Applied Sports Science newsletter – May 7, 2016

… After victories, the Clippers race to the locker room and form two lines at the door; the last one in has to dance. After losses, they still form those two lines; no one sits until the last man has returned.

“It matters,” Crawford says. “Because if you care about a person off the court, you’ll run through a wall for them on the court.”

Warriors guard Stephen Curry said Tuesday he received platelet-rich plasma treatment as part of his treatment on his sprained right knee.

It’s impossible to consider the situation that has developed between Chris Bosh and his team, the Heat, without considering Reggie Lewis, the Celtics star who died in 1993 at age 27, three months after he had collapsed on the Boston Garden floor during a playoff game.

It’s not that Bosh and Lewis have similar medical diagnoses. They don’t. After Lewis died of a heart attack, it was revealed that he’d suffered from myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that causes scars and enlarges the heart. Bosh had a blood clot that moved from his leg to his lung last year, putting him at risk for a fatal pulmonary embolism, but returned to play this year. When a clot was discovered in his leg in February, the Heat all-but ruled Bosh out for the season.

The England prop who has excelled for the Lions is taking a year out to save his career, and talks of the pressure on rugby players to compete.

… tomorrow, he’s back. Tomorrow, Lincecum will showcase the “new” Lincecum for a dozen or more teams in Arizona, and it feels like the biggest baseball story of the week. Lincecum told Yahoo’s Jeff Passan — whose new book “The Arm” is a terrific, important read — that “it’s kind of like a scientist going to work on something in his garage and not unveiling it until he’s ready to. That’s kind of what it feels like.” (I love that in the universe of Lincecum’s brain, scientists work in garages rather than labs.) Lincecum is touching 91 mph on his fastball; he had been barely getting over 80 mph when he was struggling with the Giants the last few seasons.

In all my years I’ve never seen a fully healthy player at the elite level in any sport.

There is always an imbalance, a ‘niggle’, an injury a player is carrying or concern they are managing.

So with this in mind, coaches and parents must remember playing the games healthy is a case of optimizing performance and reducing risk.

Preventing injury is a game of chance, but with smart care you can really reduce the risk of injury.

… More than just getting to the line, James’ ability to finish through contact is unparalleled, as he demonstrated again Monday night. But despite James’ obvious natural talents, that kind of finishing ability doesn’t come without hard work, much of which came in the form of resistance band training, the biggest focus of the LeBron-designed workout. It started with building upper-body strength in every direction by pushing or pulling against a resistance band.

“Who needs workout partners? I work better alone. They’ll just hold me back.”

These are all excuses for not having workout partners. However, as an o-lineman, workout partners will have an invaluable influence on how good you can really be. Here are three reasons for having workout partners. It is assumed that your workout partner also plays o-line and wants to improve.

A Common Goal

… I recently spoke with Hanlen and wanted to get insight on his background, how he formulates developmental plans for his players, his thoughts on the seasons that Bradley Beal and Kelly Oubre had, and what the plan for their development was in the future.

Prior to become a renowned skills coach, Hanlen worked with Beal. This occurred before either player garnered recognizable names in high-school.

“His dad had requested that we work out, just because he knew I was a really hard worker in his area. I had played against his older brothers,” Hanlen said. “I had worked him out one time – he almost passed out after about 20 minutes. He hated me, hated my workouts and I didn’t see him for a while. His dad kind of pushed him back to me. He knew he needed to be pushed.”

The Philadelphia Union has had a lot of help behind the scenes as they continue their strong start, and we have one of the main contributors as a guest this week.

Garrison Draper, Director of Performance for the team, is the guest of the KYW Philly Soccer Show. KYW’s Greg Orlandini and CBS 3’s Kevin Kinkead talk with Draper, who is using sports science to help improve the team’s play on the pitch. [audio, 39:55]

Wearable Human Performance Monitors – a User’s Perspective: who wants them? what do they need?

Plan now to attend this NBMC workshop to explore wearable human performance monitors from the end user perspective. Speakers will share use-case requirements from several industrial and military perspectives. The workshop will be held in Dayton, Ohio, hosted by UES, Inc.

In 2015, NBMC hosted a “Blood, Sweat and Tears Workshop” focused on exploiting different body fluid modalities for assessing biomarkers in both the health and human performance domains. A key finding from that workshop was the need to better understand customer interests as the R&D advances toward products.

… Twitter’s AI team, known as Cortex, has developed an algorithm that can instantly recognize what’s happening in a live feed. The algorithm can tell, for instance, if the star of a clip is playing guitar, demoing a power tool, or is actually a cat hamming it up for viewers.

“Content is always changing on Periscope, and more generally on live videos,” says Clement Farabet, who is the technology lead for Cortex. Farabet demonstrated the video-recognition technology to MIT Technology Review, showing a screen of about two dozen Periscope feeds, all being tagged in real-time.

