Applied Sports Science newsletter – March 16, 2016

… So, sure, it is remarkable that Richardson’s accuracy has carried over to games, leading all NBA players in three-point shooting (62.9 percent) since the All-Star break, after spending some of the season shuttling back and forth to Sioux Falls. Yet it would be inaccurate to accept that single snapshot as some sort of isolated lightning strike, whether for Richardson or for the franchise as a whole. It would be giving short shrift to the painstaking work that has gone on for years, and is ongoing, toward perfecting the art of developing prospects.

You see, the good that’s happening for rookies Richardson and Justise Winslow, as well as emerging center Hassan Whiteside — and what was happening with combo guard Tyler Johnson prior to shoulder surgery — hasn’t been mere happy happenstance.

… “I could be on the court for two hours and it felt like 10 minutes,” Leonard says. “It made time go by.” Math, his favorite subject, produced a similar effect. He could lose himself in geometry homework, calculating angles and solving problems, not having to deal with big crowds or nosy questions.

“So many people care so much about being popular,” says Jeremy Castleberry, who grew up with Leonard. “He never did.”

As an unassuming sophomore at Canyon Springs High in Moreno Valley, Calif., Kawhi declined to correct a reporter who kept awarding his points to a teammate. “Doesn’t matter,” Leonard told his mom. As a senior at Martin Luther King High in Riverside, he blew off the Nike camp when his peers would have cut up their Kobes for an invitation. “I don’t need the exposure,” he told his AAU coach, Marvin Lea. He ruled out UCLA and USC because San Diego State recruited him first. Still, he was difficult for Aztecs coaches to reach over the phone, leaving them perpetually panicked that he’d renege.

Purpose

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effects of adding strength training to normal endurance training on running performance and running economy in well-trained female athletes. We hypothesized that the added strength training would improve performance and running economy through altered stiffness of the muscle-tendon complex of leg extensors.
Methods

Nineteen female endurance athletes [maximal oxygen consumption (VO2max): 53±3 ml?kg-1?min-1, 5.8 h weekly endurance training] were randomly assigned to either normal endurance training (E, n = 8) or normal endurance training combined with strength training (E+S, n = 11). The strength training consisted of four leg exercises [3 x 4–10 repetition maximum (RM)], twice a week for 11 weeks. Muscle strength, 40 min all-out running distance, running performance determinants and patellar tendon stiffness were measured before and after the intervention.
Results

E+S increased 1RM in leg exercises (40 ± 15%) and maximal jumping height in counter movement jump (6 ± 6%) and squat jump (9 ± 7%, p < 0.05). This was accompanied by increased muscle fiber cross sectional area of both fiber type I (13 ± 7%) and fiber type II (31 ± 20%) in m. vastus lateralis (p < 0.05), with no change in capillary density in m. vastus lateralis or the stiffness of the patellar tendon. Neither E+S nor E changed running economy, fractional utilization of VO2max or VO2max. There were also no change in running distance during a 40 min all-out running test in neither of the groups.
Conclusion

Adding heavy strength training to endurance training did not affect 40 min all-out running performance or running economy compared to endurance training only.

In part three of our series on resilience, Chris Shambrook, our Performance Director and member of the GB Rowing Team’s support staff, shares some simple ideas about resilience built up over the last 4 Olympic Games.

Working in elite sport for 20 years and having the chance to see high performance through the eyes of some extraordinary companies and their people, I’ve seen resilience in action in a wide variety of situations. I’ve pulled together a few of the ideas that have particularly helped me work to develop resilience over this period, quite a few of which I’ve benefitted from personally as well.

Managers make about three billion decisions each year, and almost all of them can be made better. The stakes for doing so are real: decisions are the most powerful tool managers have for getting things done. Setting goals (another tool) is aspirational, but making decisions actually drives action. Our research has shown that people usually do what they decide to do. The good news is that there are ways to consistently make better decisions by using practices and technologies based on behavioral economics.

In a three-month study of 100 managers, we found that managers who made decisions using best practices achieved their expected results 90% of the time, and 40% of them exceeded expectations. (For comparison, goal-setting best practices helped managers achieve expected results only 30% of the time.) Other studies have shown that effective decision-making practices increase the number of good business decisions sixfold and cut failure rates nearly in half.

But although there’s great potential for using best practices to improve decision making, many organizations are not doing it. In a study of 500 managers and executives, we found that only 2% regularly apply best practices when making decisions, and few companies have systems in place to measure and improve decision making over time.

… “Until that scientific evidence is available to us, we cannot confidently say do or do not use this treatment,” says British researcher Joseph T. Costello, co-author of a 2015 Cochrane Collaboration review that reviewed four studies of a total of 64 people and found “insufficient evidence” that cryotherapy chambers relieve muscle soreness.

Cryotherapy, offered at a growing number of dedicated outlets, spas and health clubs, generally costs $40 to $90 for a three-minute treatment. Its immediate effect is to draw blood from the extremities into the core of the body, says Melvin Deese Jr., medical director of manufacturer Impact Cryotherapy Inc., of Atlanta. Why that could be beneficial isn’t clear, scientists say, but one theory is that the blood is cleansed and oxygenated before it flows back into the periphery after the treatment.

