Applied Sports Science newsletter – February 15, 2016

… THE GROUP EFFORT to push Kobe Bryant to the court this season is done for reasons that are far more complicated than they first appear.

It all begins with a dedicated army of physical therapists, massage therapists and trainers that battles daily to keep him upright with methods both high-tech and low-grade. A mini jackhammer known as the Raptor, which came on the market in December 2015, is used to blast through Bryant’s scar tissue at 3,600 percussions per minute, to shake his muscles awake. A vibrating foam roller known as the Vyper, first available in 2014, helps his sore muscles relax. Before every game, a soup made from bone broth rebuilds his battered joint surfaces. After the final buzzer, a low-sugar chocolate milk aids his muscle and tissue recovery.

If there’s time before a game or after, Bryant’s Fusionetics therapist, Michael Oviedo, who blends preventative therapy with cutting-edge technology, completes a 10-point range-of-motion assessment, from big toe to shoulder. Using something called a goniometer, Oviedo measures whether Bryant’s ankles bend at least 20 degrees, the optimal target; if they don’t, Oviedo massages the soft tissue around the guard’s ankles and into his calves, relaxing the muscles until he can move as desired. As Oviedo takes measurements, he punches his findings into the Fusionetics app on his iPad, which spits back suggestions on treatment.

… “I overthink everything,” [Simone Biles] said. “And I have to try not to.”

Dealing with that pressure to live up to expectations could make an athlete more confident, or cause her to crumble. With the Olympics on the horizon, and getting closer by the day, how is Biles handling that mounting stress?

She has a plan that requires taking baby steps toward Rio, and trying not to worry about what’s at stake there.

Whenever skeletal muscle insults occur, both by functional impositions or other injury forms, skeletal muscle repair (SMR) follows. The SMR succeeds when proper skeletal muscle regeneration and limited fibrosis ensue. Muscle fiber replenishment by fibrosis negatively affects the tissue quality and functionality and, furthermore, represents the worst post-injury phenotypic adaptation. Acute muscle injury treatment commonly follows the RICE method—rest, ice, compression, and elevation. This immediate immobilization seems to be beneficial to preserving the tissue structure and avoiding further destruction; however, if these interventions are delayed, the risk of muscle atrophy and its deleterious-related effects increase, with resultant impaired SMR. Moreover, a growing body of evidence shows positive skeletal muscle loading (SML) effects during SMR since it seems to effectively increase satellite cells (SCs) in their activation, proliferation, self-renewal, and differentiation capacities. Additionally, recent data show that SML may also influence the functions of other participants in SMR, compelling SMR to achieve less fibrotic accretion and accelerated muscle mass recovery. Moreover, given the SML effects on SCs, it is plausible to consider that these can increase the myofibers’ basal myogenic potential. Thus, it seems relevant to scrutinize the possible acute and chronic SML therapeutic and prophylactic effects regarding the SMR process.

SVSP Sport & Performance Psychologist Kacey Oiness, Ph.D., HSPP, consults with athletes of all ability levels and ages. Invariably, one thing they have in common is goals. She’s compiled a few tips to make sure you set yours the right way.

Goals are often the unconscious motivators for our athletic endeavors and goal-setting is a vital part of an athlete’s mental training preparation. Having an athlete actively involved in the development of their future goals is one way to keep them engaged in their sport. By giving them some degree of control over their goals and taking responsibility for their progress as an athlete, we are allowing them to become accountable and remain invested. It is also important that we assist athletes in not only setting goals, but in setting SMART goals. Smart goals include goals that are Specific, Measurable, Adjustable, Realistic, and Timely.

Not every point in tennis holds the same weight. In basketball, football—most sports, in fact—every point or run harbors the same value, you just add them up. Tennis, though, has more pressure points. Game points. Set points. Match points. Championship points. Win a set point and you may have just earned half of all you needed to win the match.

“That is an enormous swing on one point,” says Allen Fox, former pro player and author of Tennis: Winning the Mental Match. “It doesn’t happen in other sports. It would be the same thing, if in basketball, you said after every five minutes the next basket counts 10 points. Gee, that is a big swing. In tennis, all or nothing swings increase the pressure so players have to be particularly disciplined to handle choking.”

Dealing with that pressure while on the court in a virtual island of your own thoughts requires mental training as much as physical training.

