Applied Sports Science newsletter – April 2, 2016

Bill Walton arrived at the San Diego Natural History Museum carrying a large black chair. I watched him walk with it, a little stiffly, past the Moreton Bay fig tree outside. The tree is one of the city’s grand natural treasures: more than 100 years old, nearly 100 feet tall, hugely spread, still standing despite a century of weather and air pollution and climbing children. It’s so large that it made even Walton, one of basketball’s dominating giants, look small.

“Why is he carrying a chair?” the woman working the museum’s front door asked me.

I had no idea. We were standing inside the building, near the skeleton of a dinosaur (Allosaurus fragilis, the sign said), watching him approach. Walton wore jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. He chewed gum. His hair, formerly long, red and curly, was now a sparse white wisp. His stride was deliberate, determined; each step seemed to cost him something.

… “The All-Star break, we all know, is what separates good teams from great teams,” Scola said. “This team has been in the situation where they’ve been really good and (then struggled after the break). I have been on other teams where it happens in the same situation. We’re ready for that to not happen.”

Scola relayed his story and the message was clear: There may never be a better chance than the one they have right now.

“A lot of us have come from situations where we were on non-winning teams,” Patterson said. “Teams that we’re at the bottom of the playoffs, teams going home, teams having problems with players or (the) coaching staff or this and that. None of us have been in this type of environment with the whole city behind you, the whole nation’s behind you. Just realizing this opportunity is not going to last very long and we’re all not going to be in the league forever.”

With the president of the Russian tennis federation suggesting that Maria Sharapova’s disciplinary hearing for doping could be put off until June, the Sharapova camp is facing a sobering reality: It’s going to get late very quickly in the 2016 season and with the possibility of no discussions until early summer, Sharapova could be looking at missing the bulk of the year, including the event she’s had her eye on most — the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Groundbreaking new metrics demonstrate Curry’s improvement in his ability to create better shots in the paint and finish them.

… Plenty of players work hard. Plenty of second-round selections show promise.

It’s not normal for any to work like this.

So much has propelled the Heat to a 14-6 record since the All-Star break, all in Chris Bosh’s absence. Goran Dragic finding his pace, Luol Deng finding his role, Dwyane Wade (30 points Monday) finding some Father Prime form, Amar’e Stoudemire finding pride in his defensive side, Justise Winslow finding the rookie wall is made of flimsy cardboard rather than stout stone.

Still, the Heat’s rally is mostly because of its two most fantastical finds.

Spring is finally here, and if the weather looks good, many of us will head outside this weekend to stretch our legs. Some will content themselves with leisurely strolls in the park while those looking for more of a challenge may prefer to chase that legendary, though misunderstood, “runner’s high”—the heightened sense of well-being and euphoria that endurance running can produce.

Scientists used to chalk these feelings up to an increased concentration of endorphins, but we now know that the runner’s high comes from the so-called endocannabinoids, or eCBs (named for their molecular resemblance to the active ingredient of cannabis). These are powerful painkillers, released during long-distance running, that also stimulate the secretion of the neurotransmitter dopamine from various neuron populations in the brain. Dopamine is often popularly seen as the brain’s pleasure-inducing reward chemical, and while there is more to it than that, many recreational drugs—including cannabis, of course, but also nicotine, heroin and cocaine—do indeed stimulate the release of dopamine, inhibit its absorption or mimic its actions.

Liverpool’s head of fitness and conditioning Ryland Morgans is to leave the club to pursue new challenges.

… What is your philosophy?

In the modern day, there is a fundamentally different requirement of leadership, because the answers now sit outside of the traditional model. Twenty years back leaders became the CEOs of companies because they were the persons who knew the most about the business. Coaches became coaches based on their superior knowledge of how to play the game. So their method of leading, of coaching, was through instruction. That model is fast becoming outdated. One needs to bring in an approach – what I call harnessing the collective intelligence that sits within the group.

Even if they might not have the experience, you need to be creating a team based on a player’s strengths and personal preferences, learning styles etc. The way you do that is get information from the players and structure the approach around the players and the player’s requirements rather than the coach’s preordained ideas. So that is one thing, utilising the expertise that sits within the group.

… What has made Villanova different – at least to the extent that the entire program, and especially the players, actually live the words – is the guy who put them on the walls in the first place.

“We know we have to get guys who really want to be part of Villanova basketball and not just guys who love playing basketball,” Jay Wright said.

