Applied Sports Science newsletter – August 4, 2016

Two years ago, Paul George suffered a gruesome leg injury playing for Team USA that changed his career path. As he makes his return to the global basketball stage in Rio, he reflects on that night, and how badly he wants redemption.

The MMQB senior reporter Albert Breer visits former major league pitcher Tom House, who’s found a second life working with some of the NFL’s best quarterbacks.

… Despite being nearly half a decade younger than any of her teammates, Pugh unquestionably belongs on the field with all of them. She primarily plays on the left wing, where she mixes blazing speed with improving skill when dribbling. “Speed kills but technical speed absolutely annihilates defenders. Mallory Pugh is for real,” the U.S. women’s soccer legend Mia Hamm tweeted after a recent match. Pugh, the second-youngest Olympian in the history of the U.S. women’s team—Cindy Parlow was a month younger in 1996—should play a major role in the Rio Games, where the American women look to become the first team ever to take home gold following a World Cup win. Not bad for someone who is a month removed from finishing her final high-school project. (It was on a decidedly second-semester-of-senior-year topic: how fashion correlates with your personality. “Did I learn anything?” Pugh said recently. “No, not really, to be completely honest.”)

When a dance instructor teaches the salsa to a beginner, she explains the steps in their most basic form. Whether it’s a front-to-back or side-to-side movement, the timing and rhythm are the same for each: quick, quick, slow, a 1-2-3, 5-6-7 count.

New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz is certainly not a novice salsa dancer—his Puerto Rican grandmother taught him the moves as a child—so as he prepares to play in his first NFL season since October 2014, he’s taking a similar step-by-step approach.

“With every day I get stronger and I get more and more confident with every step I take, with every run and every drill,” Cruz says. “I think it’s all coming together.”

As the Summer Olympics begin, all eyes will be on Simone Biles. The 19-year-old gymnast is one of the most decorated in history. But while Biles has clearly benefited from years of intense training, she’s also a natural talent who copied seasoned gymnasts with ease as a small child. For those of us who seem to trip whenever the wind picks up, flipping up and down a balance beam can seem like a truly impossible task. What goes on in the brain and the body when athletes like Biles perform these astounding feats — and why are they so much better at it than the rest of us?

“There are so many athletic tasks that are simply breathtaking in their execution,” Thomas M. Jessell, co-director of Columbia University’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, told The Post. Jessell has dedicated his career to studying the neuroscience of movement, but he still can’t say what makes a Michael Jordan different from a Biles — or what makes elite athletes in general different from the rest of the population, other than hours of practice and je ne sais quoi.

I always loved football at school and playing for Arsenal was my dream. But my PE teacher saw something in me when I was running down the wing. He pulled me aside and said to focus on athletics – it all started there.

I began racing seriously at 13 but it was after winning the European Junior 5,000m title in 2001 I started to really believe this could be my full time job. I dedicated myself to it 24/7 but I couldn’t have imagined I would become a double Olympic champion, especially not in my own back yard.

The Olympics spark hope in many a child of going for the gold. But in financially supporting those dreams, some parents are going for broke.

For his 15-year old son’s travel hockey team, Tim Richmeier was spending about $5,000 a season: using his tax refunds, halting contributions to his 401(k), and putting travel expenses on a credit card — including $6,000 he’s still paying off. Richmeier said it was a great experience for his child. But after four years, it was a financial relief when his son didn’t make the team.

“I was kind of dreading the upcoming season, knowing I’d go deeper in the hole,” said Richmeier, a single father in Phoenix.

Fueled by dreams of Olympic medals and college scholarships, many parents of top young athletes invest in their kids’ activities to the detriment of their own retirement savings, according to a new study.

The poll, commissioned by TD Ameritrade, focused on 1,001 parents of elite athletes.

While families typically dole out up to $500 a month on each child’s athletics, 33% of the parents polled said they do not regularly set aside money for their retirement. And 57% said they have no long-term financial plan.

A Florida support staff member paces near the 50-yard line, staring across the field of the Georgia Dome. It’s December and the SEC Championship Game will begin in an hour — No. 18 Florida vs. No. 2 Alabama. Players from both teams warm up, yet it’s not an athlete who has this young, up-and-coming coach’s attention. He looks over at the opposing sideline and marvels at the size of the crimson-clad throng of coaches at Nick Saban’s beck and call.

Florida is outnumbered, again.

It’s no less shocking than a week earlier, he says, when he was struck by the disparity in the number of coaches when they hosted Florida State to end the regular season. But instead of Saban, it was former Saban assistant Jimbo Fisher who had a king-sized support staff at his disposal, a flood of graduate assistants, analysts, quality control and player personnel-types.

The FDA won’t regulate fitness trackers and certain mobile health apps, the agency confirmed in a final guidance document released July 28.

The Food and Drug Administration won’t enforce its rules over products that are intended only for general wellness, such as tools for weight management, physical fitness or mental acuity, the agency said. Wellness products can be standalone products or mobile applications, and can also be sold as games, the agency said.

Wearable devices are pushing the boundaries of packaging and interconnects, according to experts who say many of the most interesting innovations are still ahead.

Wearables is a diverse field “with at least ten different segments,” said Pankaj Kedia, a senior director running the emerging wearables product line for Qualcomm. “For fast turn around, system-in-package rather than silicon integration will be more important,” he said on a panel at the Linley Mobile and Wearable Conference here.

Kedia would not say what sorts of SiP products Qualcomm is delivering. But he did note the recently launched Snapdragon 2100 and 1000 SoCs for wearables keep sensors external and come in versions supporting a variety of communications options.

Your fitness data is exactly that: data. Which is to say that it can be exposed and vulnerable. Not only could your standard, everyday workout metrics (like how fast, how hard, or how far you ride) surprisingly land in the laptops of crime-sniffing cops, hovering school administrators, and/or determined lawyers—it already has, and to surprising effects. Fitness-data downloads have been used to sleuth crimes, toss mountain bikers from trails, and—on a happier note—save at least one cyclist’s life.

Herewith, an eye-opening selection of extraordinary ways that the wider world interprets our workout stats.

Claudia Perlich discusses tricks to the art of predictive modeling in situations where the right data is scarce.

The advanced stats vs conventional hockey people fight is probably getting old for anyone watching the argument from the outside. Nevertheless, it rages on, flaring up whenever a new school person flagrantly denies conventional wisdom or an old school person balks at nerds analyzing the game with spreadsheets.

Many might be surprised to find out that the two schools of thought actually agree more than they disagree. The problem is, there are fundamental areas of friction between the two sides that may never be resolved. Let’s talk about these issues, from the view of a new school outsider with a background in psychology (i.e.; me).

So sum up what you’re talking about here. Why can’t we get past this annoying sniping between the two sides?

Player evaluation. It is the answer to everything.

Why have the Edmonton Oilers failed so miserably over the past decade in Rounds 2-6 at the National Hockey League Draft? Player evaluation: Amateur.

Why have they shored up their defence with professional acquisitions like Anton Belov, Nikita Nikitin, Andrew Ference and Mark Fayne? Player evaluation: Pro.

Why did the front office overrule its scouts and draft Nail Yakupov first overall in 2012? Well, the GM and his pals didn’t trust the scouts’ collective player evaluation skills, and showed that their own were highly questionable as well.