Applied Sports Science newsletter – June 11, 2016

… The slender 6-foot-7 point guard— the No. 4 pick in the 2004 draft — came down awkwardly after a missed layup attempt and snapped his twig of a leg in half. The arena gasped as Livingston yelled in agony and writhed on the floor. Suddenly, a promising career was in jeopardy before it got going.

Next up was a missed season of rehabilitation, stints with nine NBA teams and one D-League squad and being waived four times before triumphing as a key member for the 2015 NBA champion Warriors. His is now an oft-held story of inspiration.

He looks as healthy as ever. Bruce Smith works out five times per week, still casting quite a presence here among current Buffalo Bills players at Jim Kelly’s annual golf outing Monday. At nearly 53 years old, Smith is in incredible shape.

But like so many former NFL players, this Hall of Famer is also in incredible pain.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I’m not in pain,” Smith said. “Multiple joints and things that I experience on a daily basis. It can be very frustrating sometimes and painful, but I’m very blessed.”

… After the Serb’s breakthrough major championship at the 2008 Australian Open, it took him three more years to mature into Djokovic version 2.0—the best player in tennis.

That first peak effectively ended with his epic 2012 Australian Open win over Rafael Nadal, and he knocked around as the No. 1 or No. 2 player, losing big matches as often as not, and certainly not putting in his candidacy as the greatest player of all time. It was hardly a “dark ages,” but he did experience championship doldrums.

Then came 2015 when Djokovic version 3.0 drubbed the ATP tour with perhaps the greatest season of all time. King Novak had arrived. Of course there was still no French Open title, and until it happened he would wear that sin around his neck like Coleridge’s albatross.

With just one season of playing cornerback under his belt, you would think Arizona Cardinals rookie Brandon Williams would be easing his way into his pro career.

Think again.

Not only is Williams a quick study, but he’s making himself noticed.

Yes, it’s early, and yes, the Cardinals are merely playing soccer — what head coach Bruce Arians calls the NFL offseason work (organized team activities and mini-camp) when pads are not allowed — yet Williams is already impressing his coaches and teammates.

Graziano Pellè is set to lead Italy’s attack at Euro 2016, with the 30-year-old striker having flourished relatively late in his career and seized his recent opportunity at international level.

After bouncing around a number of clubs in Italy, it wasn’t until his spell with Feyenoord from 2012 to 2014 (50 goals in 57 Eredivisie games) that Pellè made his mark on European football. His form in the Netherlands led to former Feyenoord manager Ronald Koeman signing the Italian for Southampton, where Pellè has impressed with his muscular brand of play, scoring 23 goals in 68 Premier League games and forcing his way into Antonio Conte’s Azzurri squad.

A few weeks ago, there was buzz on the Internet about the physical transformation of recently retired marathoner Ryan Hall. Hall, whose distinguished career includes the fastest marathon and half-marathons ever run by an American, had adopted an intense weightlifting regimen and was dedicating himself to dumbbell curls and bench presses with the fervor he’d previously shown for tempo runs and track intervals. As a result, the 5’ 10” Hall had bulked up from 127 pounds last summer to 165 pounds, according to a recent Twitter post. The tweet also included a shirtless selfie, in which Hall’s torso looks less like that of an elite endurance athlete, and more like something you’d see on the brochure for a Vegas pool party.

As one member of an online running community bluntly put it: “Ryan Hall is jacked.”

Hall is relishing his newfound jackedness.

… context matters. And when context changes, under the hood, we somehow manage to integrate the new, updated information into our decision-making process to help us reassess the situation and make the better choice.

It’s an incredibly nifty skill, and one we don’t really understand. Now a new study published in eLife pinpoints the powerhouse underlying this type of rapid online learning in the brain: the mediodorsal thalamus (MD).

One Friday, a storm siren would blare on a continuous loop in the weight room as members of the Iowa State football team would go through workouts.

