Applied Sports Science newsletter – August 8, 2016

Before he became a full-time swim coach, Bruce Gemmell was an engineer and inventor whose oeuvre included toilet paper products. Among the 11 American patents on which his name appears is one for an adapter and dispenser for coreless rolls.

In 2011, Gemmell put his engineering degree to rest, but he has never stopped innovating. His latest project, Katie Ledecky, has thrived under his tinkering, becoming stronger, faster and more versatile.

In the four years since she began working with him, Ledecky has dropped more than eight seconds in the 800 freestyle, her gold medal event at the 2012 London Olympics. She has trimmed six seconds from her personal best in the 400 freestyle. She has lowered the world record five times in the 1,500-meter freestyle, a non-Olympic event for women. And she has become a world-class performer in the 100 and 200 freestyles.

“I couldn’t be happier with how my four years have gone with Bruce,’’ said Ledecky, 19, who opens her individual program in the 2016 Games on Sunday in the 400 freestyle.

… when Dunn failed to make the World Cup team last summer, it was her rare absence that turned many heads. Dunn was in the car with her parents, Vincent and Rhonda, last April when Ellis gave her a call. “Uh, Crys, unfortunately we’re not going to take you to the World Cup,” Ellis said. For once, Dunn was not exactly where she wanted to be.

Some fans wrote it off as the cost of doing business, the downside of traveling among such elite company; not everyone can make the team. Others delved into criticism (Ellis, and U.S. Soccer, had messed up Dunn’s development!) or conspiracy (Dunn was left off the team to give courtesy spots to high-profile veterans!). But anyone watching had to wince in empathy when Dunn was asked, two weeks later, to come to California to train with the World Cup squad in place of the injured Tobin Heath.

“I’m kind of like the loner,” Dunn told the Washington Times, “sitting there and cheering them on.” She said that while everyone else ducked out for TV interviews and uniform distribution, she had no need. “But I’m a part of U.S. Soccer,” she said, “and for me it wasn’t an option to say no, so I was 100 percent all in.”

The aim of this investigation was to analyze the physical and physiological demands of experienced basketball players during a real and competitive game. Twenty-five well-trained basketball players (8 guards, 8 forwards, 9 centers) played a competitive game on an outdoor court. Instantaneous running speeds, the number of body-impacts above 5-g as well as the number of accelerations and decelerations were assessed by means of a 15 Hz GPS accelerometer unit. Individual heart rate was also recorded using heart rate monitors. As a group mean, the basketball players covered 82.6±7.8 m/min during the game with a mean heart rate of 89.8±4.4% of maximal heart rate. Players covered 3±3% of the total distance running at above 18 km/h and performed 0.17±0.13 sprints per minute. The number of body impacts was 8.2±1.8 per minute of play. The running pace of forwards was higher than centers (86.8±6.2 vs. 76.6±6.0 m/min; p<0.05). The maximal speed obtained during the game was significantly higher for guards than centers (24.0±1.6 km/h vs. 21.3±1.6 km/h; p<0.05). Centers performed a lower number of accelerations/decelerations than guards and forwards (p<0.05). In conclusion, the extraordinary rates of specific movements performed by these experienced basketball players indicate the high physiological demands necessary to be able to compete in this sport. The centers were the basketball players that showed lower physiological demands during a game while there were no differences between guards and forwards. These results can be used by coaches to adapt basketball training programs to the specific demands of each playing position.

To become stronger and develop more muscle, you must lift heavier weights over relatively few repetitions. At least, that has been the received wisdom among professional athletes. However, a new body of evidence suggests that it may be wrong.

Researchers at McMaster University in Canada found that the weight of your weights doesn’t matter, as long as you continue lifting to the point of exhaustion.

Dawn Scott first worked with the U.S. Women’s National Team in January of 2010 and joined Pia Sundhage’s staff full-time the following February, working with the USA in both the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup and the 2012 Olympics. Scott came to U.S. Soccer from the English Football Association, where she worked since 2001 as an Exercise Scientist, primarily with the England Women’s National Soccer Teams. Her responsibilities with the U.S. women include the delivery, coordination and monitoring of the team’s strength and conditioning as well as the nutritional and exercise science strategies for the squad. … Scott took time out of her extremely busy schedule to answer questions about the US Women’s National Team Fitness. How do you compare?

United States under-20 men’s coach Tab Ramos is in New Jersey with 20 of the top young players in America. ASN’s Brian Sciaretta spoke with the coach and a few key players about the status of the team.

Background

Several strategies have been used to improve running economy (RE). Defined as the oxygen uptake required at a given submaximal running velocity, it has been considered a key aerobic parameter related to endurance running performance. In this context, concurrent strength and endurance training has been considered an effective method, although conclusions on the optimal concurrent training cannot yet be drawn.
Objective

To evaluate the effect of concurrent training on RE in endurance running athletes and identify the effects of subject characteristics and concurrent training variables on the magnitude of RE improvement.
Methods

We conducted a computerized search of the PubMed and Web of Science databases, and references of original studies were searched for further relevant studies. The analysis comprised 20 effects in 16 relevant studies published up to August 2015. The outcomes were calculated as the difference in percentage change between control and experimental groups (% change) and data were presented as mean ± 95 % confidence limit. Meta-analyses were performed using a random-effects model and, in addition, simple and multiple meta-regression analyses were used to identify effects of age, training status, number of sessions per week, training duration, type of strength training, and neuromuscular performance on % change in RE.
Results