… Not getting enough sleep is a big problem. Randomized controlled trials show that people who are sleep-deprived can see decreases in their empathy. More than one such study has shown that sleep deprivation can leave people more sensitive to pain. Sleep deprivation can hurt cognition, and it is associated with many, many car accidents.

But serious sleep deprivation in adults is most likely rarer than many think it is. After all, people in controlled studies of sleep deprivation are usually getting very, very little sleep. Complicating things, not all people react to sleep deprivation in the same way. Some people just need less sleep, and that may be somewhat genetic. Many news reports that highlight the dangers from too little sleep are assuming that all adults need at least eight hours. There’s just little evidence that’s so.

There’s one group where that may not be true, however. Younger people need more sleep than adults.

“I have always needed to learn about things that were new to me. And to be a leader of any kind I think you need to be interested in self-improvement and growth. If you go back to the very beginning of Amazon, we had to learn about logistics. I’m thinking back 20 years, when I was driving all the packages to the post office myself. Today we have a lot of automation and robotics.

“We seek to hire our tutors. In the early days, we hired some of the best logistics people in the world, and then I studied at their feet. To start Kindle, we had to learn about the hardware business. Kindle is now more than 10 years old. That was a very steep learning curve. We spent three years learning how to build hardware devices before we launched Kindle 1, and now we’ve actually gotten pretty good at it.

“The best inventors have a high level of expertise in a particular arena, and they simultaneously maintain a beginners’ mind. And that’s hard to do.

At the beginning of each Olympic quadrennium, USA Track & Field submits a four-year High Performance Plan to the US Olympic Committee for their consideration and funding support. Work will take place in the spring and early summer of 2016 on development of the 2017 – 2020 USATF High Performance Plan. Accordingly, USATF is inviting proposals specifically in the areas of Sports Science
& Medicine for consideration.

This call for proposals is open to all, including the greater US sports science & medicine community, university and private researchers, technology developers, coaches, athletes, and the USATF community at large. These proposals must be specific to a Sports Science or Sports Medicine related concept.

The Los Angeles Dodgers are warming up for a second season of its startup accelerator. The LA Dodgers Sports and Entertainment Accelerator, a joint venture between the baseball team and R/GA Ventures, is now accepting applications for its sophomore class through June 10.

The program is seeking early- to growth-stage companies from Los Angeles and around the world in the areas of fan engagement, VR/AR, e-sports, sports training, smart arenas, big data and analytics, fitness and youth sports, and sponsor integration. The accelerator will once again take place in Los Angeles and be operated and supported by R/GA.

The determination of a cyclist’s lactate threshold (LT) has become an important test performed in sports science laboratories around the world. A limitation of such testing is that it is relatively expensive and invasive, requiring multiple blood samples. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate a commercially available, wearable lactate threshold sensor (WLT) that uses near infrared LED technology to measure gastrocnemius muscle oxygenation and predict LT. The WLT was compared to four traditional calculations of determining LT following an incremental exercise test. Ten male and five female recreational to elite cyclists (mean ± SD; age 24 ± 8, body mass 69.7 ± 7.3 kg, VO2max; 59.7 ± 9.9 ml kg?1 min?1) performed an incremental cycling test to exhaustion. Blood lactate samples were taken at the end of each 3-min stage during the test to determine lactate threshold using four traditional methods (TradLT, Dmax, mDmax, OBLA). Traditional methods were then compared against the WLT predicted value. The correlation between the WLT and TradLT, Dmax, mDmax and OBLA were all >r = 0.96. The highest level of agreement for the WLT was with the Dmax method (95 % limits of agreement: ±17 W, TEE = 8.6 W, 4.4 %). The 95 % level of agreement between the WLT and all other traditional methods was <±40 W (TEE <18 W, 8 %). In summary, the WLT is practical, easy to use and exhibits an acceptable level of agreement with four of the traditionally accepted methods of determining lactate threshold.

… With the assistance of an Australian based company, Catapult, Bradley-Bourbonnais will be the first high school program in the nation to tap into advanced computer technology that until now was only utilized by teams as the highest professional and collegiate levels. … “It monitors all their movements. From total distance traveled, to how fast they are moving, to how much they change direction,” Bradley-Bourbonnais football coach and assistant athletic director Mike Kohl said. “I wasn’t totally not it in the beginning and I think the biggest thing was I didn’t know how it worked. But after we went to Notre Dame and saw it in action, we wanted to see if this was something we could get done and I’m excited about the possibilities of it.”

The results of a recent study conducted by the NCAA show that not only do many student-athletes begin specializing in their sports before the age of 12, but also that many are expected from a young age to play sports in college and beyond.