On another Friday, the public address announcement from the movie “The Purge” or the theme song from “Saw” would play over and over.

Rudy Wade, the Iowa State football team’s new strength and conditioning coach, quickly made his mark with the Cyclones by exhausting his players — physically and mentally — during winter workouts.

… The regular season situation changes during the playoffs. Games on consecutive days are extremely rare. The best of seven series format limits the scope of travel and focuses in-depth preparation on a single opponent. Perhaps, most important teams get to practice. And teams that get the most out of practice give themselves real post-season advantages.

The Brooklyn Nets have named Zach Weatherford as director of player performance, Dan Meehan as head strength and conditioning coach, Lloyd Beckett as head athletic trainer/physical therapist and Aisling Toolan as director of physical therapy.

RATINGS OF PERCEIVED EXERTION ARE A VALID METHOD OF ESTIMATING THE INTENSITY OF A RESISTANCE TRAINING EXERCISE OR SESSION. SCORES ARE GIVEN AFTER COMPLETION OF AN EXERCISE OR TRAINING SESSION FOR THE PURPOSES OF ATHLETE MONITORING. HOWEVER, A NEWLY DEVELOPED SCALE BASED ON HOW MANY REPETITIONS ARE REMAINING AT THE COMPLETION OF A SET MAY BE A MORE PRECISE TOOL. THIS APPROACH ADJUSTS LOADS AUTOMATICALLY TO MATCH ATHLETE CAPABILITIES ON A SET-TO-SET BASIS AND MAY MORE ACCURATELY GAUGE INTENSITY AT NEAR-LIMIT LOADS. THIS ARTICLE OUTLINES HOW TO INCORPORATE THIS NOVEL SCALE INTO A TRAINING PLAN. [link to full text pdf]

It was only two years ago that Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft CEO, plunked down $2 billion to buy the Los Angeles Clippers. Since then he has brought his tech background to the squad forcefully: He announced his intention to techify the Staples Center; he wants the team to use Microsoft Surface tablets instead of Apple iPads. You might think the Clippers are, by default, the tech industry’s NBA team of choice.

But techies have chosen the Warriors.

Golden State won the NBA Finals last year and its star player, Stephen Curry, was the MVP of the league. This year the team is in the Finals again, and Curry is the MVP again. The team’s 73 regular-season wins set an all-time record. And as the team has risen to the top of the NBA, luminaries of Silicon Valley have eagerly hopped onto the bandwagon.

Fitness trackers are old hat. Wearable tech company Vinaya thinks that what the world really needs is a device that tracks your emotional and mental health.

It’s just launched Zenta, a device that will identify cues such as heart rate, perspiration and temperature, cross-referencing them with your smartphone data. It’s goal is to decode stress triggers that might impact your productivity, sleep, happiness and even fertility. Kate Unsworth, founder and CEO told Fast Company:

“Our technology is able to use advanced pattern recognition techniques to understand cause and effect in your life. Once your profile is accurate enough, we begin to use predictive analytics to understand how these patterns will map out over time.”

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In the practice gym for the University of Virginia men’s basketball team, I’m trying to do my best Stephen Curry. The Golden State Warriors guard is the deadliest three-point shooter in the history of the NBA. I am a playground hack. I shoot from all over the court: free throws, 18-footers, three-pointers. After each shot, a robot speaks from a black box attached to a wall. “For-tee-two,” it says, flatly enunciating each syllable. I shoot again. “For-tee-three.”

The gym is empty except for me and my rebounder, John Carter, chief executive of Noah Basketball. His robot is telling me the angle of each shot as it falls from its peak toward the rim using data from a sensor mounted above the backboard. The software knows exactly what’s wrong with my shot: I need to heave the ball up higher.

… Home testing services like InsideTracker say they are empowering consumers, allowing them to spot metabolic red flags before they progress to disease. But critics say the services often lack proper medical oversight and convince healthy people that they’re sick, leading to unnecessary testing and treatment.

