Applied Sports Science newsletter – February 11, 2016

… Over the previous 12 months, Keys had cracked the Top 20 on tour and made herself a threat at the Grand Slam tournaments. Along the way, she had made many American tennis fans believe that there might actually be a future for the sport in this country after Serena Williams retires.

Yet in the off-season, Keys had surprised the tennis world by splitting with former No. 1 Lindsay Davenport, the coach who many credited with her breakthrough. She hired a new, full-time team. Keys would be 21 the following month—had she left her slyly, shyly sarcastic teenage self behind?

Maybe. Or maybe not.

Do you remember that match when Messi scored from an outrageous bicycle-kick? No? Well, me neither. Okay, let’s try another one: how about when he scored a 40 yard screamer? You know, the one that went right into the top corner? Thing is, I don’t. And I hope you don’t either, because Messi has never scored a goal like that. Of course, it could very well be a coincidence that not a single goal of the hundreds of goals in Messi’s career, fits these descriptions. I think it isn’t. I think these observations point to something more fundamental about ‘La Pulga’ and why he truly is a one-of-a-kind genius. They tell us something about the rationality inherent in Lionel Messi’s game.

People call Messi’s way of playing football all kinds of things: magic, extraterrestrial, genius, unbelievable, or even magisterial (Hi there, Ray). None of what I’m gonna say is meant to challenge these characterisations. True, Messi’s game is often, and I mean: very, very often, spectacular, but at the same time, the following statement holds true: it’s never more spectacular than it needs to be. When Messi goes for the spectacular, it’s always as a means to an end, never as an end in itself. If he can score a goal the easy way, he will do so. If there’s an obvious pass to be played, he will do so. If dribbling through four opponents, for once, isn’t the best option, be sure that he won’t try it but do the sensible thing instead. If you see him scoring some wonder goal after dribbling past six players, I basically guarantee you that doing so was the best option available to him. My point is: Messi doesn’t overcomplicate things. He is genius, not coupled with madness, but with rationality.

… At this point, Curry’s trajectory was just depressing: In his first NBA season after the original procedure, he suffered five ankle sprains while playing in a mere 26 games.

“He was turning his ankle in completely nontraditional, crazy ways,” Warriors general manager Bob Myers says. One time, Curry turned it while hopping into a passing lane during a preseason game against the Lakers. Another time, he was dribbling upcourt against the Spurs, with no one around, only to have his right foot fishtail like an old tire on black ice. “It was scary,” Myers says. “I’d never seen someone sprain his ankle like that prior to Steph. And I haven’t seen it since.”

The coach education courses are coming thick and fast. Nearly every weekend from January to May I will be delivering to coaches either of the first two stages of a fantastic curriculum developed by the Swedish FA. Each group I work with is unique. Coaches between the ages of 16 and 55 sit in the same room discussing, personal experiences, training design, how we meet the child’s physical and emotional needs and the many issues that are presently polarising the debate around child and youth sport in Sweden. Opinions come in many shades as experiential knowledge and socio-cultural factors are so varied. This leads to many rich and rewarding discussions and hopefully with the material provided during the course helps guide the coaches (and me) towards developing a more informed opinion.

One thing that I have been reflecting on from leading these courses (with the aim of deepening my understanding of how the learner learns and how learning occurs) is the praising of effort by coaches.

… how do players develop this communication when the coach is yelling constantly from the sideline? His behaviors that are aimed at short-term success (the immediate possession, game, tournament) interfere with his long-term goals (player communication). To develop the player communication that he desires, at some point, he must risk a loss (of possession, a game, or tournament) and be quiet to enable/force the players to fill the gap.

Because the players have been coached in this manner for some time, it is unlikely to be a quick fix. It is not a matter of the coach keeping silent, and the players immediately filling the void. The players currently are reliant on the coach for constant instruction and feedback, and they need to break this habit. One game or one tournament is unlikely to be sufficient to see permanent change.