The concurrent training program had a small beneficial effect on RE (% change = ?3.93 ± 1.19 %; p < 0.001). In addition, explosive (% change = ?4.83 ± 1.53; p < 0.001) and heavy weight (% change = ?3.65 ± 2.74; p = 0.009) training programs produced similar improvements in RE, while isometric training (% change = ?2.20 ± 4.37; p = 0.324) in selected studies did not induce a significant effect. The multiple linear meta-regression analysis showed that all the differences between % changes could be explained by including the above-mentioned characteristics of subjects and weight training program elements. This model showed that the magnitude of the % change in RE was larger for longer training duration (? = ?0.83 ± 0.72, p = 0.02).
Conclusion

Explosive training and heavy weight training are effective concurrent training methods aiming to improve RE within a few weeks. However, long-term training programs seem to be necessary when the largest possible improvement in RE is desired.

Athletic technology and innovation …

Mounir Zok 2Mounir Zok (bio), Director of Technology and Innovation for The US Olympic Committee (Team USA), joins Marc Raco, Rob Sanchez and Nataliya Makulova at The 2016 Smithers Apex WEAR Conference in Boston, MA.

Zok describes his role as the person who sits down with athletes and coaches, helping them get as many medals as possible by helping to develop the secret sauce of sports success and closing the 1% gap. International differences in innovation, the impact of people from varying backgrounds and skills being at same table, true innovation and a wealth of knowledge, and the value of originating from Lebanon. Looking at the range of innovation, functional fibers, tracking, coaching, all technology, injectionable technology, environments, in bedrooms and gyms, analytics, and AI. Plus, applications for paralympic athletes. [audio, 34:20]

… Stephen Curry is considered by many to be the greatest shooter in National Basketball Association history. How does he average more than 30 points per game? There’s no doubt that he possesses an extraordinary amount of natural talent. But what really sets him apart is his drive to push his training to a place where few athletes have gone.

Curry’s complex, next-generation regimen involves a plethora of “Steph drills,” which often involve doing two things at once, like dribbling with one hand and catching a tennis ball with the other. To make it even harder, he uses military-grade goggles with strobing effects that produce blanks in the visual space, requiring him to react based on partial information. The result? He’s cognitively and physically prepared for virtually anything his defender throws at him.

First in vivo tests demonstrate ultrasound can be used to wirelessly power and communicate with millimeter-scale devices surgically placed in muscles and nerves

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have only just begun to penetrate the consumer market, but researchers are already asking themselves, “what’s next?” and looking for new applications and ways to improve these technologies to make them more immersive, interactive, and able to enrich other existing technologies.

SIGGRAPH, the annual conference for computer graphics and interactive technologies, featured a number of emerging technologies that aim to “blur the boundaries between art and science, and transform social assumptions,” according to the conference website. Working across various disciplines, researchers all over the world are working to explore new ways of making technology, art, and science into a more interactive, human-friendly experience.

Several energy gels now include caffeine. Why? Well, according to performance nutritionist Sophie Killer, the benefits are numerous. “Caffeine’s so effective because you have caffeine receptors all over the body, even in the brain,” explains Killer. “In the brain, it’s one of these rare substances that can cross the brain’s blood barrier, resulting in a stimulatory effect that improves reaction time, which is good for descending and technical courses.

“In the muscle it’s a completely different response, leading to increased muscle-firing capacity, so you’re able to produce higher forces. It also acts on the central nervous system and dampens the messages that are sent to the brain saying you’re getting tired. And for longer efforts, it can improve the ability of the muscles to contract as well as increase aerobic capacity.”

But it’s not all good.

Like “literally” or “LOL” (or, if you are Bachelor host Chris Harrison, “most dramatic season ever”), “superfood” has been thrown around so much that it’s become effectively meaningless. You’re not literally dying from that puppy video, or whatever. You’re not really sitting there belly-laughing at a Slack comment that was mildly witty at best. To be honest, Chris Harrison, this season actually kind of sucked. And the very definition of “super” means that not every healthy food can be a superfood. Some of them, unfortunately, have to be regular old healthy foods.

So which ones are actually deserving of the superfood label? None, technically, because the label never really had a definition to begin with. “Superfoods are marketing gimmicks,” Duane Mellor, a nutrition scientist at the University of Canberra in Australia, told New Scientist earlier this week. “Superfood,” in other words, isn’t an indicator that the food in question has crossed some nutritional threshold — it’s just a buzzword created to make you think it has.

“Despite thousands of websites and lifestyle articles devoted to superfoods, there is hardly any published research in peer-reviewed scientific journals,” the magazine noted in a separate column. “What is out there is, more often than not, industry-funded, published in alternative health journals and too eager to jump to scientifically questionable conclusions.”

Imagine a Martian trying to make sense of this world and the only available data are the Summer Olympic medal tables from the past century.

How much would that explain? Quite a lot, it turns out. In fact, it would be challenging to find anything so concise that say so much about the past century as the tables below.

The four bar charts show the countries that usually win the largest share of medals — the United States, China, Russia and Germany — and how they have performed since 1912.

… To Elway, the game always has been a puzzle that is constantly being redesigned and reassembled. The pieces change. The final picture changes. And he must change with it.

“I always used to say, when I was playing I could control most everything inside the lines, and really nothing outside the lines,” he says. “I could say things, but I really had no control. I just worked with who they put next to me. Now I really don’t have any control inside the lines, but I got a lot of control outside.”

The biggest decisions, he says, rarely have clear answers. The toughest ones never get easier.