Applied Sports Science newsletter – March 23, 2016

The crowd gathered by the hundreds, blue-clad fans filling the lower bowl, 10- to 15-rows deep. They were there for Stephen Curry, a rabid throng pressing toward the floor in an effort to inch closer to the NBA’s reigning MVP. They held up signs (Steph Curry Lover, read one, with an arrow pointing down), chanted his name and gasped in disbelief as he effortlessly tossed in 30-footers.

Such is life for Curry and his Golden State Warriors. Not only do they get opponents’ best efforts – and they did again Monday, escaping Minnesota with a 109-104 win over the Timberwolves – but the fans’ best, too. More than 19,000 packed the Target Center, a sellout crowd roaring for its young team, a playoff atmosphere for a relatively meaningless regular-season game.

The Warriors have grown used to it, but make no mistake: It’s draining. “When you are getting a team’s best shot every night,” Warriors forward Draymond Green said, “it kind of takes a toll.”

With just 13 games remaining in the regular season, Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue has re-prioritized his team goals as he tries to prepare Cleveland for a repeat run to the NBA Finals.

Lue said Monday that he will prioritize resting his players above the race for the Eastern Conference’s top spot going down the stretch.

“We definitely want the No. 1 seed if we can get it, but I think we have to rest our guys also,” Lue said after the team’s shootaround Monday morning. “I think health going into the playoffs is more important than the seeding. If we’re fortunate enough to get the No. 1 seed, it will be great for us. But if not, then we just got to play through it.

… Does compression wear improve performance? When it comes to performance, the answer depends on your activity. For endurance exercise, there is not much evidence to suggest that compression wear enhances performance. Studies of endurance cycling (Scanlan et al. 2008) and running (Ali et al. 2011; Sperlich et al.) did not find significant performance benefits when comparing the times of athletes wearing compression wear to the times of those wearing conventional, non-compressive clothing.

However, for explosive exercises that require maximal strength and power, the evidence appears more promising. Although the effect sizes are small, they are nevertheless present in some studies on vertical jumping height (Doan et al. 2003) and short-duration sprints (Hamlen et al. 2012). Further, even in studies that did not find a significant effect on sprinting performance, athletes perceived less effort (Faulkner et al. 2013).

According to UltraRunning Magazine, an ultra run is anything longer than a standard marathon of 26 miles, but it’s not unusual for people to participate in gruelling runs that take place in punishing environments over days or even weeks. For people who struggle to run to catch a bus, the idea of deliberately putting yourself through this kind of physical punishment, for fun, seems little short of crazy. Yet this is a sport that’s on the increase – the number of official events has doubled in the last decade.

Exercise-related distress was once seen as a simple consequence of physical symptoms like metabolic discharge building up in the muscles. But we now understand that the mind plays an important role in deciding whether a symptom is acceptable or unbearable. It’s this that makes ultra-runners possible. In fact, a new in-depth case study of an ultra runner published in the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology finds that with greater physical exertion comes the experience of ever more positive emotion.

Purpose: To assess the effects of mental fatigue on physical and technical performance in small-sided soccer games. Methods: Twenty soccer players (age 17.8 ± 1.0 y, height 179 ± 5 cm, body mass 72.4 ± 6.8 kg, playing experience 8.3 ± 1.4 y) from an Australian National Premier League soccer club volunteered to participate in this randomised crossover investigation. Participants played 15-min 5 vs 5 small-sided games (SSG) without goalkeepers on two occasions, separated by 1 wk. Prior to the SSG, one team watched a 30-min emotionally neutral documentary (control), while the other performed 30 min of a computer-based Stroop task (mental fatigue). Subjective ratings of mental and physical fatigue were recorded before and after treatment and following the SSG. Motivation was assessed prior to treatment and SSG; mental effort was assessed after treatment and SSG. Player activity profiles and heart rate (HR) were measured throughout the SSG, while ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) were recorded prior to the SSG, and immediately following each half. Video recordings of the SSG allowed for notational analysis of technical variables. Results: Subjective ratings of mental fatigue and effort were higher following the Stroop task, while motivation for the upcoming SSG was similar between conditions. HR during the SSG was possibly higher in the control condition, while RPE was likely higher in the mental fatigue condition. Mental fatigue had an unclear effect on most physical performance variables, but impaired most technical performance variables. Conclusions: Mental fatigue impairs technical, but not physical performance in small-sided soccer games.

Overuse injuries are a major problem in both young and adult athletes and according to recent research the actual number is greatly underestimated. Nonetheless, many overuse injuries can easily be avoided by identifying minor inconveniences before they become a problem. The OSLO Sports Trauma Research Center has developed an app with SpartaNova, collecting valuable information from athletes for doctors and physiotherapists to monitor.

By following up on minor issues, overuse injuries can often be avoided. Recent research indeed shows that effective registration and prevention of injuries can maximize the available training time and lead to better performance.

A new supercomputer simulation of blood moving around the entire human body compares extremely well with real-world flow measurements, researchers say.

More than two dozen companies are racing to develop digital technology to keep tabs on patients in real time: monitoring their vital signs, getting them to take their pills, even releasing medication into their body as needed.

