Applied Sports Science newsletter – July 6, 2016

Even as arguably the greatest American sports story — Two towering champions? One family? Really? — it still has found a lavish new chapter at this Wimbledon. Nineteen years after it started and six years after it started to ebb, it cannot stop topping itself. Maybe it intends to prove limitless.

They’ll play the women’s semifinals on Thursday, and one American family will send out half the semifinalists — as crazy as it should sound, and as routine as it sounds by now. Venus and Serena Williams, 36 and 34, each more than double the age from when they began playing at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, will walk out to Centre Court among the last four, as they did in 2000, and 2002, and 2003, and 2008, and 2009.

“I’m surprised by the longevity of it,” Serena Williams said.

“It doesn’t feel foreign at all, let’s put it that way,” Venus Williams said.

A Wimbledon win may, at least in part, be down to pumping iron in the gym, according to UK researchers who say the most successful elite male players of modern times tend to be more muscular.

“Mental toughness” is a desirable trait in any athlete. When game situations become critical and extremely difficult as the levels of pressure and stress skyrocket, a coach’s concern turn to the ability (or inability) of the athlete to avoid the onset of anxiety and not succumb to these high stress conditions. As part of the discussion in the preparation of the athlete to enhance their “mental toughness” it is important to consider the influences of fatigue upon athletic performance.

Fatigue is not the enemy of the athlete. It is critical for the athlete develop a work capacity to enable them to perform at optimal levels repeatedly over time. To improve an athlete’s work capacity the athlete must be exposed to the appropriate application of unaccustomed stress as described by Hans Seyle in his “General Adaptation Syndrome” (GAS) for the desired adaptation to occur.

“Why are traffic lights red, yellow and green?”

When a child asks you a question like this, you have a few options. You can shut her down with a “Just because.” You can explain: “Red is for stop and green is for go.” Or, you can turn the question back to her and help her figure out the answer with plenty of encouragement.

No parent, teacher or caregiver has the time or patience to respond perfectly to all of the many, many, many opportunities like these that come along. But a new book, Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children, is designed to get us thinking about the magnitude of these moments.

Carefully designed plans for the pre-season programme at Melwood will help to ensure the Liverpool squad is ‘on a good way’ for 2016-17, according to Andreas Kornmayer.

Most training plans suggest mixing runs of various lengths and speeds, with a shift in focus—from endurance to speed, typically—as you get closer to a goal race. This approach, “periodization,” is the subject of an ongoing study by Stephen Seiler, a researcher at the University of Agder and the Norwegian Olympic Federation. Last fall, he presented initial results comparing three different styles of periodization for endurance athletes.

… it is no secret that technology is quickly becoming a key part of our sporting lifestyles. But, until now there was very little evidence gathered directly from the people who are actually using it. We now know what technologies people use, why they use them and how, and what role coaches can play in the process.

With this insight we can start to plan how coaching can work in tandem with technology to reach new audiences and provide everyone with the sport and physical activity experiences they are looking for.

NBA players have been cozying up to the tech world in recent years, though mainly through investments or, in the case of New York Knicks’ Carmelo Anthony’s M7 Tech Partners, actually creating VC firms. But some players aren’t just flirting with Silicon Valley, they’re ready to commit—and the National Basketball Players Association is more than happy to be the matchmaker.

The National Basketball Players’ Association (NBPA) is announcing today the inaugural NBPA Technology Summit, a three-day event in San Francisco that aims to integrate NBA players with tech and media companies for post-career opportunities beyond just backing them—a shift in thinking that’s found Golden State Warriors forward Andre Iguodala as a model student.

The game of baseball is often referred to as “America’s Pastime,” not only due to the rich history of the game, but there is something about watching your favorite team with a hot dog and an ice cold beer at the park you grew up going to with your dad. The ballpark scene is symbolic to American culture, and is filled with legendary players and coaches. In the sports performance realm, however, tradition, or doing it “the way it’s always been done,” can often lead us down an unproven path. The safety in doing what’s always been done has impeded performance gains for decades. The goal is to change this way of thinking.

Weightlifting for baseball players used to be a taboo topic; because the old school train of thought was that it could make you big and slow. While there may be some truth to that in certain cases, we know that resistance training, regardless of sport, can be very beneficial when done correctly. Using science to validate what we do in this industry is the best way to be sure that we don’t waste our time.

A new study, published in the American Journal of Infection Control, shows that electronic hand hygiene monitoring improves compliance with the World Health Organization’s five moments for hand hygiene recommendations. Everyone knows the importance of good hand hygiene in the healthcare setting, but there isn’t much research connecting better hygiene to improved patient outcomes.

The study, conducted between July 2012 and March 2015, involved electronic monitoring of hand hygiene with technology from DebMed rather than direct observation. Sensors were attached to hand-sanitizing and hand-washing units in 23 inpatient facilities. Each time one of the units was used, the information was relayed back to a server. An algorithm calculated whether or not the staff was following the WHO’s recommended standards.

Orthopedic sports medicine can be defined as “the care of the muscles, bones and joints of athletically active individuals.” The sports medicine physician has multiple responsibilities to athletes and must possess the following characteristics: availability, compassion, gentleness, honesty, communication and a true love of helping those who show good sportsmanship.

Accordingly, the duties of the sports medical team, including the physicians, athletic trainers and other paramedical personnel, are to responsible for the health and well-being of the athlete. The team physician and athletic trainer must be prepared to identify and plan for medical care and services that promote the safety of athletes, prevention of injury and provision of medical care at the site of practice, competition or thereafter. It is also important to remember the athletic trainer is the glue that keeps the sports medicine team on track.

If Noah Syndergaard continues his solid sophomore season as a starting pitcher for the New York Mets, “juicing” in baseball may take on a whole new meaning, and that would be a very good thing for Sarah-Christian Carlson.

The Certified Nutrition Specialist and Nutritional Health, Performance and Longevity Coach from Webster counts the 23-year-old right-hander and rising star among eight current clients who are major-league baseball players. Carlson was mentioned recently in a New York Post article detailing Syndergaard’s focus on nutrition and in particular his regular routine of drinking vegetable-charged and fruit-infused juices that often look as green as the grass on which he plays baseball.

Sports nutrition has evolved rapidly in the last 50 years and is likely to continue to evolve. The purpose of this symposium is to
discuss some of the major trends and expected areas of development of the field. The discussions will center around 3 major topics:
(1) Development of guidelines and personalization of advice as well as products (2) Regulatory changes with an impact on advice,
athlete behaviour as well as product development (covered by Dr Maughan) and (3) The continued introduction of technology into
sports nutrition.

… Clubs that are considering using data to solve specific recruitment issues tend to have three common aims: to benchmark transfer targets against existing squad members; to find a player similar to an individual they already know or have; and to identify players with specific characteristics.

As a first step in assisting with such enquiries, the Prozone Performance.LAB can conduct a principle component analysis that enables players to be searched across multiple variables. The results are then processed to create similarity measures that highlight the levels of correlation between a player (or group of players) and the desired characteristics. This data can be used to identify which players are the best fit with the club’s requirements, a useful starting point in the technical scouting process.

This is an elementary introduction to causal inference in economics written for readers familiar with machine learning methods. The critical step in any causal analysis is estimating the counterfactual—a prediction of what would have happened in the absence of the treatment. The powerful techniques used in machine learning may be useful for developing better estimates of the counterfactual, potentially improving causal inference.