Applied Sports Science newsletter – February 29, 2016

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for February 29, 2016

 

Keflezighi sets sights for Rio marathon at age 41

Reuters from February 27, 2016

Meb Keflezighi has run past his humble beginnings, his marathon opponents and his advanced age as he reaches distances only he can see. When the Rio Olympics are held in August, Keflezighi, who turns 41 in May, will be the oldest United States Olympic marathon runner in history. It could be the latest chapter in a career that is finally nearing the finish line.

 

Ravens make strength and conditioning changes – Baltimore Sun

Baltimore Sun from February 26, 2016

The Ravens have long considered their training and practice methods to be cutting edge, but they’ve made recent changes on both fronts this offseason that they hope will help the organization stay ahead of the curve.

Those changes are highlighted by the hiring of Steve Saunders as a “performance coach.” Saunders, a personal trainer who has worked with numerous professional football and baseball players including former Ravens tight end Todd Heap, will represent the “third leg” of the team’s training and conditioning program, Ravens coach John Harbaugh said Thursday.

 

#TrainingLoad16 (with images, tweets) · cudgie · Storify

Storify, cudgie from February 26, 2016

 

How to Learn to Love to Practice

Nautilus from February 25, 2016

In interviews, famous people often say that the key to becoming both happy and successful is to “do what you love.” But mastering a skill, even one that you deeply love, requires a huge amount of drudgery. Any challenging activity—from computer programming to playing a musical instrument to athletics—requires focused and concentrated practice. A perfect golf swing or flawless butterfly stroke takes untold hours of practice (actually around 10,000 hours, according to Malcolm Gladwell) and countless repetitions to perfect.

Anyone who wants to master a skill must run through the cycle of practice, critical feedback, modification, and incremental improvement again, again, and again. Some people seem able to concentrate on practicing an activity like this for years and take pleasure in their gradual improvement. Yet others find this kind of focused, time-intensive work to be frustrating or boring. Why?

 

The Importance of Triangulation | Getting Parents On Board

The Whitehouse Address from February 26, 2016

In the past few years this blog has discussed the importance of coaches in the development of young players. What we haven’t focused on enough is the role of parents. And this is a big neglect, because the role of the parent is arguably the most important. As this article will discuss, parents are the key for players (all children’s) development.

 

This Is Your Brain on Decision-making

Knowledge@Wharton from October 29, 2015

Wharton marketing professor Michael Platt wants to get inside your head. Specifically, he wants to know why people make the decisions that they do and what influences those decisions.

Platt’s latest research looks at the confluence of factors involved in decision-making — from the primitive parts of the brain that respond to the most basic of needs to the push and pull of external forces and opinions. The more we understand about the mechanisms in the brain that influence decision-making, Platt says in this interview with Knowledge@Wharton, the more we can make better decisions. Platt is also a professor of neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and a professor of psychology at Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences.

 

New technology helps NFL conduct more in-depth heart checks

Associated Press from February 26, 2016

One month after Indiana University Health’s new sports cardiology performance lab opened, two new machines are getting their first real workout during the NFL’s scouting combine in Indianapolis.

Doctors can simulate game-time conditions in elite athletes, giving them a better idea how hearts react to stress. The machines allow physicians to put larger athletes who tend to be in better shape than most of the general public on a wider, tougher treadmill and on a specialized bike.

The new machines allow doctors to measure much more than traditional electrocardiograms. The tests can monitor levels of expired oxygen, breaths per minute, and how big the breaths are per minute.

 

Life as an Athletic Trainer: A Balancing Act

Board of Certification for the Athletic Trainer from February 23, 2016

Life has many ways of challenging us. In our personal lives, our professional lives and really in any aspect we can imagine. A question I often find myself asking is, “How can I stop the chaos of life for just a few minutes?”

At first, I didn’t believe it was possible. Especially as a young, entry level Athletic Trainer (AT), it seemed every other night I was working an enormous number of hours, like a record playing around and around with no end in sight. Now don’t get me wrong; I love what I do. But always having to focus on the needs of others can be extremely taxing, both on the body and on the mind.

After being in the profession for a few more years and gaining significant insight in both my professional life and in my emotional maturity, I was able to establish a pattern in my day to day functioning that has helped me exponentially. It is almost as if it is night and day. The solution that personally made a world of difference, was finding a balance.

 

Individualized Nutrition Support Is Crucial to Athletic Performance

Newswise press release, American College of Sports Medicine from February 25, 2016

Nutrition-related factors influence athletic performance, and registered dietitian nutritionists who are also certified specialists in sports dietetics are the best-qualified professionals to assist active adults and competitive athletes, according to a revised position paper from the American College of Sports Medicine, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the Dietitians of Canada.

 

Organized Sport Trajectories from Childhood to Adolescence and Health Associations.

Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise from February 11, 2016

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to identify unique organized sport trajectories from early childhood to late adolescence in an Australian pregnancy cohort, the Raine Study.

