Applied Sports Science newsletter – June 14, 2016

… The day after surgery, Kang and Kim sat alongside Tomczyk in a meeting room at PNC Park and spoke toward a speaker phone. They were on a conference call with team doctors, Kang’s surgeon and key members of the Pirates athletic training and strength staff in Bradenton, Fla.

They needed a plan.

With no map to follow of how to rehab these three injured body parts at once, everyone was to put ego aside and select best practices. It was a great test for a Pirates performance team that has helped the club dramatically beat the industry average for days lost to injury in the previous two seasons.

Tomczyk thought about the advice he always gave to medical students in speaking engagements: Trust your knowledge and understanding of how the body works.

… Just by looking at Curry, you would never guess that he’s the most dominant player in the league. He’s six-foot-three, 190. He doesn’t bulldoze like LeBron or fly like Michael. His advantages are subtler. The remarkable quickness and off-the-charts shooting skills are ones that everyone knows about already. But the evidence also points to Curry being an extreme outlier — it wouldn’t be wrong to say genius — in his ability to process sensory input, even in the most stressful, complex, and fast-moving situations. In simplistic terms, he’s seeing more of the game, allowing him to exploit opponents’ positioning to create shots, find passing lanes, and force turnovers. Moreover, he is at the forefront of an emerging practice, among pro — and even amateur — athletes, of training their perceptive powers, just like ball-handling drills hone their physical skills and sports psychologists help put them build a winning mind-set. In short, Curry is something of poster boy for an new era in sports, where superior neural circuitry is regarded as just as much of an advantage as a higher vertical or a sweeter jump shot.

It’s “the cutting edge of sport performance,” says University of Central Florida sports scientist Jay Hoffman. “It’s being able to look at multiple stimuli on a court,” he says: seeing not just where your teammates and their defenders are, but, like a judo master, recognizing where your defender’s body is in space and using it against him. Curry “has the ability to see [all that stimuli], and get somebody into a position that’s favorable for him,” Hoffman says.

Danny Rose was so busy pondering how Gareth Bale had transformed himself from a shy and underused fellow Tottenham Hotspur reserve into a two?times European Cup-winning force of nature that, initially, he did not notice uttering the words sure to send shivers of apprehension down England spines.

He had already pointed to the way the Welshman lives off the pitch, teetotal and away from the limelight. He followed that with mentions of diet and professionalism. “So it’s not a surprise Gareth’s hit the heights,” Rose said. “He joined Spurs predominantly as a left-back and now he’s one of the most dangerous attacking midfielders in the world. Actually he’s probably the only guy I’ve seen who’s a lot quicker than Kyle Walker. I didn’t think that was possible.”

In his new book, Ego is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday takes philosophy out of the ivory towers and translates often-dense concepts into actionable insights—things like the “right” way to pursue excellence, and how to cultivate and sustain a high-performance mindset. As its title suggests, the book, out June 14, highlights what Holiday considers the greatest barrier to performance: ego. “The ability to evaluate one’s own ability is the most important skill of all,” he writes. “Without it, improvement is impossible.”

The Union are using their two-week Copa America Centenario layoff for rest, recovery and improving certain facets of their game.

But the coaches are also taking advantage of such a big tournament stopping in Philly in other ways, too.

“Having Copa America in our city has been pretty valuable — looking at players, watching a lot of games, sending scouts to watch games, going myself to see training sessions,” Union head coach Jim Curtin said. “I got to go see Uruguay, which was good. As a young coach, you always want to learn and try to get better. It confirms a lot of what you’re doing is similar, but you do see little things you can maybe tweak and make your own.

Poor neuromuscular control has been proposed as a risk factor for non-contact injuries, thus this study aimed to explore the effects of soccer-specific fatigue on leg muscle activation, reactive strength, leg stiffness, and functional hamstring/quadriceps ratio (H/QFUNC) in elite male youth soccer players. Outcome measures were determined in 18 youth players (age 14.4 ± 0.5 years; stature 169.4 ± 9.9 cm; mass 59.3 ± 8.9 kg; maturity offset 0.86 ± 0.88 years) pre and post simulated soccer match play (SAFT90). There was no fatigue-related change in the H/QFUNC; however, reactive strength and leg stiffness were both compromised (P < 0.001) after soccer-specific fatigue. Muscle activation was also locally compromised (P < 0.001) in the medial hamstring and quadriceps but not in the lateral muscles. Where statistically significant changes were observed, the effect sizes ranged from small to large (0.33–0.97). Compromised stiffness when fatigue is present suggests an increased yielding action, greater ground contact times, greater center of mass displacement, and less efficient movement when the limb comes into contact with the ground. This combined with a reduction in medial quadriceps muscle activation may reflect poor kinetic chain control at the hip and an increase in knee injury risk.

Previous studies have shown that muscle repetitive stress injuries (RSIs) are often related to sport trainings among young participants. As such, understanding the mechanism of RSIs is essential for injury prevention. One potential means would be to identify muscles in risk by applying biomechanical modeling. By capturing 3D movements of four typical youth sports and building the biomechanical models, the current study has identified several risk factors related to the development of RSIs. The causal factors for RSIs are the muscle over-lengthening, the impact-like (speedy increase) eccentric tension in muscles, imbalance between agonists and antagonists, muscle loading frequency and muscle strength. In general, a large range of motion of joints would lead to over-lengthening of certain small muscles; Limb’s acceleration during power generation could cause imbalance between agonists and antagonists; a quick deceleration of limbs during follow-throughs would induce an impact-like eccentric tension to muscles; and even at low speed, frequent muscle over-lengthening would cause a micro-trauma accumulation which could result in RSIs in long term. Based on the results, the following measures can be applied to reduce the risk of RSIs during learning/training in youth participants: (1) stretching training of muscles at risk in order to increase lengthening ability; (2) dynamic warming-up for minimizing possible imbalance between agonists and antagonists; (3) limiting practice times of the frequency and duration of movements requiring strength and/or large range of motion to reducing micro-trauma accumulation; and (4) allowing enough repair time for recovery from micro-traumas induced by training (individual training time). Collectively, the results show that biomechanical modeling is a practical tool for predicting injury risk and provides an effective way to establish an optimization strategy to counteract the factors leading to muscle repetitive stress injuries during motor skill learning and training. [full text]

Modern-day referees are top athletes; UEFA’s referee fitness expert Werner Helsen explains how he and his team have meticulously prepared the match officials for duty at UEFA EURO 2016.