The findings reveal a disconnect between what many parents and student-athletes believe is possible and what reality shows the chances are of forging a career as a professional athlete.

When I got a call from Stanford athletic trainer Sarah Lyons recently, I was a bit confused. Sure, Scope covers fitness as it relates to overall health, but we’re not in the business of chronicling sports. And aren’t athletic trainers just for elite athletes: pro football players and top sprinters and the like?

Well, no, Lyons (shown at right working with a Stanford gymnast) told me. And, she said, I’m not the only one with a few questions about athletic trainers. So, to educate myself and to honor National Athletic Training Month, I shot Lyons, who serves as the athletic trainer for Stanford women’s gynmastics and men’s rowing, a few questions.

Predicting injury is becoming the Holy Grail of professional sports. By that I don’t just mean it’s something holy and heaven sent. I mean that it is something many are aspiring to but as yet is largely fantastical. True injury prediction will be multi-factorial and look at mechanical, lifestyle, training load, and physiological data to put together a comprehensive model that provides high likelihoods for injury that can inform coaches on playing and practice load. … I was recently sent a mechanical screen using motion sensors which has also shown promise in U18 Premier League teams as both an assessment and intervention tool (see case studies here and here). While it’s doubtful there will be one true assessment (see results refuting use of the FMS) using tools like ViMove could usher us in to the next frontier in injury prediction

If you take two different medications for two different reasons, here’s a sobering thought: your doctor may not fully understand what happens when they’re combined, because drug interactions are incredibly hard to study. In this fascinating and accessible talk, Russ Altman shows how doctors are studying unexpected drug interactions using a surprising resource: search engine queries.

The N.H.L.’s top officials have privately acknowledged that fighting could lead to concussions and long-term health problems, including depression, and that so-called enforcers frequently use pills “to ease the pain,” according to emails unsealed during a continuing court battle with former players.

The exchanges, mostly between Commissioner Gary Bettman and his top lieutenants in 2011, contradict what the league has said publicly and what it has argued in defending itself from a class-action lawsuit brought by dozens of former players over the effects of concussions.

Background: Various research efforts have studied concussions in the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and the National Hockey League. However, no study has investigated the incidence and return-to-play trends in the National Basketball Association (NBA), which this study aims to do.

Hypothesis: Increased media scrutiny and public awareness, in addition to the institution of a league-wide concussion protocol, may have resulted in more conservative return-to-play practices.

Study Design: Descriptive epidemiology study.

Methods: All concussions to NBA players that were publicly reported in the media from the beginning of the 2006 NBA season to the end of the 2014 season were included. The incidence and return-to-play statistics were generated by synthesizing information from publicly available records.

Results: There were 134 publicly reported concussions to NBA players from the beginning of the 2006 season to the conclusion of the 2014 season, resulting in an average of 14.9 concussions per season. The incidence has not changed significantly during this time span. The average games missed after a concussion from 2006 to 2010 was 1.6, significantly less than the 5.0 games missed from 2011 to 2014, following the institution of the NBA concussion protocol (P = .023).

Conclusion: Although the incidence of publicly reported concussions in the NBA has not changed appreciably over the past 9 seasons, the time missed after a concussion has. While players often returned in the same game in the 2006 season, the combination of implemented policy, national coverage, medical staff awareness, and player education may have contributed to players now missing an average of 4 to 6 games after a concussion. A multitude of factors has resulted in more conservative return-to-play practices for NBA players after concussions.

The more time young adults spend on social media, the more likely they are to become depressed, a study has found.

Of the 19 to 32-year-olds who took part in the research, those who checked social media most frequently throughout the week were 2.7 times more likely to develop depression than those who checked least often.

There are really only a few basic habits we know should help keep people healthy: eating well, exercising, avoiding smoking, and keeping body fat in check.

Turns out a shockingly tiny number — just 2.7 percent — of Americans actually manage all four habits, according to a new study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

Leading up to last year’s NFL draft, my firm noted the heavy toll that contact sports take on athletes, and how medical cannabis could help to alleviate that burden. Cannabis has been in a much bigger spotlight over the past 12 months and as part of that many retired and active professional athletes have spoken up about the plant and its potential. Across multiple sports athletes have stated that cannabis could be a superior treatment for sports-related injuries, without the drawbacks of current opioid pain medications.

World sport resembles a failed state.

Soccer’s ruling body offers indictments and perp walks, and Qatar stands exposed for using something akin to slave labor to build stadiums for the 2022 World Cup. Brazil — plagued by a severe recession, corruption and Zika, a scary new virus — will host an obscenely expensive Summer Olympics.

