic in Santa Barbara, where the Jazz and other teams send players for testing. Favors set its all-time record for total force generated pushing sideways off one leg, a key basketball movement, and he can reach his peak vertical jumping height 45 percent faster than he did as a rookie, said Marcus Elliott, the founder of P3. “And believe me, we’ve had some beasts in here,” Elliott said.

Gobert walked in as one of the most elastic bigs P3 officials had ever observed. When big men jump down off a box and hit the floor, they tend to land with a thud, lose all their momentum and summon a weak second jump on the way back up. Not Gobert. He’s so fluid that he eases into the floor, gains speed, and jumps higher the second time, Elliott said.

… The overall workload of Premier League teams significantly outweighs that of their counterparts in Germany, Italy, France, and Spain. Beyond the Bundesliga’s five-week interlude, from Dec. 20 clubs in Ligue 1 got to rest their legs until Jan. 8, while Serie A sides had two fewer days off and those in La Liga were idle until Dec. 30.

With the Bundesliga featuring just 18 teams, seasons contain 74 fewer matches than their Premier League equivalent. Moreover, the absence of a Christmas schedule contrasts to England, in which top-division clubs had to negotiate three games between Dec. 26 and Jan. 2, before a New Year fixture list that will incorporated two midweek rounds by Feb. 3.

Such an onerous workload has forced Klopp to select teams from a collection of the walking wounded, plus, in the FA Cup, teenagers and fringe players.

They seemed like sensible changes: giving big-time college athletes, many of whom spend more than 40 hours a week on their sports, a true day off per week — certain hours when coaches couldn’t make them practice — and more downtime after the season.

But the ideas, part of a package of new rules proposed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, did not come up for a vote at the association’s annual convention here on Friday. Instead, leaders of the five most powerful conferences resolved to vote on the measures next year, with the possibility of introducing a more comprehensive set of changes.

The delay rubbed several students the wrong way.

… How important was this move by the club and how do you envision Paul, Chris Leitch [technical director] and yourself integrating the program from the Academy through to the first team?

Kinnear: “I think it is important that your head academy guy, and Chris Leitch falls into this category as well, has played professional soccer, specifically American soccer. They know the situations that young players go through. Paul played college soccer at Santa Clara [University], so he knows that system. He coached at UC Santa Cruz before moving on to Cal Poly, so understands the challenges of recruiting, as well as what it takes to look for young players through connections with club soccer. It’s good to have him here.

“If you look at his record through the years and the way he wants his teams play, you can see foremost that he is a teacher, which is a good thing. He knows what these players are going through and what they need to go through to get to college and improve their game or, say, become a homegrown player for us. He’s new to the professional game, but I’ve known him well and know that he has a deep love for the game.

In an nod to the Rolling Stones one has to wonder if time, meaning time to be actual college students while dealing with the rigor that is college athletics, is really on the side of college athletes. According to recent NCAA report entitled the NCAA GOALS Study of the Student Athlete Experience Initial Summary of Findings, published in January 2016, it is clear that college athletes at all divisions in the NCAA structure are spending more, much more than the mandate of no more than 20 hours a week on athletically related activities. For example, the average NCAA Division 1 athlete reports spending an average of 34 hours per week on athletically related activities, with FBS football players reporting an average of 39 hours plus per week. Even more stunning is many are reporting spending as much time on their sport in the off-season as they do in-season.

At the 2016 NCAA Convention, the delegates punted on any legislation designed to free up some well-deserved free hours away from athletically related activities for college athletes. Many reasons were given for not enacting any legislation this year but predictably the responses ranged from “need more study” to “forming (yet another) another working group of mostly non-competing athletes, re: administrators to make the decisions. I feel it is just another delay to figure out to give the athletes more free time without sacrificing competitive equity. Good luck with trying to do that. It does not need to be so complicated.

… As teams and the sabermetric public are on the hunt for new insights, there’s a natural assumption to make: that the next answers lie within the information we can’t yet see. If only we knew the spin on the slider, we might understand the strikeouts. There are two issues with this approach. On one hand, the presumption that the new level of detail will contain those exact details which reveal further truth, for example, that significant elements which determine strikeouts are contained within the particular information Trackman is providing, and not within other areas not captured. On the other side of that coin is the simple and fundamental truth that the most valuable insights in sabermetrics have come not from new data sources, but by re-imagining elements of the performance record which already existed in sufficient detail.

