Applied Sports Science newsletter – July 13, 2016

Andy Murray’s fitness trainer Matt Little has described the moment when Ivan Lendl rang around Murray’s backroom staff, just a couple of days before the Aegon Championships at Queen’s Club, to check whether the time was right for his return.

In a revealing interview, Little explained yesterday how he had reassured Lendl about Murray’s physical and mental readiness to win more grand-slam titles. Now he sees his own role as managing the final third of Murray’s extraordinary career.

… This week, voices around the league will pay tribute to Tim Duncan, highlight his achievements, and pontificate on his legacy. They’ll praise his longevity and consistency, a man who weathered a stream of injuries and ultimately posted one of the finest seasons of his career at age 36.

But if the board of governors wants to understand the essence of Duncan’s greatness behind the fundamental purity of his big-man game, they should consider the factors that contributed most to his endurance. And if they’re honest about it, they’ll note that Duncan never sniffed the top 25 in minutes played in any season after 2002-03, and that the Spurs monitored his playing time obsessively, even incurring $250,000 fines if it meant giving their franchise player the rest he needed.

If the league and its power brokers truly want to honor Duncan and bolster his legacy, they’ll cede to the best practices that kept Duncan on the floor until age 40.

Muscle strength is often measured through the performance of a one-repetition maximum (1RM). However, we that feel a true measurement of ‘strength’ remains elusive. For example, low-load alternatives to traditional resistance training result in muscle hypertrophic changes similar to those resulting from traditional high-load resistance training, with less robust changes observed with maximal strength measured by the 1RM. However, when strength is measured using a test to which both groups are ‘naive’, differences in strength become less apparent. We suggest that the 1RM is a specific skill, which will improve most when training incorporates its practice or when a lift is completed at a near-maximal load. Thus, if we only recognize increases in the 1RM as indicative of strength, we will overlook many effective and diverse alternatives to traditional high-load resistance training. We wish to suggest that multiple measurements of strength assessment be utilized in order to capture a more complete picture of the adaptation to resistance training.

Injuries are part and parcel of football, people working in the game often say. Sure enough the number of injuries does not seem to be decreasing, even though most top-level teams have embedded sports medicine and science provision within their set-ups these days. Some injuries, such as hamstring muscle strains and knee ligament ruptures, actually appear to be on the rise.

And there is evidence that injury rates negatively affect team success – teams that have more players available and suffer fewer injuries achieve more points per match on average. English Premier League champions Leicester City incurred relatively few injuries and days lost due to injury during their winning campaign, for example. On the other hand, Arsenal have consistently high injury rates and have struggled to win the league since 2003/04.

Football tournaments such as Euro 2016 can increase the injury risk for players because of the congestion of match fixtures. If any of the 23-man football squads at Euro 2016 were to play a whole season of football they could expect approximately 46 injuries – two injuries per player on average. This makes it particularly desirable to avoid injuries if possible – so can anything be done?

Over the last few years, I’ve written repeatedly about a series of strength-training studies from Stuart Phillips’ group at McMaster University. The basic message of these studies, in my view, has been: stop stressing out about all those training details that people like to stress out about. Strength training is simple—as long as it’s hard.

The group’s latest study is now out in the Journal of Applied Physiology, and it amplifies this message.

Epidemiological studies suggest a dose-response relationship exists between physical activity and cognitive outcomes. However, no direct data from randomized trials exists to support these indirect observations. The purpose of this study was to explore the possible relationship of aerobic exercise dose on cognition. Underactive or sedentary participants without cognitive impairment were randomized to one of four groups: no-change control, 75, 150, and 225 minutes per week of moderate-intensity semi-supervised aerobic exercise for 26-weeks in a community setting. Cognitive outcomes were latent residual scores derived from a battery of 16 cognitive tests: Verbal Memory, Visuospatial Processing, Simple Attention, Set Maintenance and Shifting, and Reasoning. Other outcome measures were cardiorespiratory fitness (peak oxygen consumption) and measures of function functional health. In intent-to-treat (ITT) analyses (n = 101), cardiorespiratory fitness increased and perceived disability decreased in a dose-dependent manner across the 4 groups. No other exercise-related effects were observed in ITT analyses. Analyses restricted to individuals who exercised per-protocol (n = 77) demonstrated that Simple Attention improved equivalently across all exercise groups compared to controls and a dose-response relationship was present for Visuospatial Processing. A clear dose-response relationship exists between exercise and cardiorespiratory fitness. Cognitive benefits were apparent at low doses with possible increased benefits in visuospatial function at higher doses but only in those who adhered to the exercise protocol. An individual’s cardiorespiratory fitness response was a better predictor of cognitive gains than exercise dose (i.e., duration) and thus maximizing an individual’s cardiorespiratory fitness may be an important therapeutic target for achieving cognitive benefits. [full text]

For adolescents, the transition into high school comes with a raft of social and behavioral challenges. The ability to assess, monitor and support these students could go a long way to helping them become successful in the classroom and life. That’s the idea behind the Social Emotional Health Survey (SEHS) developed by researchers at UC Santa Barbara.