One of the biggest challenges with smartwatches is trying to navigate through apps on a relatively tiny screen. While smartphones and tablets have gotten bigger over the years, the gadgets we wear on our wrists need to stay small to avoid looking terribly unfashionable. Today a team at the Future Interfaces Group, a research lab within Carnegie Mellon University, released a look at a novel solution to this problem: making the skin on your arm and hand act like a touchscreen for your smartwatch.

The system uses a signal-emitting ring worn on the finger to communicate with a sensing band attached to the watch. When the finger wearing the ring touches the skin, a high-frequency electrical signal spreads across your arm. It uses the distance between the ring and four pairs of electrodes in the watchband to triangulate the position of your finger in 2D space. “The great thing about SkinTrack is that it’s not obtrusive; watches and rings are items that people already wear every day,” said Yang Zhang, a first-year Ph.D. student at CMU who worked on the technology.

In high school, Nikhil Panu played varsity basketball and tennis, but his appetite for competition didn’t stop there. When not in uniform, the 6-foot-4 San Jose, California, native ferreted out neighborhood pick-up games—any sport would do. Panu and his friends would spontaneously trek down to area fields or gyms on weekends in hopes that a few similar-minded folks would show up to form equal teams for an hour or two of soccer or 5-on-5 basketball.

But Panu discovered what many weekend recreation warriors know: the endeavor can be hit or miss. Sometimes the venue was vacant, or a friend would back out, leaving the group shorthanded. On other occasions, Panu arrived with “numbers,” but the court or field would be jammed with bodies and games already under way. “We got next.” Sure, but when?

Shoes that vibrate can apparently improve balance and agility, and thanks to a recent licensing deal, they are likely headed to the market.

Two studies published this month by Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering University have shown that the vibrating insoles improved balance when fatigued and overall agility.

“People were more sensitive given small stimuli when noise (or vibration) was part of the system,” said Daniel Miranda, a Wyss Institute Technology Development Fellow and one of the authors of the two studies.

This paper addresses if and how a periodic health examination to screen for risk factors for injury can be used to mitigate injury risk. The key question asked is whether it is possible to use screening tests to identify who is at risk for a sports injury—in order to address the deficit through a targeted intervention programme. The paper demonstrates that to validate a screening test to predict and prevent sports injuries, at least 3 steps are needed. First, a strong relationship needs to be demonstrated in prospective studies between a marker from a screening test and injury risk (step 1). Second, the test properties need to be examined in relevant populations, using appropriate statistical tools (step 2). Unfortunately, there is currently no example of a screening test for sports injuries with adequate test properties. Given the nature of potential screening tests (where test performance is usually measured on a continuous scale from low to high), substantial overlap is to be expected between players with high and low risk of injury. Therefore, although there are a number of tests demonstrating a statistically significant association with injury risk, and therefore help the understanding of causative factors, such tests are unlikely to be able to predict injury with sufficient accuracy. The final step needed is to document that an intervention programme targeting athletes identified as being at high risk through a screening programme is more beneficial than the same intervention programme given to all athletes (step 3). To date, there is no intervention study providing support for screening for injury risk. [full text article]

Labral tears are, thankfully, relatively uncommon in major league baseball. Less well known than UCL tears—the injury that necessitates Tommy John surgery—these injuries require a very complex surgery, extensive rehab, and can end a pitcher’s career. Pitchers like Michael Pineda have made it back to the majors after their labral tears, but they are the minority and even those who make it back can miss multiple seasons recovering. So why has there been an increase in labral tears, which come with a three-to-six month recovery window attached to them?

Sports Medicine Congress 2016. Comwell Hotel, Kolding – 04-06 February 2016. Follow the conference live at twitter @sportskongres or #sportskongres

IOC symposium – “Muscle Injuries in sports”

“Can we improve hamstring injury prevention programs?

OBJECTIVES:

The effect of maturity on Functional Movement Screen (FMS) scores in elite, adolescent soccer players was examined.
DESIGN:

A cross-sectional observational study was completed.
METHODS:

Participants were 1163 male English Football League soccer players (age 8-18 years). Players were mid-foundation phase (MF) (U9); late foundation phase (LF) (U10 and U11); early youth development phase (EYD) (U12 and U13); mid-youth development (MYD) phase (U14-U15); Late Youth Development Phase (LYD) (U16) and early professional development phase (EPD) (U18). Age from peak height velocity was estimated and players were categorized as pre- or post-peak height velocity (PHV). To analyse where differences in FMStotal score existed we separated the screen into FMSmove (3 movement tests); FMSflex (2 mobility tests) and FMSstab (2 stability tests).
RESULTS:

FMStotal median score ranged from 11 at MF to 14 for EPD. There was a substantial increase (10%) in those able to achieve a score of ?14 on FMStotal in those who were post-PHV compared to pre-PHV. This was explained by a substantial increase in those achieving a score of ?4 on FMSstab (21%). There was a substantial increase in the proportion of players who achieved the FMStotal threshold of ?14 with an increase of 47.5 (41.4-53.6)% from the MF phase to the EPD phase due to improvements in FMSmove and FMSstab.
CONCLUSIONS:

PHV and maturity have substantial effects on FMS performance. FMS assessment appears to be invalid for very young players. Findings are relevant to those analyzing movement in soccer players.