… The German game philosophy prioritizes the role of the team over the individual role of a player, thus diminishing the over-reliance on any major star. The team learns to improvise and respond to any situation or opponent, and can adapt its style within a game. An individual player may play his position, but can adapt to the role required of him based on the situation of the game; this adjustment is quite typical past the center line, between midfielders and strikers. This is part of the core philosophy that the coaches hoped to inculcate in the newly formed team for World Cup 2014.

It was a real challenge for the coaches of the DFB (Deutscher Fußball-Bund in German, for the German Football Association) to instill and cultivate this team spirit, given the players got to practice together as a team for a mere 50-plus days before the big event (this included the friendly matches). Moreover, the final roster was not set until May 20, 2014, and even after that date, three to four more players were released.

The players needed to fulfill their obligations to their European club teams for the 2013–2014 season, limiting their preparation time for the World Cup. As a result, the interactions among players, coaches and scouts were more or less “virtual” through most of the year. The coaches wanted to foster more of a familial bond among the players through constant communication with them or among them.

Ken Kruger SEAS ’12 and Houtan Fanisalek SEAS ’12 founded SensorKit after noticing a underutilization of the sensors found in consumer electronics. With a combined 12 years of experience in sensor systems, they journeyed to unlock the true potential of the wearable tech market.

SensorKit is a software platform that enables developers to detect user movements and activities via an API. Currently, wearable devices can count your steps, track your sleep and tell you how far you ran. However, these devices really have primitive capabilities. SensorKit is taking activity detection to a more granular level so devices can detect specific movements, like a bench press or pushup, and count sets, reps, and resting times along with a variety of other metrics.

On a construction site across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie stood in the middle of an unfinished building.

It’s the location of the 76ers new $80 million, 120,000-square feet practice facility and business offices. No courts yet. No locker rooms. Just an empty two-floor structure with beams and stairs that is scheduled to be completed before training camp opens in the fall.

Standing on what will be the location of a practice court, Hinkie envisions his ideal scenario. It’s September, players are in town ahead of training camp, working out. They are on the court, in the weight and conditioning room, in the hydrotherapy pools. Perhaps doing yoga or getting a massage.

If we get hurt, we go to the hospital. But what if we could avoid getting hurt in the first place? Jack James is a professor in the Psychology Department at Reykjavik University and the author of a recently published book called The Health of Populations: Beyond Medicine. According to Dr. James, healthcare is dominated by strong beliefs that biological understanding is the foundation for promoting health and preventing illness.

“What this book shows is that despite the importance of biological understanding, health in all societies is more closely related to behavioral and social factors,” he says. “There is a large gap between the claims made in support of medicine and the actual success of medical care. Optimal health will be achieved only by replacing medicine as the dominant form of healthcare to being an adjunct to preventive behavioral, legislative, and social interventions.”

When college football players get hurt some players claim the teams’ interests are placed above their own.

After the success of the 2015 edition, Isokinetic Medical Group, in collaboration with FIFA F-MARC, decided to celebrate in London the 25th Anniversary of its conference that will be entitled “Return to play”.

It will be held from Saturday 9 April to Monday 11 April 2016, once again in the large and highly renowned venue Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, in order to welcome the international Faculty and more than 2,000 participants from all around the world.

Return to play is a wide topic of inherent interest for all the field experts and this is why it will be discussed by sharing different points of view and across different disciplines: through this multidisciplinary approach it will be possible to achieve a deeper understanding of the whole sports medicine and rehabilitation process.

The attention to both professional and amateur athlete safety has grown rapidly in the past few years. Several retired football players have stated their regret over playing. The NFL settled in court over a law suit that they were hiding information about the dangers of concussions to players, although appeals are ongoing. Sports-related concussions account for 58% of all emergency department visits for children between 8 and 13 years old, according a report from the National Athletic Trainers’ Association.

Enter Christine Baugh, a Harvard University student pursuing a doctorate in health policy with a concentration in ethics. Named one of FORBES’ 30 Under 30 in sports, Christine is looking to apply her research to better the health and quality of life for athletes, being a former collegiate athlete herself. Check out the Q&A below to learn more about Christine, her research, and the state of the sports medicine industry.

… The numbers logged in Nash’s Fitbit, or printed on the food labels that Haelle reads religiously, are at best good guesses. Worse yet, as scientists are increasingly finding, some of those calorie counts are flat-out wrong—off by more than enough, for instance, to wipe out the calories Haelle burns by running an extra mile on a treadmill. A calorie isn’t just a calorie. And our mistaken faith in the power of this seemingly simple measurement may be hindering the fight against obesity.

Knowledge workers have largely suffered in silence or grumbled in private because their chances of promotion have come to be influenced by their willingness to collaborate. But a backlash is setting in.