If you’ve ever experienced that sensation of powering up the last hill of a long run— when your legs feel like cement and your lungs are heaving, you’ve probably wondered how much your body can actually take. Could you dig deeper, even when your legs are telling you to stop?

Your own stopping point may have as much to do with your tolerance for suffering as physiological strength. We are accustomed to thinking that our limits are physical and that the way to get stronger is by pushing harder and going longer. But the brain’s tolerance for pain may play a significant role in how far one can push into that dark place.

When faced with limited time, most triathletes would prioritize a swim, bike, or run over a strength workout. But not two-time IRONMAN World Champion Miranda Carfrae. According to Tri Active Endurance owner Rob Reinhard, 99 percent of the time, she prioritizes her heavy lifting strength workout1. For a long time, this philosophy seemed counter intuitive. Many believed that heavy lifting added muscle mass and hampered endurance performance. However, in the first article in this series, we discussed the benefits of strength and power training in a well-designed training program2. The numerous benefits far outweigh the fear of carrying added weight.

Biobanding is a recent phenomena, that gives academies the opportunity to judge players not in age groups dependent upon their chronological age but instead in terms of physical maturation. There was a feature in the Southampton issue of Matchday on the technique, and Cherries Player HD’s cameras also went down to a recent tournament against Watford to find out more.

… Sometime in May, when the draft is complete and free agency is largely concluded, the NFL is scheduled to provide its teams access to the next-gen statistics it has been compiling during games for the past two seasons. What teams do with it is up to them, but discussion at last week’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference teemed with possibilities as analytics moves closer to the football mainstream.

“I think we can answer a lot of questions,” said Adam Beard, the Cleveland Browns’ newly hired director of high performance. “Without it, we’ve got a lot of subjective opinions. Everybody’s an expert on Monday. They all knew what was going to happen. But the data can help us be more objective, look at trends and what can help us win the next one.”

… Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota, in partnership with Abbott, have announced the launch of the largest single-center prospective study of TBI in the country.

The goal is to diagnose concussions early enough for clinicians to provide better care, quicker and prevent additional brain damage.

The study will screen thousands of trauma patients to develop a standard approach for evaluating and diagnosing traumatic brain injury. Researchers will use multiple evaluation tools, including eye tracking, blood-based biomarkers, imaging and cognitive measures.

Dr. Beth McQuiston, neurologist and medical director at Abbott shared about the study goals and the general initiative in a phone interview.

Gatorade has been expanding its product category reach, including the introduction of shakes, smoothies, bars, bites, and powders to its portfolio. Gatorade has already long dominated the sports drink segment, with 77% of the market as of 2014 and a successful 2015, according to PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi on an earnings call last month. Diversification, especially in the athletic nutrition space, is the next logical step for the brand as it strives to find new growth opportunities.

One of these upcoming innovations stands out for another reason. Hints of a Gatorade protein-enhanced yogurt product come not long after Chobani dropped out of talks with PepsiCo.

… At the rear of the crammed ballroom, while Andrew Hawkins of the Cleveland Browns expressed concern over biometric information being used against athletes in, say, contract negotiations, Lakers assistant coach and director of basketball strategy Clay Moser took it all in during his first visit to the 10th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston.

Afterward, along with a steady stream of others, Moser headed toward a nearby hotel lounge to get off his feet after the eight-hour first day of the forward-thinking sports gathering.

“It’s a place you have to be,” Moser said of the conference, which this year boasted more than 3,900 attendees, including representatives from every NBA team and nearly every NFL, MLB and NHL team. “You’ve got to see what’s new out there. You’ve got to make sure you’re current and up to date.”

… Carolyn Wilke This is where the NHL is having issues. Yes, there’s more data out there. Lots more data out there. but they’re not even (as a whole) using what we have yet.

Ryan Stimson Lots of teams will get tricked and/or just fall down pits of meaningless data.

asmean Yeah, and some GMs and coaching staff will foam at the mouth for data like “offensive taps after face-off wins” provided by these techs.

The most frustrating thing is most of these black box companies won’t open up their data so we could survey it. So we won’t really get the chance to prove how useless it may be. Until then, teams will continue to drink the Kool-Aid. But honestly even if we did prove how useless it really is, teams are still going to be incredibly stubborn in their beliefs.

… When Alex Gordon homered off Jeurys Familia in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 1 of the World Series, we can now dissect exactly what happened. Familia, who averaged 2200 RPM on his four-seam fastball during the regular season, tried to quick-pitch Gordon. His release point ended up slightly higher and his RPM jumped up to 2300, resulting in a flatter pitch without much sink. Gordon crushed the belt-high pitch to tie the score.

This is just the beginning of the next revolution in sabermetrics, as I learned at the SABR Analytics Conference last week.

“When I played it was mostly about the A’s and Billy Beane and players who get on base and that was about it,” ESPN analyst Aaron Boone said.