Applied Sports Science newsletter – July 27, 2016

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for July 27, 2016

 

Newton’s Gevvie Stone a medal contender in rowing at Rio

The Boston Globe from July 25, 2016

Shortly after dawn, Gevvie Stone hangs a homemade sign on the back door of Weld Boathouse. Its blue, pink, and purple block letters read: “Gevvie’s Gone Rowing.” She is alone in the cavernous space filled with boats and oars, and the sign is a precautionary measure. Before she crafted it, Stone returned from a workout on the Charles River and was locked out.

She smiles, then half-shrugs at the memory and at the sign. That’s how the often-solitary life of an Olympic single sculler goes, even for a single sculler ranked No. 2 in the world.

Long and sometimes lonely days have taken Stone, 31, from almost quitting elite international competition to two US Olympic teams and into medal contention at the Rio Games. She hopes to join the four Americans who have reached the Olympic podium in women’s single sculls since the event debuted at the 1976 Montreal Games. All won silver.

“It’s a little ironic that after loving the teamwork aspect and rowing eights in college, I’m now in a single,” said Stone.

 

How the Knicks Can Make the Most Out of an Aging Joakim Noah – WSJ

Wall Street Journal from July 26, 2016

… for everything Noah does remarkably well, he isn’t without clear weaknesses. Among the biggest, assuming he’s healthy enough to play a full season: his shooting woes from the restricted area, where, among players with 100 tries, he shot a league worst 42.1% last year.

Some of that may stem from Noah’s lack of lift due to injuries. Over the past two seasons, he shot 48.4% from inside of 4 feet when playing on one day of rest or less; the rate shot up to almost 59% when he played on two days’ rest, according to Stats LLC.

 

Tottenham striker Vincent Janssen almost quit football three years ago

ESPN FC, Dan Kilpatrick from July 26, 2016

Tottenham Hotspur new boy Vincent Janssen has revealed he nearly quit football after failing to make the grade at Feyenoord.

Janssen spent three years with the Dutch giants but was released in 2013, aged 19, and dropped down to the Dutch second tier with minnows Almere City FC.

After two seasons at Almere, he returned to the Eredivisie and finished top scorer in the division in his only season with AZ Alkmaar, bagging 27 goals in 34 appearances last term to earn a £17 million summer move to Spurs.

 

Beware: mental fatigue to elite athletes is as big a concern as physical injury

Stuff.co.nz from July 17, 2016

… we need to acknowledge mental strain in sport the same way we do physical injury? – ?because it’s normal.

Every high performance athlete has mental challenges. So do coaches and officials.

That’s because it’s not possible to do your job on a public stage, stretch mind and body to the limits, be away from home and family for long stretches of time, withstand criticism and fear failure, know you could be one game away from a career ending crash?—?and not wage war with what’s going on in your head.

 

No Muscle is an Island: Integrative Perspectives on Muscle Fatigue.

Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise from July 18, 2016

Muscle fatigue has been studied with a variety approaches, tools and technologies. The foci of these studies have ranged tremendously, from molecules to the entire organism. Single cell and animal models have been used to gain mechanistic insight into the fatigue process. The theme of this review is the concept that the mechanisms of muscle fatigue do not occur in isolation in vivo: muscular work is supported by many complex physiological systems, any of which could fail during exercise and thus contribute to fatigue. To advance our overall understanding of fatigue, a combination of models and approaches is necessary. In this review, we examine the roles that neuromuscular properties, intracellular glycogen, oxygen metabolism, and blood flow play in the fatigue process during exercise and pathological conditions.

 

Short-Term Heart Rate Recovery is Related to Aerobic Fitness In Elite Intermittent Sport Athletes. – PubMed – NCBI

Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research from July 16, 2016

Although heart rate recovery (HRR) has been suggested as a measure of fitness, minimal data exists among athletes. The purpose of this study was to determine if HRR is related to aerobic fitness in elite athletes and whether this relationship is influenced by sex or body composition.84 collegiate athletes (male=45) underwent body fat percentage (BF%) determination by DXA and maximal treadmill testing followed by 5 minutes of recovery. Maximal aerobic capacity (VO2max) and heart rate (HRmax) were determined and HRR was calculated as a percentage of HRmax at 10 seconds, 30 seconds, and 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 minutes after test completion. After stratifying by sex, participants were grouped as high fit or low fit based on VO2max median split. HRR was compared between sexes and fitness level at each timepoint. Multivariable regression analysis was used to identify independent predictors of HRR using VO2max, BF%, and sex as covariates.HRR did not differ significantly between sexes. HRR was faster among high fit at 10 and 30 seconds, but no other time. VO2max was significantly correlated with HRR at 10 and 30 seconds (r=-0.34, p<0.001 and r=-0.28, p=0.008) only. After controlling for BF% and sex, VO2max remained significantly associated with HRR at 10 seconds (p=0.007) but not 30s (p=0.067) or any time thereafter.Aerobic capacity is related to faster HRR during the first 30 seconds only, suggesting that only very short-term HRR should be used as a measure of aerobic fitness in intermittent sport athletes.