Those concerns have not stopped people from seeking home testing. The market for direct-to-consumer laboratory tests was valued at $131 million last year, up from $15 million in 2010,according to Kalorama Information, a pharmaceutical-industry research firm.

In December, the New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, accused two companies, DirectLabs and LabCorp, of violating a state law that requires laboratory tests to be carried out at the request of licensed medical practitioners.

Jawbone quietly acquired a company last year that could shed some light on the company’s rumored clinical wearable, MobiHealthNews has learned. Spectros, a startup founded by current Jawbone Chief Medical Officer David Benaron, was acquired by Jawbone in 2015. The company confirmed the news to MobiHealthNews in an email. Benaron is a serial entrepreneur whose previous company, Insite, was acquired by Masimo.

An 11-year-old company with at least six patents and numerous published studies, Spectros specialized in using spectroscopy to create a range of non-invasive molecular sensors. In particular, commercial applications of the technology used it for pulse oximetry, and detection of perfusion and ischemia. The company’s On-Call remote monitoring product allowed doctors to monitor their patients using a smartphone.

A lot of you wanted to know more about Tango. We did too. So we met with a few of the Tango developers to learn how it works, and what exactly does real-time 3D tracking capabilities actually mean??

These days, a person can’t talk about football without bringing up questions about the health effects of hard hits. Evidence is mounting that concussions experienced by players could lead to changes in the brain, including cognitive impairment.

But what about the bodily impacts football players experience?

In a new study, researchers at the University of Michigan set out to answer that question. They monitored 33 NCAA Division I football players using a device custom-fitted into the players’ shoulder pads that had both a GPS receiver and an accelerometer. They measured the intensity and number of impacts, along with their distribution over the players’ bodies. Then they sorted this data based on the players’ positions.

Lateral ankle sprains (LASs) are the most prevalent musculoskeletal injury in physically active populations. They also have a high prevalence in the general population and pose a substantial healthcare burden. The recurrence rates of LASs are high, leading to a large percentage of patients with LAS developing chronic ankle instability. This chronicity is associated with decreased physical activity levels and quality of life and associates with increasing rates of post-traumatic ankle osteoarthritis, all of which generate financial costs that are larger than many have realised. The literature review that follows expands this paradigm and introduces emerging areas that should be prioritised for continued research, supporting a companion position statement paper that proposes recommendations for using this summary of information, and needs for specific future research.

The Executive Committee of the International Ankle Consortium presents this 2016 position paper with recommendations for information implementation and continued research based on the paradigm that lateral ankle sprain (LAS), and the development of chronic ankle instability (CAI), serve as a conduit to a significant global healthcare burden. We intend our recommendations to serve as a mechanism to promote efforts to improve prevention and early management of LAS. We believe this will reduce the prevalence of CAI and associated sequelae that have led to the broader public health burdens of decreased physical activity and early onset ankle joint post-traumatic osteoarthritis. Ultimately, this can contribute to healthier lifestyles and promotion of physical activity.

My colleagues and I are currently working on a couple of reviews in rugby, and like most reviews, we went back as far as 1980. As we illustrated last year, the majority of rugby research has been published in the last ten years and a relatively small proportion has been produced before the year 2000.

As I scroll titles of articles before the year 2000 to review, I notice how the purpose of studies hasn’t changed much over the last 15 years. For example, in 1999 Garraway et al. published an article titled Factors influencing tackle injuries in rugby union football. Recently, we published a paper titled Tackle technique and tackle-related injuries in high-level South African Rugby Union under-18 players: real-match video analysis. Although the aims of the studies seem similar, after a peruse of both articles, the difference between the two studies soon become evident. Let’s call this difference…progress?

There’s a theory that we all have a finite number of heartbeats in our lifetimes, and that once we’ve worked our way through them all – however long it takes – that’s it, we’re dead.