There’s no doubt that Stephen Curry is one of the best players in the NBA. But Curry is also a classic example of the cascading effect of one body imbalance leading to another, and finally to injury. He has a history of sprained ankles (in the 2010–2011 season alone, he sprained his right ankle eight times). When your ankle starts to roll, your inner thigh should react and pull your ankle back, protecting it and preventing the sprain. Curry’s history of ankle sprains tells me his inner thighs haven’t been working for a while. In addition, people typically don’t put their bones back into alignment after a sprain. If you don’t do this, your body starts to compensate, muscle imbalances kick in, and you get the injury domino effect. If I had to guess, I’d say that Curry has been walking on the outside of his feet (which means his inner thighs aren’t firing well, and he’s overworking his lateral quads, TFL, the sides of his glutes, and his calves).

… “There’s always an opportunity for it,” said Aaron Schatz, editor-in-chief of FootballOutsiders.com, one of only a handful of websites devoted to football analytics. “NFL teams are already using it, but they just aren’t letting on to it. Just because you don’t hear them talk about it doesn’t mean they’re not doing it.

“Lots of teams are criticizing it in public and using it in private.”

The analytics community is critical of the way football teams do business in the same way it challenged the deep-seated scouting practices in major-league baseball almost 15 years ago. It believes scouting in the NFL is not advancing and there is a need to modernize the approach.

Objectives

This study examined the relationship of talented soccer players’ psychological characteristics with current and future performance.
Design

Both a cross-sectional and a prospective design were used.
Method

The sample consisted of 2677 U12 players in the German talent development program. Self-report questionnaires captured psychological dispositions and skills that were assigned to the areas of motivation, volition, self-referential cognition, and emotion. Current performance was operationalized by a motor score representing speed abilities and technical skills as well as by coaches’ subjective ratings (A = highly promotion-worthy, B = promotion-worthy, C = partly promotion-worthy). The level of future performance was assessed by examining whether individuals were selected for professional clubs’ youth academies in U16.
Results

This study revealed that only self-referential cognitions had a significant and relevant association with the motor score (0.10 ? r ? 0.37). The players in the subjectively rated categories significantly differed in 10 of 17 psychological scales (0.01 ? ?2 ? 0.03). In most of the scales, A-players showed more positively connoted values compared to B- and C-players. Logistic regressions demonstrated that 10 of 17 characteristics explained a significant proportion of players’ future success. Players with high dispositions in these characteristics had a greater chance of achieving a higher performance level compared to players with low dispositions (1.61 ? OR ? 2.65).
Conclusions

Expanding on previous research, this study enabled comparisons between a wide range of psychological characteristics with regard to their relevance for soccer performance, leading to conclusions for talent identification and development.

We may not be raring to go on a Monday morning, but humans are the Energizer Bunnies of the primate world. That’s the conclusion of a new study that, for the first time, measures precisely how many calories humans and apes burn each day. Compared with chimpanzees and other apes, our revved-up internal engines burn calories 27% faster, according to a paper in Nature this week. This higher metabolic rate equips us to quickly fuel energy-hungry brain cells, sustaining our bigger brains. And lest we run out of gas when food is short, the study also found that humans are fatter than other primates, giving us energy stores to draw on in lean times.

“The brilliant thing here is showing for the first time that we do have a higher metabolic rate, and we do use more energy,” says paleoanthropologist Leslie Aiello, president of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research in New York City. “Humans during evolution have become more and more hypermetabolic,” says biological anthropologist Carel van Schaik of the University of Zurich in Switzerland. “We turned up the thermostat.”

… Team cohesion is a key factor in enabling sports organisations to achieve sustained success and develop their brands as a result. Defining cohesion as the level of interrelationship between team members, Prozone uses the Teamwork Index (TWI) as part of the Performance.LAB’s performance audit service to measure team unity and how it influences performance levels. Measuring the quantity and intensity of linkages within a team, the index shows a strong correlation between a high TWI score and sustained on-field success and off-field stability.

The value of ongoing success is best understood in terms of the team unit rather than through the worth of individual players. Take the 2015 Rugby World Cup-winning All Blacks, for example. Every player in the squad had a salary, but it was their value as a collective that was significant. Think about the All Blacks’ combined salary, then imagine if all 23 players were auctioned on the open market. Their combined salary would skyrocket. The ongoing success of the All Blacks has created a perceived value of the players based on the success and reputation of the team.

The latest late-bloomer to make news — in motion in the green sneakers — is quarterback Carson Wentz. Last week, Wentz became the second pick in the NFL Draft.

Carson Wentz was a 5-foot-8, 120 pound high school freshman who played many sports. He was not a starting quarterback until his senior year. He did not distinguish himself as an NFL prospect until late in college at North Dakota State.

The Washington Post‘s Adam Kilgore made a strong case, in this profile, that Wentz has succeeded not despite being a late-bloomer — but because he bloomed late. [audio, 36:44]