Applied Sports Science newsletter – June 20, 2016

Bud Dupree didn’t have to look very far to find a role model when it came to NFL fitness. His locker stall is three down from James Harrison’s, where the “ageless” linebacker — as Ben Roethlisberger called him last week — tweets of videos of his weight room workouts. Dupree witnesses those legendary sessions in person, and they’ve been helpful in his transition to professional football.

Like most college players entering the NFL, Dupree really had no idea of what it took to be in peak physical condition. He found that out the hard way when his rookie season that started with so much promise ended with a whimper.

Will Götze be the centre of an new era of Bayern Munich? Or is a move away more likely?
In Germany’s opening game versus Ukraine Mario Götze received a lot of criticism regarding his performance. A few years ago this one of the most promising players in world football. Now at 24 years old he looks lost and lacking in confidence. What happened to Germany’s young new hope and what does the future hold for him?

The aims of the current study were to examine the external validity of inertial based parameters (inertial movement analysis; IMA) to detect multi-planar explosive actions during maximal sprinting, change of direction (COD) and to further determine its reliability, set appropriate magnitude bands for match analysis and assess its variability during international women’s soccer matches. Twenty U20 female soccer players, wearing GPS units with a built-in accelerometer, completed three trials of a 40-m sprint and a 20-m sprint with a change of direction to the right or left at 10-m. Further, thirteen women’s national team players (157 files; 4-27 matches per player) were analyzed to ascertain match-to-match variability. Video synchronization indicated IMA signal was instantaneous with explosive movement (acceleration/deceleration/COD). Peak GPS velocity during the 40-m sprint showed similar reliability (CV = 2.1%) to timing gates, but increased pre- and post-COD (CV = 4.5-13%). IMA variability was greater at the start of sprints (CV = 16-21%) compared to pre- and post-COD (CV = 13-16%). IMA threshold for match analysis was set at 2.5m.s-2 by subtracting one standard deviation from the mean IMA during sprint trials. IMA match variability (CV = 14%) differed from high-speed GPS metrics (35-60%). Practitioners are advised that timing lights should remain the gold standard for monitoring sprint and acceleration capabilities of athletes. However, IMA indicates a reliable method to monitor between match explosive actions and assess changes due to various factors such as congested schedule, tactics, heat or altitude.

Taking more rest between sets of weightlifting can promote muscle growth, according to researchers at the University of Birmingham who have published a study in the journal Experimental Psychology.

Conventional belief is that the shorter the rest period, the better when it comes to weight training. But Dr Leigh Breen and her team found that cutting recovery to a minute or less may actually impair the processes that trigger muscles to grow.

In their study, the Birmingham scientists recruited 16 men who performed a resistance session with either one or five minutes of rest between sets. Muscles biopsies were taken at four stages during the 28 hours following their workout with the researchers analysing myofibrillar protein synthesis (MPS) and intercellular signals, signs of growth.

It’s a players’ game.

Those were the words Mike Sullivan used to deflect his personal impact on the Penguins’ run to the Stanley Cup a few days before the team’s storybook ending June 12, on that choppy sheet of ice in San Jose, Calif.

That might be true. But many a coach routinely finds a way to get in the way.

Sullivan had his hands full when general manager Jim Rutherford promoted him from head coach of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton minor leauge club to take over as head coach of the Penguins Dec. 12 after firing Mike Johnston. The Penguins were buried in the standings, struggling badly and the franchise’s window of Stanley Cup opportunity was closing rapidly. There were a lot of chefs in the kitchen, so to speak, and the collection of bodies in the locker room was nowhere near the team it would later become.

How do we learn a thing? If you are in any normal pursuit, you probably read a book, or take a course. Maybe you check out some peer-reviewed journal articles, should you have access to materials at a university. Possibly, what you want to learn has some expert sites on the internet, so you trawl through their material to get up to speed. In a few rare cases, maybe you are lucky enough to have access to a subject matter expert and you ask them for information.

That’s for normal subjects, which covers the vast spectrum of all things humans need to know.

Now… how do you learn if you are a coach?

A FRIEND of mine has a bad habit of narrating his experiences as they are taking place. I tease him for being a bystander in his own life. To be fair, we all fail to experience life to the fullest. Typically, our minds are too occupied with thoughts to allow complete immersion even in what is right in front of us.

Sometimes, this is O.K. I am happy not to remember passing a long stretch of my daily commute because my mind has wandered and my morning drive can be done on autopilot. But I do not want to disappear from too much of life. Too often we eat meals without tasting them, look at something beautiful without seeing it. An entire exchange with my daughter (please forgive me) can take place without my being there at all.

Recently, I discovered how much we overlook, not just about the world, but also about the full potential of our inner life, when our mind is cluttered. In a study published in this month’s Psychological Science, the graduate student Shira Baror and I demonstrate that the capacity for original and creative thinking is markedly stymied by stray thoughts, obsessive ruminations and other forms of “mental load.” Many psychologists assume that the mind, left to its own devices, is inclined to follow a well-worn path of familiar associations. But our findings suggest that innovative thinking, not routine ideation, is our default cognitive mode when our minds are clear.

When it comes to elite sport, athletes never stop looking for a physical edge. Seemingly small changes to training, nutrition or recovery can pay off big time in competition, when the difference between a podium finisher and the pack of also-rans can be mere seconds or fractions of seconds. But no matter how well prepared any athlete’s body is, this preparation can be in vain if their mind lets them down. It’s tricky enough to formulate a solid game plan and execute it flawlessly when things are going smoothly, but add in a little adversity – a hot or cold day, an early stumble, a shoelace that comes untied at just the wrong moment – and even the best physical specimens can fall apart between the ears.