 

Relationships Between Training Load Indicators and Training Outcomes in Professional Soccer | SpringerLink

Sports Medicine from July 26, 2016

Background

In professional senior soccer, training load monitoring is used to ensure an optimal workload to maximize physical fitness and prevent injury or illness. However, to date, different training load indicators are used without a clear link to training outcomes.
Objective

The aim of this systematic review was to identify the state of knowledge with respect to the relationship between training load indicators and training outcomes in terms of physical fitness, injury, and illness.
Methods

A systematic search was conducted in four electronic databases (CINAHL, PubMed, SPORTDiscus, and Web of Science). Training load was defined as the amount of stress over a minimum of two training sessions or matches, quantified in either external (e.g., duration, distance covered) or internal load (e.g., heart rate [HR]), to obtain a training outcome over time.
Results

A total of 6492 records were retrieved, of which 3304 were duplicates. After screening the titles, abstracts and full texts, we identified 12 full-text articles that matched our inclusion criteria. One of these articles was identified through additional sources. All of these articles used correlations to examine the relationship between load indicators and training outcomes. For pre-season, training time spent at high intensity (i.e., >90 % of maximal HR) was linked to positive changes in aerobic fitness. Exposure time in terms of accumulated training, match or combined training, and match time showed both positive and negative relationships with changes in fitness over a season. Muscular perceived exertion may indicate negative changes in physical fitness. Additionally, it appeared that training at high intensity may involve a higher injury risk. Detailed external load indicators, using electronic performance and tracking systems, are relatively unexamined. In addition, most research focused on the relationship between training load indicators and changes in physical fitness, but less on injury and illness.
Conclusion

HR indicators showed relationships with positive changes in physical fitness during pre-season. In addition, exposure time appeared to be related to positive and negative changes in physical fitness. Despite the availability of more detailed training load indicators nowadays, the evidence about the usefulness in relation to training outcomes is rare. Future research should implement continuous monitoring of training load, combined with the individual characteristics, to further examine their relationship with physical fitness, injury, and illness.

 

What’s beer got to do with sports injuries? A guest blog by Dr Tim Gabbett

Adam Meakins, The Sports Physio blog from July 26, 2016

… Apart from the obvious link between sport and alcohol consumption (e.g. think celebrating a good victory), the ability to develop “beer tolerance” following consistent exposure to beer is similar to the tolerance one develops when regularly exposed to training load. The first training session is always the hardest, but over time the soreness experienced following training is reduced. However, it is important to consider that just as beer and tequila carry different risks, not all training carries the same risk either 1. The training tolerance developed from continuous low-speed running (analogous to beer load) does not mean that a tolerance to high-speed running or sprinting (analogous to tequila) has been developed.

 

Chris Ash uses an idea from Pete Carroll to ramp up team meetings

CoachingSearch.com from July 25, 2016

… “For us, competition is at the core of who we are and what we want to be,” Ash said Monday on the Big Ten Network set. “We are installing competitive events throughout the course of the week. This summer, we started an arm-wrestling competition before team meetings. Players love it. They don’t know who’s going to get called out, but we call them out and a player has to come down in front of the group and get ready to perform. The players love it. It’s created a really energetic environment to start meetings.

“I went out to visit with Pete Carroll and the Seahawks in June, and they had a basketball hoop in their team meeting, and they start off with a shoot-off before their meetings. We implemented that in our team meetings also.”

 

Ed Smith on how sportspersons turn stress into purposefulness

ESPN Cricinfo from July 25, 2016

We have stress the wrong way around. Instead of an unpleasantness to be carefully avoided, it is fundamental to fulfilment. Stress makes us – or some people – happy.

