Applied Sports Science newsletter – March 14, 2016

Chris Coghlan played for Theo Epstein’s Chicago Cubs last year. Now he’s on Billy Beane’s Oakland A’s.

Coghlan knows what this means. Two of the more sabermetrically inclined front-office bosses in the game have sought out his services on the free-agent market, and for good reason.

“These guys are very strategic about how they do moves,” Coghlan said on Friday morning at the A’s Spring Training complex at Hohokam Stadium before Oakland defeated the Reds, 9-4. “It’s not a coincidence or a fluke that I ended up over here. I think that they value what I can bring to the table and how I can help the team win daily in a lot of different roles and a lot of different ways. I embrace that, and I’m grateful for that.”

Aaron Ramsey’s latest thigh injury continues a worrying trend for the Arsenal midfielder, whose body has yet to prove it can cope with an extended run of consecutive games.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger had expressed concern about Ramsey’s history of muscular injuries even before Tuesday’s FA Cup game at Hull, saying they had usually come after playing several games in quick succession.

We analysed the time course of recovery of creatine kinase (CK) and countermovement jump (CMJ) parameters after a football match, and correlations between changes in these variables and match time–motion parameters (GPS-accelerometry) in 15 U-19 elite male players. Plasma CK and CMJ height (CMJH), average concentric force (CMJCON) and average eccentric force (CMJECC) were assessed 2 h before and 30 min, 24 h and 48 h post-match. There were substantially higher CK levels 30 min, 24 h and 48 h (ES: 0.43, 0.62, 0.40, respectively), post-match. CMJECC (ES: ?0.38), CMJH (ES: ?0.35) decreased 30 min post, CMJCON (ES: ?0.35), CMJECC (ES: ?0.35) and CMJH (ES: ?1.35) decreased 24 h post, and CMJCON (ES: ?0.41) and CMJH (ES: ?0.53) decreased 48 h post. We found correlations between distance covered at velocities ?21 km · h?1 and changes in CK at 24 h (r = 0.56) and at 48 h (r = 0.54) and correlations between CK and distance covered >14 km · h?1 (r = 0.50), accelerations (r = 0.48), and decelerations (r = 0.58) at 48 h. Changes in CMJCON 30 min and 24 h post (both r = ?0.68) correlated with impacts >7.1·G. Decelerations >2 m · s?2 correlated with changes CMJCON (r = ?0.49) at 48 h and CMJECC (r = ?0.47) at 30 min. Our results suggest that match GPS-accelerometry parameters may predict muscle damage and changes in components of neuromuscular performance immediately and 24–48 h post-match.

For months, the Hurricanes have prepared for this moment, for this week and beyond.

There have been countless offseason and conditioning workouts. Hours of shooting drills and practices.

They’ve spent time watching film and studying opponents, opponents they faced in the regular season and with whom they could match up against in Washington, D.C., at the ACC Tournament.

But when the 11th-ranked Miami men’s basketball team takes the floor at the Verizon Center late Thursday night against Virginia Tech in its tournament opener, the Hurricanes hope they’ll have another advantage in their arsenal — a ready-made rest and recovery program specifically designed for each of their players thanks to months of research and a gadget called the Omegawave.

There is a strong contingent of coaches out there that swear by the effectiveness of mat drills. Going beyond the typical weight room work outs, not only are mat drills typically a great, intense workout, but they’re also built to help forge mentally tough teams while also creating bonds among teammates.

When 5AM rolls around down at Miami, the equipment staff are busy setting up mat drills, and the players are starting to roll into the locker room, and that’s where mat drills start at The U. Richt provided an explanation of their approach to mat drills at Miami in a video that the ‘Canes recently rolled out

“Mat drills are drills, done on a mat, that have to be done just right. The drills themselves are not that scientific, or anything that’s new, but how we go about doing it is important.”

What do you feel are the most important habits to get into a young player?

I think it depends on the individual but in terms of a priority, personally I would emphasise a huge focus on establishing a mentality to play forward. This sounds simple but in the modern game I think it is commonly accepted at many clubs that players circulate, play backwards, bounce when pressed or in 1v1s, shield and protect rather than outplay to retain.

Are you focused on the right stuff?

Believe me I know very little about the brain so if you have a P.H.D. in brainy stuff just humor me.

Apparently, we all have a RAS (Reticular Activating System), which is a part of the brain that filters information collected from our senses. Actually most data to which we are exposed does not make it through this filter, which is good considering I struggle to keep up with the small bits that do.