The same is supposedly true for animals, such that small animals with high heart rates and fast metabolisms have shorter lifespans than big animals whose hearts beat slower. Some sources suggest most animals have
a lifespan of about a billion heartbeats, while us humans can expect to have nearer two billion. There are said to be exceptions to this rule, and plenty of people who suspect the theory is bunkum in the first place.

When Cyclist puts the notion to cardiologist and cyclist André La Gerche, he isn’t as quick to dismiss it as we might have suspected: ‘Obviously the idea of a defined number of heartbeats is simplistic,’ he says. ‘But as a broad concept for understanding over-training and the potential risks of high-level sport, it’s an interesting discussion point.’

BACKGROUND: Recent studies have shown increased risk of musculoskeletal injury for athletes returning to play from concussion. It is possible that subtle deficits in neurocognition and neuromuscular control, such as inhibited concentration, balance, or prolonged reaction times could increase risk of subsequent injury. However, there is little understanding of the variables that may help characterize risk during this time of vulnerability.
PURPOSE: To determine if concussed collegiate athletes with worse neurocognitive or balance performance are at increased risk of acute lower extremity musculoskeletal injury (LEI) following return to play (RTP) from concussion.
METHODS: This retrospective cohort study examined male (n=70) and female (n=14) athletes participating in NCAA Division I football, hockey, soccer, wrestling, and basketball, who sustained a concussion between June 2011- May 2015. Athletes completed symptom score, computerized neurocognitive (ImPACT – Immediate Post-concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing) and balance (BESS – Balance Error Scoring System) testing at baseline and post-injury time points (0-4, 5-11, 12-18, >30 days). The remaining academic school year following RTP from concussion was reviewed for acute, non-contact LEI, and athletes were divided into two groups (LEI, No LEI). Differences in total symptom, ImPACT composite, and BESS scores were compared using repeated measures ANOVA.
RESULTS: 152 cases of concussion were identified. Following strict exclusion criteria, 104 cases in 84 athletes were used for analysis. 31 athletes sustained 32 LEI between RTP from concussion and the end of the academic school year. After analyzing “change-from-baseline” for total symptom, ImPACT composite, and BESS scores, it was found that there were no significant differences between LEI and non-LEI groups at any time point.
CONCLUSIONS: There was no significant difference in neurocognitive or balance performance in concussed athletes who sustained LEI after RTP compared to athletes who did not sustain LEI. ImPACT and BESS testing may not be sensitive enough to detect athletes with subtle impairments who may be at increased risk of LEI following concussion. Future studies may utilize different methods, such as the Sensory Organization Test or vestibular-oculomotor deficit testing.

It was a startling scientific finding: Children who eat candy tend to weigh less than those who don’t.

Less startling was how it came about. The paper, it turns out, was funded by a trade association representing the makers of Butterfingers, Hershey, and Skittles. And its findings were touted by the group even though one of its authors didn’t seem to think much of it.

“We’re hoping they can do something with it — it’s thin and clearly padded,” a professor of nutrition at Louisiana State University wrote to her coauthor in early 2011, with an abstract for the paper attached.

… there are “pro’s” and “cons” of consuming sport drinks. Pro’s include; replacing fluids lost during high intense exercise, replacing CHO used for energy aiding in bring blood glucose back up to normal levels, replacing protein, and the fact that in general the drinks are easy to digest, taste good, and replenish vitamins and minerals. The cons include; the acidity in sports drinks can dissolve teeth, they are expensive, they are often used to replace water when unessential, they are high in sugar, they may contain caffeine, and some also have unproven claims such as; improving one’s speed, endurance, concentration, agility, and overall athletic performance. Companies who market and sell sports drinks do not have factual proof to back up these performance-enhancing claims (Lifescript, 2016).

With these alternatives it proves that there are different possibilities in maintaining or replenishing electrolytes loss during high intense, low intense, or long duration exercises. Keeping electrolytes in mind when exercising. Making it a priority to maintain electrolytes at optimal levels, so as an athlete you can perform the best you can in any activity you may be performing in.