That’s why so many athletes turn to sports psychologists. These “brain trainers” try to ensure that sportsmen and women are just as resilient emotionally and cognitively as they are physically when it matters most: on race day. Dr. Jim Afremow is one of the world leaders in this field.

That sneaky Jim Harbaugh. He may be up to something new and clever—or at least we think so.

From the Twitter page of Alejandro Zuniga comes a flyer he found. It’s hard to make heads or tails of the flyer, as it is both cryptic and secretive in nature.

This is what it reads verbatim:

Coach Harbaugh needs you. Coach Harbaugh and Michigan football need your help. We are looking for graduate student volunteers with backgrounds in programming, engineering, medical, analytics, design for SECRET applied research projects. A great opportunity to be part of something special. All highly motivated individuals send Dr. Fergus Connolly, Michigan Football Director of Performance, a resume

… According to a SAP press release, the Challenger Insights are “providing data driven insights surrounding an opponent’s offensive and defensive tendencies, formations, and more.” The SNAP HANA Cloud Platform is available on iPads that DFB players have in their pre-game lockers which coaches use to display data of the opposing team’s tactical characteristics and assumed match plans to review in video breakdowns.

The SAP Match Insights projects a new dashboard that gathers real-time pitch information on previous and upcoming games including, average ball possession time, defensive strategies and player movements. The dashboard is equipped with video progressions of each team and their current and projected tendencies which are simulated. [video, 1:18]

The University of Alabama will be home to a new center whose researchers will study the intersection of sports and technology, involving Crimson Tide athletics in an innovative approach to improve training and performance of athletes across the world.

The UA System Board of Trustees approved the Integrative Center for Athletic and Sport Technology, or I-CAST, at its meeting June 17, establishing the research center devoted to the development of new technologies and the application of existing technologies for the purposes of reducing injury, accelerating recovery from injury, enhancing human performance and optimizing nutrition in performance and recovery.

The central theme of research and development of new technologies directly associated with competitive sports gives UA faculty, staff and students the opportunity to be part of the first such research center in the nation.

Background: Injuries are inherent to the sport of American football and often require operative management. Outcomes have been reported for certain surgical procedures in professional athletes in the National Football League (NFL), but there is little information comparing the career effect of these procedures.

Purpose: To catalog the postoperative outcomes of orthopaedic procedures in NFL athletes and to compare respective prognoses and effects on careers.

Study Design: Case series; Level of evidence, 4.

Methods: Athletes in the NFL undergoing procedures for anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears, Achilles tendon tears, patellar tendon tears, cervical disc herniation, lumbar disc herniation, sports hernia, knee articular cartilage repair (microfracture technique), forearm fractures, tibial shaft fractures, and ankle fractures were identified through team injury reports or other public records. Game and performance statistics during the regular season were collected before and after surgery. Statistical analysis was performed with significance accepted as P < .05.

Results: A total of 559 NFL athletes were included. Overall, 79.4% of NFL athletes returned to play after an orthopaedic procedure. Forearm open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF), sports hernia repair, and tibia intramedullary nailing (IMN) led to significantly higher return-to-play (RTP) rates (90.2%-96.3%), while patellar tendon repair led to a significantly lower rate (50%) (P < .001). Athletes undergoing ACL reconstruction (ACLR), Achilles tendon repair, patellar tendon repair, and ankle fracture ORIF had significant declines in games played at 1 year and recovered to baseline at 2 to 3 years after surgery. Athletes undergoing ACLR, Achilles tendon repair, patellar tendon repair, and tibia IMN had decreased performance in postoperative season 1. Athletes in the Achilles tendon repair and tibia IMN cohorts recovered to baseline performance, while those in the ACLR and patellar tendon repair cohorts demonstrated sustained decreases in performance.

Conclusion: ACLR, Achilles tendon repair, and patellar tendon repair have the greatest effect on NFL careers, with patellar tendon repair faring worst with respect to the RTP rate, career length after surgery, games played, and performance at 1 year and 2 to 3 years after surgery.

Basketball teams play down to their opponents. We know that. But we’ve also heard that good defense leads to good offense. These are seemingly contradictory.

But they’re not. Both are true. How they are both true is what is now clear.

This post is the second part of our forum on data analytics and inclusivity. The forum was inspired by an essay written by Michael Wilbon about African Americans and analytics. I’ve asked several people who work in analytics to comment on the problems with and opportunities for inclusivity in data analytics, especially as it relates to sports analytics. The first set of essays can be found here.

Today’s essays are written by three contributors who have direct experience in data analytics and sports. The essays all deal with, in some way, root causes of a racial gap in analytics. Michael Lopez is a statistician at Skidmore College who has written extensively about sports analytics at places like Sports Illustrated and Fivethirtyeight. Jerry Kim is an economic sociologist, who has been at Columbia University since 2006 and will soon join the business school at Rutgers University. His research focuses on the consequences of status for evaluation and he has written about about the effects of status bias on umpires’ decision-making in the MLB (a paper that I can say with zero bias is amazing). Our final contributor is Trey Causey, a computational social scientist who has done considerable work as a data analyst and consultant for the NFL and who is now a data scientist at ChefSteps.

In club football, each team has its own style of play. Arsenal have an intense build-up in front of and into the box, Leicester focus on rapid counter-attack and long balls, and Southampton and West Ham look to put crosses into the box.

Until the matches started in this summer’s Euros, though, it was difficult to know exactly how the national teams were going to play. Pre-tournament friendlies, with all of the substitutions involved, don’t give a clear picture.

But now that we’ve seen the first round of matches, we can start to build a clearer picture of Europe’s different styles.