We crave the easy life, but we need a challenging one. Stress knows our requirements better than we do. To adapt Bob Dylan’s lines in Blonde on Blonde: “You know what you want, but stress knows what you need.” And if, like a psychological alchemist, you can turn anxiety into a sense of purpose, then you are, well, you’re living a bit like Alastair Cook and Joe Root.

 

How Exhaustion Became a Status Symbol

New Republic from July 25, 2016

Exhaustion is a vague and forgiving concept. Celebrities say they’re suffering from it when they go to rehab and don’t want to admit to depression or addiction. You can attribute your low mood or your short temper to exhaustion, and it can mean anything from “had a couple of bad nights’ sleep” to “about to have a nervous breakdown.” It also seems like a peculiarly modern affliction. Relentless email, chattering social media, never-ending images of violence and suffering in the news, the lingering effects of the financial crisis, and looming environmental catastrophe: Who’s going to blame you if you confess to having had enough of it all?

Anna Katharina Schaffner’s Exhaustion: A History opens with the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI in 2013. He cited deteriorating physical and mental strength as a major factor in his decision to step down, and Schaffner teasingly holds him up as an emblem of our age, exhausted by the demands placed upon him. Then she points out that the only other pope to resign voluntarily gave reasons very similar to Benedict’s for doing so. That was Celestine V and the year was 1294.

Exhaustion, in popes as in less exalted subjects, is nothing new. But if exhaustion is eternal, our understanding of exhaustion is always changing. Schaffner, who is a lecturer in comparative literature at the University of Kent, shows how each era remakes the condition in its own image, reflecting its medical, technological and cultural developments, as well as its fears. Dangerous precisely because it keeps us from action, exhaustion has for centuries done double duty as a sign of weakness and a badge of honor.

 

The price of Olympic success

ANZ BlueNotes from July 25, 2016

Francesca Rizzo: You work closely with athletes at the top of their game. What do you think are the attributes of a truly successful person and how can anyone apply these in their workplace and career?

Shona Halson: My experience with truly elite athletes is they are willing to do things that others aren’t. I see this in their attention to detail and their focus on success.

I once asked a gold medallist from rowing why they thought they were so successful and their reply was they are always competing against themselves.

Their goal was to continually challenge themselves and see what their body could do.

 

U.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to ‘Enhance’ Human Abilities

Pew Research Center from July 26, 2016

Cutting-edge biomedical technologies that could push the boundaries of human abilities may soon be available, making people’s minds sharper and their bodies stronger and healthier than ever before. But a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults shows that majorities greet the possibility of these breakthroughs with more wariness and worry than enthusiasm and hope.

Many in the general public expect continued scientific and technological innovation, broadly speaking, to bring helpful change to society. Yet when people are queried about the potential use of emerging technologies for “human enhancement,” their attitudes are not nearly as affirming.

 

Fueling the Bears’ fire: Meet nutrition guru Jennifer Gibson

Chicago Sun-Times from July 23, 2016

… [Ryan] Pace first learned about Gibson in an article he randomly came across while researching ways to revamp the Saints’ methods. He was so impressed by what he read that he fired off a blind email, as he called it, to Gibson. It turned into dinner meeting that included Saints coach Sean Payton and GM Mickey Loomis.

Halfway through dinner, discussions became less about picking Gibson’s brain, but more about how they could hire her.

For the 2013 and 2014 seasons, Gibson served as a consultant, overhauling the Saints’ cafeteria, building a recovery shake area and creating a nutrition plan where there wasn’t one before.

“As time has gone on, the whole sports-science, nutrition, dietician aspect of what we do has become more and more important,” Pace said.

 

Athletes, coaches trying to find balance between analytics and ‘gut feeling’

The Seattle Times from July 24, 2016

The new sports battleground is no longer about the value of a stats approach vs. a traditional one. Most teams by now realize that blending the two offers a better shot at winning. The bigger challenge is how to get humans to catch up to the numbers.

Also, in Sports + Data:

  • Rise of Data Analytics in Football: The rise and rise of Leicester City (July 22, Outside of the Boot, Jack Coles)
  • How USA Cycling is Using Data to Prepare for Rio (July 26, TrainingPeaks, YouTube)
  • Putting it all together: A hockey systems, stats, tools, and talent evaluation primer (July 24, Blue Seat Blogs, Dave Shapiro)
  • Who Do you Want Throwing your Darts – A Monkey or Eric Bristow? (July 7, Leaders Performance Institute, Scott Drawer)
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