U.S. Soccer announced a series of overhauls in coaching education and the structure of the youth game in 2015, which will begin to take root in 2016. The significant changes in licensing courses and new youth initiatives take from successful models around the world and, officials say, will eventually allow a uniquely American system that pulls the United States forward.

“None of it is about copying what happens in other countries,” Ryan Mooney, who oversaw the changes as U.S. Soccer director of sport development, told SI.com. “It’s really about bringing in different perspectives, bringing in international expertise, people that have proven track records of developing coaches, educating coaches in a very professional manner and at a very high level and creating something that is uniquely American.”

The sporting dilemma. Nick Levett, Talent Identification Manager at The FA, discusses the moral questions that sport can throw up. Whether it’s within or outside of the rules of the code, when does winning become the focus and should it be at all costs?

… In her comprehensive analysis, rote learning and testing come under as much fire as their opposite: permissive environments “fueled by gauzy fantasies of a more wholesome and child-focused world” absent of any adult guidance. Christakis is calling for an idyllic middle ground.

“It’s not simply inadequate resources or a faulty moral compass that explains the state of early education,” she writes. It is “a lack of understanding of how children actually grow and learn.” Many early educators, she argues — including parents — have lost sight of the most important factor in any learning environment: kids themselves and our relationships with them.

… Many coaches talk frequently about culture. It is important. It is necessary for success. Without it, you can’t win. With it, the world is your oyster. In many ways, a good culture is the holy grail of athletics. However, despite confirmation regarding the value of culture it is still an illusive moving target for many. So what really is culture? To begin my exploration, first, I must employe inverse logic.

… “Under Armour is undefeated,” Plank jokes, perched on a high wooden chair during a live streamed interview with Fortune assistant managing editor Adam Lashinsky two days before the big game.

Today, more than 70% of Under Armour’s revenue comes from apparel, says Plank, a former University of Maryland football player who started the company in 1996 out of frustration with his undershirts. But Plank’s attention is clearly on a new part of Under Armour’s business: technology. [video, 23:03]

Automation isn’t just for blue-collar workers anymore. Computers are now taking over tasks performed by professional workers, raising fears of massive unemployment. Some people, such as the MIT professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, identify automation as a cause of the slow recovery from the Great Recession and the “hollowing out of the middle class.” Others see white-collar automation as causing a level of persistent technological unemployment that demands policies that would redistribute wealth. Robot panic is in full swing.

But these fears are misplaced—what’s happening with automation is not so simple or obvious. It turns out that workers will have greater employment opportunities if their occupation undergoes some degree of computer automation. As long as they can learn to use the new tools, automation will be their friend.

It’s hard to believe that it has been a year since I had the privilege to attend and speak at the Danish Sports Kongres in Copenhagen which I wrote about here. As I’ve mentioned before this conference is one of, if not the best that I have ever attended over the years, both in content and company, and this years was even better

… Alabama has one of the most talent-rich rosters in college football and is led by one of the greatest and most successful coaches in college football history, Nick Saban.

The Tide also has the benefit of having what Saban said he believes is “the best medical staff in the country.”

You would be hard-pressed to find any medical team in the country or even in the NFL doing a better job of getting players back from serious injuries and preventing avoidable injuries altogether.

… exciting new research now shows that the gut microbiome can affect bone strength in both animal models and humans.

Some of the best evidence for this link comes from studying mice that were raised in sterile environments. These “germ-free mice” are known to have greatly reduced microbiomes, and have been an extremely useful model system for studying the effects of the microbiome on various diseases.

IBM announced today that is has teamed with the Toronto Raptors to bring cognitive analysis in the form of IBM Watson to the NBA team’s talent evaluation process.

The new tool called IBM Sports Insights Central, pulls in data from a variety of sources including statistics, video, social networking sentiment analysis, medical records and much more. It compares this data against the team’s needs, a player’s likelihood of succeeding, staying healthy and working well with coaches and teammates for the duration of the contract.