The federal government’s decision to update food labels last month marked a sea change for consumers: For the first time, beginning in 2018, nutrition labels will be required to list a breakdown of both the total sugars and the added sugars in packaged foods. But is sugar really that bad for you? And is the sugar added to foods really more harmful than the sugars found naturally in foods?

We spoke with some top scientists who study sugar and its effects on metabolic health to help answer some common questions about sugar. Here’s what they had to say.

If you’re looking to improve your running, go deep – a tune-up for your digestive system could boost your performance and your health.

Exclusive social groups are ones in which the group members decide whether or not to admit a candidate to the group. Examples of exclusive social groups include academic departments and fraternal organizations. In the present paper we introduce an analytic framework for studying the dynamics of exclusive social groups.

Tactical match performance depends on the quality of actions of individual players or teams in space and time during match-play in order to be successful. Technological innovations have led to new possibilities to capture accurate spatio-temporal information of all players and unravel the dynamics and complexity of soccer matches. The main aim of this article is to give an overview of the current state of development of the analysis of position data in soccer. Based on the same single set of position data of a high-level 11 versus 11 match (Bayern Munich against FC Barcelona) three different promising approaches from the perspective of dynamic systems and neural networks will be presented: Tactical performance analysis revealed inter-player coordination, inter-team and inter-line coordination before critical events, as well as team-team interaction and compactness coefficients. This could lead to a multi-disciplinary discussion on match analyses in sport science and new avenues for theoretical and practical implications in soccer.

… DC: As someone who has spent a significant amount of time pushing forward the knowledge level of the baseball community, but who has also had his work removed from the public sphere at times due to jobs with the Mariners and Cubs, can you give us some idea of what went into the decision to join MLBAM?

TT: I’ve worked all my life for various corporate America-type companies, and for the last 10 years, I’ve had a secondary job as a sports consultant, on nights and weekends. My day job is “what I did,” but my night job is “who I am.” While in the past I’ve had the possibilities to make sports my full-time job, relocation was a constraint, so I never made that jump. With MLBAM, all the stars aligned. First, it was baseball. Secondly, it was with Cory and his team, with whom I’ve always had a great relationship. Finally, it’s a train ride away.

To date, news surrounding the arms race in college athletics has included lucrative television deals, facilities upgrades, dining-area enhancements, lodging amenities and even multi-uniform combinations. Notice what is missing from this list? The very reason why athletes should be attending college: Academics.

Can offering unique educational programs and experiences for student-athletes become part of the recruiting arms race for coaches? Is marketing academics attractive enough to sway kids 17 years old into wanting to attend a particular university over the massive size of a new weight room?

Nobody ever mentions academic upgrades because it is not as sexy as facility enhancements. Perhaps that is changing.

OK, this post has no equations or analysis results. It is an “opinion” article, and in my particular my opinion on sports and universities. The discussion about university spending on athletic teams has led to some interesting debates and arguments. I do not have any particular strong feelings about this (every situation has its pros and cons after all). However, where I have a strong opinion is on a particular change that I would like to see universities start making. In the past this change might not have made so much sense, but in the era of “big data” and “data science” almost all of the professional teams and leagues are turning more to computational approaches. Even though statistics have been into sports from their inception pretty much, now we are able to get a plethora of data ranging from boxscore data to micro-level data from sensors embedded on players uniforms. So the question that has been flying in my mind for some time now is that since we prepare athletes for the professional sports leagues, why not also prepare the sports analysts for these teams?

… our team decided to dig into Ray Kurzweil’s 2005 book The Singularity Is Near, in which Kurzweil describes the exponential growth of technologies like artificial intelligence, genetics, computers, nanotechnology and robotics. … Here are the top big insights from the book we think you should definitely know about…

1. Technology Feels Like It’s Accelerating — Because It Actually Is