The payoff for success will be twofold: possibly huge profits and access to a lucrative new trove of personal data.

Investigators of this study found high return-to-play rates after ACL reconstruction among collegiate female soccer players, especially those with athletic scholarships and those who underwent reconstruction early in their career.

Researchers contacted sports medicine and athletic training staff from 14 institutions in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Southeastern Conference. Investigators sent each institution a spreadsheet with instructions and response choices with regard to criteria for inclusion. Requested information on female soccer players who underwent ACL reconstruction during the past 8 years included athlete, injury, surgical technique and return-to-play data.

Objectives: Younger age has been increasingly recognised as a risk factor for ACL graft rupture and contralateral ACL injury following ACL reconstruction. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the re-injury rate and explore factors that might be associated with increased risk.

Methods: In this observational study, a cohort of 362 consecutive patients was identified from patients undergoing primary ACL reconstruction by a single surgeon form December 2004 to February 2012. Patients were under 20 years at the time of surgery and had a normal contralateral knee. The incidence of subsequent ACL injuries (graft rupture or contralateral ACL injury) was determined at a mean follow up time of 5 years (range 3-10). For further analysis the group was divided according to gender and age: under 18 or 18-19 at the time of surgery

Results: The overall follow up rate was 89% (40/362 patients were unable to be contacted). Graft ruptures occurred in 60 patients (16.6%) at an average time of 1.9 years. Almost half (47%) occurred within the first postoperative year. The graft rupture rate was significantly higher in males (19.5%) than females (11.1%). The rupture rate in the youngest males (under 18) was the highest at 25.4%, which was significantly higher than females of the same age (11.7%) and males over 18 years (12.7%). Of the early graft ruptures, 75% occurred in the under 18 group. Contralateral ACL injuries occurred in 57 patients (15.7) at a longer average time of 3.7 years. There were no gender or age differences for contralateral ACL injuries. There were 4 patients who had a graft rupture as well as a contralateral ACL injury; therefore the total number of patients who had at least one further ACL injury subsequent to the primary surgery was 113 (31.2%).

Conclusion: The high rate of subsequent ACL injury in younger patients was confirmed. Early graft ruptures are more prevalent in the very young and gender differences are more apparent for graft rupture, where the youngest males are at high risk. The high incidence of multiple ACL injuries in such a young cohort is concerning for future knee health.

We are witnessing a revolution in the healthcare industry and big data is key in this revolution. The healthcare industry recognizes the potential benefits of big data and considers it as a major factor in enhancing its efficiency and producing results. It is widely believed that big data will play a vital role in revolutionizing the industry’s growth in 21st century. According to the Ukmedix blog only one out of every 10,000 discovered compounds is approved for development and sale while only three out of 20 generates enough revenue to cover development cost. Big data strategies are compelling in the dynamic business environment and help in optimizing innovation, improving the efficiency of research, and clinical trials. It also helps in building new tools for physicians, consumers, insurers, and regulators to strengthen the industry.

For some players, it’s an annual rite of a baseball spring, just like hearing the crack of the bat or feeling the pleasant heat of Florida sunshine again.

Why, some ask, do teams not do more of their spring training work at night, since most of their games are played at night during the regular season?

… Innovation, no matter how successful, logical or needed will always meet with stiff opposition from those accustomed to a certain way of doing things. Such criticism can, and often does, confound objective evidence as if to suggest that, for some incumbents, worse is better than different.

So here’s the rub – if you want to do something differently, you have to be ‘all in’. You have to be prepared for opposition and be ready to hold your nerve if things don’t go your way.

Like the rest of baseball, Dallas Keuchel was initially dubious of the Astros’ ways. This was before he won the American League Cy Young award and the downtrodden franchise was suddenly rejuvenated. This was late 2013, when Keuchel was a former seventh round pick with an ERA floating above five and Houston was a laughingstock.

Jeff Luhnow had been hired as the team’s general manager prior to the 2012 season and his plan to turn it around was by bottoming out and by investing in an iconoclastic process that leaned heavily on advanced analytics and data.

There was a leeriness throughout the sport about Luhnow’s methods. It lingered inside the Astros clubhouse too, where jokes about their data-heavy approach flew among players. Those jokes still persist, Keuchel says. But now there is also a belief in the Astros’ machinations, borne out of results.

I recently presented evidence that power and contact are independent skills. An increase in power does not have to come at the cost of contact. Surely intuition disagrees with these findings and when that happens you should be skeptical. I would be skeptical.

One reason a trade-off between power and contact is intuitive is that we are accustomed to speed-accuracy trade-offs for many everyday actions. For example, we slow down when we pour a fresh cup of coffee because going too fast is dangerous. Implicitly, we assume there is a speed-accuracy trade-off when we suggest that hitters can cut down on their swing to achieve more contact. Richard A. Schmidt is like the Bill James of my field — motor behaviour — and in 1979 he and his colleagues published the Theory of Accuracy for Rapid Tasks. According to Google it has been cited over 1200 times. While speed-accuracy trade-offs for movement are typical, the theory explains that rapid timing tasks like hitting are an exception to this rule.