Thanks to a $1.3 million grant by the Institute of Education Science, UCSB researchers led by Michael Furlong, a professor in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, will conduct a four-year study involving 140,000 California high school students to refine and validate the SEHS for use in schools.

MFC TV launches the first part of a new series entitled ‘Motherwell Inside’ with the focus on Strength & Conditioning Coach Andy Boles.

And in part one, the job of strength and conditioning coach Andy Boles is explored as the squad return for pre-season.

From training regimes to dietary advice, Andy plays a big part in helping the players reach peak fitness levels.

When a team reach the final of one of the great summer tournaments – a World Cup, or a European Championship – the chances are that your players will be exhausted, their minds reeling at what can be accomplished, and as a manager you can only try to keep it simple.

What time do France have between their semi-final win over Germany in Marseille and Sunday’s final? Three days’ rest. Portugal have one extra day. It is nothing. Nothing that will make a difference in terms of work that you can do on the training field. There is no time for high-intensity training or detailed preparation on the opposition – just rest, and clear minds for the biggest game of your life.

For many runners with big fall races on their calendars, the past few months have been scripted with detailed training plans dictating when to run, when to rest, how to stretch, what to eat, and everything in between. The minutes, hours, and days after the event are a lot less defined. Yet this often overlooked transition period is critical, especially if you raced 13.1 or 26.2 miles. “What you do to recover after a race plays a big role in how you will perform at the next one,” says Corey Hart, a physiologist and doctoral candidate at the University of Utah’s Vascular Research Lab. Here’s what is happening inside your body and mind following a race, and the steps you can take to bounce back strong.

In the name of spit science, Douglas Granger and his colleagues have collected saliva samples from a restless polar bear, a college marching band and Navy medics dodging bullets in simulated combat.

The mouthwatering liquid is a gold mine of information, says Granger, an “oral fluid” expert who recently moved his renowned research institute to the University of California, Irvine as part of the school’s High Impact Hiring Plan.

A fraction of a drop of spit can be used to measure stress, decipher relationship dynamics, predict heart trouble and even help football players train more effectively, he says: “Laced with hormones, enzymes, DNA and other substances, it can reveal almost everything found in a blood test, but without the needles.”

Federal regulatory frameworks governing medical products are designed to (1) provide evidence that a product benefits patients when used as intended and should be available despite accompanying risks and (2) ensure timely access to needed therapies and diagnostics. Historically, policy makers and product developers have viewed these objectives as being in tension. However, ensuring safety, expediting patient access, and enabling innovation can be complementary goals within a regulatory framework for medical devices.

The US standard for marketing a medical device is “reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness” (RASE). Generally, clinical studies must be conducted to demonstrate RASE for both high-risk and innovative lower-risk devices and US patients and clinicians have greater assurances that the benefits of devices outweigh the potential risks. In contrast, other countries apply a standard of safety and performance with limited clinical data. The greater evidentiary burden of RASE may create disincentives for manufacturers to bring important medical devices to the United States or may delay access to devices. [full text]

The Relative Age Effect (RAE) is a term used to describe the phenomenon of higher participation rates in the upper echelons of sport and academia by those born earlier in the year. Malcolm Gladwell found this effect, which he dubs “accumulative advantage”, to be prevalent among professional Canadian hockey players because the cutoff date for youth hockey leagues in Canada is January 1st. RAE has also been found to exist in the MLB, NHL and youth soccer. The premise behind this bias is straightforward; there is a huge physical developmental difference between young kids born in January vs those born in December of the same year. However, these kids usually play in the same age group in youth leagues. Naturally, kids born earlier will tend to perform better because of their physical advantage, thus being identified as talented and receiving more specialized training and attention. This small reward from being born earlier continually compounds, which results in a disproportionate number of athletes with early-year birthdays at the professional level.

I wanted to see whether or not this “Birthday Bias” exists in the NBA in terms of getting drafted. Is the NBA biased towards players born during certain times of the year?

This study investigated the effects of a congested match schedule (7 matches played in 7 days) on steroid hormone concentrations, mucosal immunity, session rating of perceived exertion (S-RPE) and technical performance in 16 elite youth soccer players (14.8 ± 0.4 years; 170.6 ± 9.4 cm; 64.9 ± 7 kg). No change was observed for salivary cortisol concentration across match time points (P = 0.33; effect size [ES] = 0.13–0.48). In contrast, there was a decrease in salivary testosterone and salivary IgA (SIgA) concentrations from the 1st compared with the last time point (P = 0.01 and 0.001, ES = 0.42 and 0.67, respectively). The SIgA concentration varied across time points (P 0.05). A higher number of tackles and interceptions were observed during the 4th match vs 1st and 7th matches (P < 0.001; ES = 2.25 and 1.90, respectively). The present data demonstrate that accumulated fatigue related to participation in a congested match schedule might induce a decrease in testosterone concentration in youth players and negatively affect their mucosal immunity and capacity to perform certain technical actions.

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