“The moment you consciously choose to become aware of something specific within your environment, is the moment the RAS goes to work and begins filtering through anything and everything that is associated or connected to your desired intention.

Even our most practiced movements are imperfect. When pro basketball players shoot free throws, they need to release the ball the same way every time. But they still miss game-winning shots.

The reason for this frustration, according to a new study by neuroscientists at Duke University, is in how we sense the world. The response of a given neuron varies in its activity even when we see exactly the same scene — essentially producing a certain kind of brain noise that affects our responding movements. These new findings are published April 6 in the journal Neuron.

“Understanding the noise in the nervous system and how it can work to cause inaccuracies in movement is a critical step in understanding how we move,” said the study’s senior investigator Stephen Lisberger, chair of neurobiology at Duke University School of Medicine.

We fear high innings counts. We fear pitchers throwing too many innings during a single calendar year. We have high-profile agents publicly expressing concern for pitchers throwing in the postseason. These agents meet with players, general managers, doctors, and the media trying to find the proper innings limits for their clients, and understandably so.

This is all part of the politics of baseball and seems like the most important decision all parties can make for the sake of the health of the pitcher, until one reads Posner et al on the “Epidemiology of Major League Baseball Injuries.” In this initially counterintuitive study, the researchers concluded that injuries are highest not at the end of the season when pitchers hit the 200 innings mark, but rather at the beginning of the season, as evidenced by the chart and data below. Note: the September data can be ignored as teams have no incentive to place a player on the disabled list during roster expansion.

An international team of researchers lead by the University of Granada (UGR) has scientifically proven, for the first time, that depression is more than a mental disorder: it causes important alterations of the oxidative stress, so it should be considered a systemic disease, since it affects the whole organism.

The results of this work, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, could explain the significant association that depression has with cardiovascular diseases and cancer, and why people suffering from depression die younger. At the same time, this research may help finding new therapeutic targets for the prevention and treatment of depression.

Researchers who have analyzed America’s eating habits say they can sum up what’s wrong with our diet in just two words: ultra-processed foods.

These foods — a group that includes frozen pizzas, breakfast cereals and soda — make up 58% of all calories Americans consume in a typical day. Not only that, they delivered 90% of the added sugars that Americans ate and drank, according to a study published Wednesday in the medical journal BMJ Open.

Nutrition continues to be a much discussed topic amongst marathon runners. Questions about what to eat before, during, and after the race are commonly asked by beginners and even advanced runners. Here is a quick guide to getting your nutrition for your marathon just right.

Interestingly, the story does not start in the week before the race, like training it starts many weeks before the event! After a race it also seems to be one of the main topics, especially for runners who did not achieve their goals or had problems along the way.

Training and nutrition are the two of the most important factors determining performance on race day. Most runners spend many hours per week training, planning, and preparing their training sessions… but how much time is spent on nutrition? Often, nutrition is taken for granted and this could jeopardize all the hours and days of hard training.

Injury prevention in the NBA is an oxymoron. That’s the problem with injuries: They can’t be prevented because they can’t be predicted. But what if they could?

That’s the premise of a new research paper being presented at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference this week. The study attempts to predict NBA injuries in order to prevent them—and it claims that resting the 20% of players above a certain risk threshold could avert 60% of injuries.

“You can either lose a player for two months, or you can lose him for one game,” said Hisham Talukder, a co-author of the study and data scientist at Dow Jones, which owns The Wall Street Journal.

The most injured team was it again in 2015, for the third straight year. The Giants defied logic — and the odds — by again finishing dead last in Football Outsiders’ Adjusted Games Lost (AGL) metric.

And the Giants didn’t just finish last, they blew away the field, despite the devastation suffered by teams such as the New England Patriots, Baltimore Ravens and Washington Redskins.
Jordan Raanan’s mock draft pick for the Giants is …
The Giants finished with an AGL of 138.7 in 2015. That was 0.6 worse than the previous year, when they also finished dead last. The Giants had 22 players finish the season on the injured reserve or physically unable to perform lists.

… As Murray suggests, at an on-field level it’s now widely accepted that strategies need to be coherently formed and articulated. However, at a boardroom level – where there is less visibility and therefore less obvious accountability – there is still the tendency to slip into generic turns of phrase.

This particularly applies in devising and communicating a philosophy. We’ll often hear of a club’s commitment to “developing young players” or “playing exciting football”, without knowing how to actually translate these notions into a ‘proper strategy’.

This is where data can be our best friend, a means to assess and validate what we are and aren’t seeing with our own eyes.