Methods: Participation in organized sport was assessed at ages 5, 8, 10, 14, and 17. Physical activity, body composition, and self-rated physical and mental health were assessed at age 20. Latent class analysis was used to identify patterns of sport participation. To assess the internal validity of the trajectory classes, differences in health characteristics between trajectories were analyzed using generalised linear models.

Results: For girls, three trajectory classes were identified: consistent sport participators (47.5%), sport dropouts (34.3%) and sport non-participators (18.1%). For boys, three trajectory classes were identified: consistent sport participators (55.2%), sport dropouts (36.9%), and sport joiners (8.1%). For girls, there were overall differences across trajectory classes in lean body mass (p=.003), lean mass index (p=.06), and physical health (p=.004). For boys, there were differences across classes in physical activity (p=.018), percent body fat (p=.002), lean body mass (p<.001), lean mass index (p<.001), physical health (p=.06), and depression scores (p=0.27).

Conclusion: This study identified unique, sex-specific, trajectories of organized sport participation. The differences in health outcomes between trajectory classes, such as participants with consistent sport participation having more preferable health outcomes at age 20, support the internal validity of the trajectories. Strategies are needed to identify and encourage those in the dropout trajectory to maintain their participation and those in the non-participator or joiner trajectories to join sport earlier. Specifically, interventions to encourage early sport participation in girls and help non-participating boys to join sport during adolescence may help more children receive the benefits of sport participation.

 

Why college football not producing the kind of players NFL wants

The State, Columbia SC from February 24, 2016

These are sunny days for college football, blindingly so.

Television contracts are filling the coffers at a historic rate. Coaches are making CEO salaries. The consumers of the product cannot get enough.

However, one of the jobs of the folks who run the sport is to keep their eyes on the horizon for clouds. There’s the matter of player safety, concussions specifically, and how long the cost-of-attendance scholarship increase will keep the compensation question at bay. And, now, further in the distance, you can add another potential storm – the evaluation issue.

 

More than just smart guys: Harvard’s reputation growing in NFL | SI.com

SI.com, Greg Bishop from February 25, 2016

… The prevailing notion of Harvard’s gridiron prospects has changed in the decade since, as players from the school, like Fitzpatrick, have not only made the pros but reached various levels of NFL success. The thinking has gone from: smart kid, small chance, to: smart kid, real chance.

That culminated in Feb. 2016, when offensive lineman Cole Toner and tight end Ben Braunecker, two prospects out of Harvard, were invited to the NFL Scouting Combine. That’s the most Ivy League players invited in any one year from any one school. Ever. Oh, and that means there are more prospects invited this year from Harvard than from Texas.

“That’s a pretty cool stat,” Toner says. “It’s not an indictment of Texas for me. It’s just a really cool thing for Harvard. It’s a testament to the type of guys we recruit, the type of clout we have. It’s a legitimate program.”

 

The Shrinking Shelf Life of NFL Players – WSJ

Wall Street Journal from February 29, 2016

It would be no surprise if 39-year-old Peyton Manning decides to retire from the NFL after a pro career that began in 1998. But the recent retirements of Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch and Patriots linebacker Jerod Mayo at the age of 29 came as a bit of a shock. Reports that Lions receiver Calvin Johnson at age 30 is also considering stepping away raises a question: Are NFL players having shorter careers?

According to data from Pro-Football-Reference.com, NFL careers are shrinking at an unprecedented rate. From 2008 to 2014, the average NFL career dropped in length by about two and a half years.

 

Performance Analysis Education

LinkedIn, Laura Seth from February 25, 2016

Yesterday I delivered a short presentation at LCFC’s Tactical Insights Conference to give an overview of the newly created Performance Education department at The FA and my role within it as Performance Analysis Education Lead which I have summarised below…

Educational and development opportunities for Performance Analysts and coaches are currently limited, the purpose of my role is to lead the development, delivery and implementation of performance analysis content on the coaching pathway and the development of a performance analysis pathway.

 

Pitchers and the Seven-Month Season

The Hardball Times, Shane Tourtellotte from February 25, 2016

At the end of my last article at THT, “The In-Season Aging Curve,” I indulged in some speculation about whether older pitchers’ skills eroded faster during the playing season than in the offseason. The data I used gave me no grounds for a conclusion either way. Were the erosion to happen faster in-season, though, it raised the unfortunate possibility that pitchers who had longer seasons—meaning those who pitched deep into the postseason—would be worn down by the grind and pitch worse the next season, and possibly beyond.

I teased that I might have more to say on the matter in months to come. Teasing isn’t really nice, so I got to work on the matter right away.

I wound up both narrowing and expanding the question I posed. I looked at just the following year after a heavy postseason workload, and I did not limit myself to older pitchers. This was probably a wise shift, since two of the biggest controversies surrounding pitcher workloads and the postseason in recent years have involved younger hurlers.

 

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