The GSK Human Performance Lab (HPL) has announced an exciting new partnership with Commonwealth Silver medal-winning GB sprinter, Jodie Williams, to help support her preparations in the lead up to Rio 2016.

Jodie, 22, celebrates a prodigious career as a former junior athlete after winning several World Youth and Junior titles, and is now transitioning smoothly on to the senior stage, winning silver at the Commonwealth Games and European Championships in 2014 in the 200m; her aims firmly set on qualification for the final in the 200m in Rio.

After visiting the GSK HPL for the first time in December, Jodie met with the lab’s scientists to discuss specific performance questions which she hopes to find the answers to by using the latest techniques in sport science, combined with the wealth of expertise offered by the HPL’s scientists. Training 6 days a week with multiple sessions a day across the track, gym and technical drills, it is imperative that Jodie’s body can meet the demands of the physical stress placed upon it through specific training, recovery and nutrition strategies, which the HPL’s scientists will aim to provide.

Creator is FocusMotion’s incredible machine learning tool that lets you add new movements, exercises, or gestures to the FocusMotion library and deploy them to your users.

What can Creator do?

You can use Creator to count and track new movements. It’s a powerful machine learning platform that can be taught new patterns and movements.

At this year’s MD&M West show, lots of material suppliers talked about new formulations for wearables and things that stick to the skin, whether it’s adhesives, wound dressings, skin patches and other drug delivery devices, or medical electronics of various kinds.

Suppliers are developing more skin-sensitive materials and processes for all types of wearable medical devices. At the show, I also heard about the continuing trends in tougher, more cost-effective materials for disposable devices, especially devices using various methods for drug delivery, as well as plastics that resist sterilization and disinfectants for reusable devices.

This weekend at the NBA All-Star Game, we’ll witness the starting points of a new revolution taking place in sports. More than ever, everything in sports is becoming digital and measurable. This will fundamentally change everything we know about the way athletes perform?—?and the arenas in which they compete.

Call it the digitization of sports. Digitization is a big word that’s thrown around a lot today, but when it’s used with sports, it’s truly transformational. It means that everything we do in a sport can now be captured as a piece of data. Data like we’ve never experienced it before. The tiniest details of play?—?from an athlete’s elbow angle on a free throw to the vertical on a slam dunk?—?can be measured and broadcast in real time.

Sweat can reveal more than an impression of one’s personal hygiene habits.

Someday in the not-too-distant future, sweat-monitoring devices might be able to tell how healthy a person is, thanks in part to groundbreaking work under way at the University of Arizona.

A lab at the UA’s Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine is working to develop devices to monitor a subject’s health by measuring biological markers in sweat such as salts, proteins, fats and hormones.

Warm weather is on its way across the country — really, it is, I promise — and so are spring marathons, meaning that many people soon will begin a new or augmented running program. Many also will wind up sidelined by injury. But a new study suggests that being light on your feet could keep most runners healthy.

Running injuries are extremely common, with some statistics estimating that as many as 90 percent of runners miss training time every year due to injury.

But the underlying cause of many of these injuries remains in question. Past studies and popular opinion have blamed increased mileage, excess body weight, over-striding, modern running shoes, going barefoot, weak hips, diet, and rough pavement or trails. But most often, studies have found that the best indicator of a future injury is a past one, which, frankly, is not a helpful conclusion for runners hoping not to get hurt.

A growing number of athletes use painkillers such as ibuprofen on a daily basis, viewing them as a pre-emptive strike against muscle soreness, but is it a good idea? Peta Bee investigates.

It’s the middle of winter, and the days are dark and cold. But you’re still training intensely and eating clean to get ready for your upcoming competition. Unfortunately, there is one vitamin no amount of clean eating can fix, especially in athletes. New research suggests maintaining the right levels of vitamin D may improve several elements of performance, including your VO2 max, sprint capacity, and power production.

Getting ready for this final stretch of Denzel Valentine’s college basketball career started over the summer, and it started with a focus on what he was eating.

The Michigan State senior guard took a renewed approach to his nutrition starting after last season. That meant eating smaller dinners and very little at night, cutting out fried foods, counting carbohydrates and switching from juices and sports drinks to water only for hydration.

The goal was to become leaner and increase his energy level. As his role with Michigan State has increased and increased, that change in his intake has paid off.

Mark Cuban, Dallas Mavericks owner, comments on how he uses data and analytics during an interview with Bloomberg’s Stephanie Ruhle on “Bloomberg Markets.”