… A movement assessment allows health and fitness professionals to observe imbalances of muscle strength, muscle recruitment, and joint range of motion. The results from a movement screen are used to determine corrective strength and flexibility exercises individual to your needs. It is possible to conduct your own movement screen with a keen eye, mirror, and possibly a second set of eyes from a friend or coach.

Use the exercises and steps below to determine your limitations. Each exercise can be used to determine corresponding corrective strength and flexibility exercises. This screen is used as a guide, not as a diagnosis or replacement for medical care. Follow the steps below and record your observations.

Linux has become the most popular operating system through forks like Android, Fire OS, Tizen, and Ubuntu, but now low-power wearable and Internet of Things (IoT) devices have bucked the trend.

Instead of utilizing the open source OS, these devices have found more success with real-time operating systems (RTOS) that function through a mobile OS, either iOS, Android, or in some cases Windows Phone.

Aim This systematic review and meta-analysis sought to identify return to play (RTP) rates following Achilles tendon rupture and evaluate what measures are used to determine RTP.

Design A systematic review and meta-analysis were performed. Studies were assessed for risk of bias and grouped based on repeatability of their measure of RTP determination.

Data sources PubMed, CINAHL, Web of Science and Scopus databases were searched to identify potentially relevant articles.

Eligibility criteria for selecting studies Studies reporting RTP/sport/sport activity in acute, closed Achilles tendon rupture were included.

Results 108 studies encompassing 6506 patients were included for review. 85 studies included a measure for determining RTP. The rate of RTP in all studies was 80% (95% CI 75% to 85%). Studies with measures describing determination of RTP reported lower rates than studies without metrics described, with rates being significantly different between groups (p<0.001).

Conclusions 80 per cent of patients returned to play following Achilles tendon rupture; however, the RTP rates are dependent on the quality of the method used to measure RTP. To further understand RTP after Achilles tendon rupture, a standardised, reliable and valid method is required.

The dynamical systems approach addresses Bernstein’s degrees of freedom problem by assuming that the neuro-musculo-skeletal system transiently assembles and dismantles its components into functional units (or synergies) to meet task demands. Strikingly, little is known from a dynamical point of view about the functioning of the muscular sub-system in this process. To investigate the interaction between the dynamical organisation at muscular and behavioural levels, we searched for specific signatures of a phase transition in muscular coordination when a transition is displayed at the behavioural level. Our results provide evidence that, during Fitts’ task when behaviour switches to a different dynamical regime, muscular activation displays typical signatures of a phase transition; a reorganisation in muscular coordination patterns accompanied by a peak in the variability of muscle activation. This suggests that consistent changes occur in coordination processes across the different levels of description (i.e., behaviour and muscles). Specifically, in Fitts’ task, target size acts as a control parameter that induces a destabilisation and a reorganisation of coordination patterns at different levels of the neuro-musculo-skeletal system.

… the North’s improbable success is widely regarded as a triumph of spirit and organisation over individual talent, while the team’s incredible run has been helped also by a dedicated, hard-working backroom staff.

Formerly a radio sports reporter, opposition analyst Lisa Fallon is one of the many people who have helped turn Northern Irish fans’ dreams into a reality. Though the Dubliner is eager to emphasise she has played just “a small part” in the success, explaining that the manager and the players deserve most of the credit, there is no doubt she is a highly valued member of the set-up.

During an interview with The Belfast Telegraph during the week, Craig Cathcart explained: ”We get little booklets on all the opposition players. Every player we get a little dossier on and areas to exploit and those are the small percentages that can really help.” Fallon is responsible for compiling these booklets, among other tasks.

Aside from the players themselves, there are a good number of 18-year-old kids who were thrilled to see the Pittsburgh Penguins win the Stanley Cup this spring.

Unless you follow the prospect world, there’s a good chance you haven’t heard of the likes of Will Bitten, Clayton Keller, Vitali Abramov, Alex DeBrincat and Rasmus Apslund yet. But you will. And depending on how many NHL teams try to copy the blueprint provided by this year’s Stanley Cup-winning Penguins, they might have a better chance to make the NHL than they ever have.

All of the aforementioned players are up for this year’s draft and all are undersized players who have an abundance of skill and speed. And if there was one defining factor that overrode all others in the playoffs and the Stanley Cup final, it was speed. Speed kills. The Penguins used their fast feet, their lightning-quick sticks and quick-moving brains to dismantle the Sharks, a team that was never able to use its strengths in the Stanley Cup final because the Penguins kept taking their best attributes away from them.

By any predictive metric, the Pittsburgh Penguins have generated a staggering amount of offense against the San Jose Sharks in the Stanley Cup Finals. Earlier this week, we looked at how the Penguins are able to create possessions with good defensive habits in the neutral zone. Today, we’ll examine how they create a volume of offensive chances via positional switches.

To fully understand the ideas behind the Penguins’ offensive zone play, it is necessary to study the “Total Football” philosophy.