Fifteen months ago, a German documentarian, Hajo Seppelt, in The Secrets of Doping: How Russia Makes Its Winners, unveiled a world of athletic doping in track and field. Russian athletes spoke of extortion, thuggery and the state-sponsored doping of “99 percent” of athletes.

… “The football facility is where the players come to work and we want the players to be comfortable. We want them to be there, to enjoy coming to work, to enjoy putting in extra work. So, we’re just going to do little things around the building to kind of improve that.”

The Lions also hired a team performance dietitian, Sarah Snyder, who recently worked at Michigan and Florida. Quinn said the Patriots also had a dietitian on staff, and he wanted to hire one this year to stay ahead of the curve. According to the Collegiate & Professional Sports Dietitians Association, the Lions are now one of 10 NFL teams with one on staff.

BACKGROUND:

The bulk of research investigating soccer player’s performance has been concentrated on the metabolic demand, while only few studies focused on the neuromuscular activation. The present study aimed at investigating the activation profile of the leg muscles throughout a 90- minute soccer match.
METHODS:

Fifteen football players (18.3±0.7 years) performed: 1) an isometric maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) before the game [MVCpre]; 2) a 90-minute soccer match (composed of two 45-minute periods separated by a 15-minute rest); 3) a second MVC after the match [MVCpost]. Electromyographic (EMG) activity of the Vastus Lateralis (VL) muscle of the dominant leg was recorded during the match. The root mean square (RMS) of the EMG signals was normalized for the maximal RMS obtained during the MVCpre (100%RMSmax) and six intensity classes were created in order to represent the %RMS distribution during the match (1st: 0-20%RMSmax; 2nd: 20-40%RMSmax; 3rd: 40-60%RMSmax; 4th : 60-80%RMSmax; 5th: 80-100%RMSmax; 6th: 100-120%RMSmax).
RESULTS:

After the 90-minute soccer match, knee extensor MVC failed to show any statistical difference from pre-game values (-4.2%; p>0.05) whilst the neuromuscular activation demonstrated a significant reduction (-26.3%, p<0.01). During the game, the mean total distribution of RMS of the players was: 84.8±7.1% of total time in the 1th class, 8.5±3.9% in the 2th, 3.6±1.6% in the 3th, 1.7±1.0% in the 4th, 0.9±0.6% in the 5th and 0.4±0.5% in the 6th class of intensity. There was a significant difference (p<0.05) between the first versus the second half for the classes 1th, 3th and 4th.
CONCLUSIONS:

This represents the first attempt to characterize the neuromuscular activation profile during a 90-minute soccer match. Integrating this approach with more traditional ones may help further our understanding of the physiological demand of competitive soccer.

By virtue of their 5vs5 shot differential, the Los Angeles Kings are the best team in hockey. As of Saturday night, the Kings are rolling along at 56.1% Corsi – #1 in the NHL by a long shot. In fact, the 3% gap between the Kings and the No. 2 Anaheim Ducks is the same as the one between the Ducks and the No. 15 Philadelphia Flyers.

So why are the King so good?

… Wright’s former assistant, Billy Lange, now with the Philadelphia 76ers, is an analytics savant, never as happy as when he can dig into the research on some aspect of a basketball game.

True to form, Lange responded to Wright’s request for in-depth 3-point strategies (both offensively and defensively) with a 37-page manifesto that is an ode to analytics, complete with color-coded pie charts, graphs, and enough numbers and general math to make Stephen Hawking glassy eyed.

“I read it all. One time,” Wright said with a laugh. “Billy is always studying something. I’m not great at that stuff. I want the answers but I don’t want to spend the time looking at it. Like everything with Billy, he always gives me good ideas. But if he has 10 great ideas, I might implement two and be able to handle it.”

Full video from the second session of Charles Russell Speechlys and LawInSport’s conference “Gaining the Advantage”, which explored the latest converging issues between sport, technology and law.

In a recent post by Jim, he went over how to use Markov chains to look at pitch count sequences. In this post, I will look at how Markov chains can be used to help determine the probability of a specific type of pitch being thrown given the pitch type of the previous pitch. States will restart after each batter, meaning that the last pitch to each batter will not be used to predict the first pitch of the next batter. Additionally, all data used is from the 2015 season and comes from MLB Gameday. Since most of the code for scraping data has already been explained in various posts by Carson Sievert, I will show my code, but focus more on how to produce Markov chains.