Applied Sports Science newsletter – August 15, 2016

Whether you’re an elite triathlete aiming to win a 70.3, or just wanting to complete your first triathlon, the age-old rule applies – race results don’t come without putting in the hard work beforehand. However, many of us overlook the fact that training sessions alone aren’t enough to determine performance – choices made about recovery after competitions or training could actually make the difference between a PB and a DNF.

For a triathlete, understanding recovery is important as training involves intensive sessions in not one, but three different disciplines that make various different demands on the body. Sessions take their toll on mental and physical resources, but the regeneration that occurs after a session helps an athlete to become stronger and fitter. Most triathletes are aware they should timetable recovery into their training plans, yet despite its importance, recovery and rehabilitation hasn’t been viewed as an exact science – until now

Exercise science researcher professor Dr Alexander Ferrauti and sport psychologist professor Dr Michael Kellmann, in collaboration with researchers at Saarland University and the University of Mainz, have spent the past few years running a joint project trying to find the best recovery strategies for athletes after intensive training and competition sessions. The research was run to better understand the recovery process, and might help athletes and coaches choose effective strategies to optimise performance in the future.

Ever wondered what happens inside your brain when you stay awake for a day, a night and another day, before you finally go to sleep? Well, we just found out.

It has been known for many years that how sleepy we are, how well we can add up numbers, pay attention or conduct a working memory task depends on how long we have been awake and the time of day. Typically if we stay awake over a period of two days (a day, a night and then the next day) the first 16 hours or so is of wakefulness – performance is good and doesn’t change much.

But then, as we enter the “biological night time”, as indicated by a rise of the hormone melatonin, performance deteriorates rapidly and reaches a minimum at around 6-8am the following morning. On the second day, performance can get a little better (but still well below that of day one) and only returns to normal, baseline levels after a good night’s sleep.

The key characteristic of this performance timeline is that it doesn’t deteriorate linearly based on how long you’ve been awake but is instead modulated by the time of day. In fact, we know now that it isn’t actually “time of day” but “internal biological time of day” that causes the effects of sleep loss.

Objectives

To examine the relationship between chronic training loads, number of exposures to maximal velocity, the distance covered at maximal velocity, percentage of maximal velocity in training and match-play and subsequent injury risk in elite Gaelic footballers.
Design

Prospective cohort design.
Methods

Thirty-seven elite Gaelic footballers from one elite squad were involved in a one-season study. Training and game loads (session-RPE multiplied by duration in min) were recorded in conjunction with external match and training loads (using global positioning system technology) to measure the distance covered at maximal velocity, relative maximal velocity and the number of player exposures to maximal velocity across weekly periods during the season. Lower limb injuries were also recorded. Training load and GPS data were modelled against injury data using logistic regression. Odds ratios (OR) were calculated based on chronic training load status, relative maximal velocity and number of exposures to maximal velocity with these reported against the lowest reference group for these variables.
Results

Players who produced over 95% maximal velocity on at least one occasion within training environments had lower risk of injury compared to the reference group of 85% maximal velocity on at least one occasion (OR: 0.12, p?=?0.001). Higher chronic training loads (??4750 AU) allowed players to tolerate increased distances (between 90 to 120?m) and exposures to maximal velocity (between 10 to 15 exposures), with these exposures having a protective effect compared to lower exposures (OR: 0.22 p?=?0.026) and distance (OR?=?0.23, p?=?0.055).
Conclusions

Players who had higher chronic training loads (??4750 AU) tolerated increased distances and exposures to maximal velocity when compared to players exposed to low chronic training loads (??4750 AU). Under- and over-exposure of players to maximal velocity events (represented by a U-shaped curve) increased the risk of injury.

… Tim Rusbasan: What training or performance issues did you originally think Omegawave would help you address?

Landon Evans: I’m not sure if I can accurately state how I was feeling ten-plus years ago when I was first introduced to [the system]. When I was around it more, at first there was more observation and reading than anything. It was a fantastic rabbit hole to go down and to this day I continue to be vocal about being grateful for what I learned from Val [Nasedkin] and Omegawave. Unfortunately, the ideology isn’t as popular I think because some people need their clear linear relationships.

TR: Did anything surprise you about the data when you first started using Omegawave, and if you could go back to this time and give yourself any advice about how to best apply the technology, what would that advice be?

LE: Just observing the reality of Readiness.

Katie Ledecky is different–and not just because she’s arguably the most dominant athlete in the world. (How does never losing an international final sound to you?) She wins many of her races not by fractions but by 1 or 2 percent–which doesn’t sound like much until you realize that a similar margin would mean Chris Froome would win the Tour de France by about forty minutes.

So yeah, she’s different in terms of results–but she’s also different in the way she thinks. Like most Olympic athletes, the thought truly is father to the deeds that lead to her success–and yours.

1. She does the work …

… Iowa’s summer conditioning program is five workouts a week for seven weeks (35 workouts). The one-on-one competitive drills begin in week 3 and last through the end. Doyle said he uses around 20 different one-on-one competitive drills during the seven weeks.

“We try to compete every single day,” Doyle said. “One day it might be a change of direction drill, one day it might be a linear drill. One day it might be a combo of those two. One day it might be a resistance drill, but we try to compete every single day.”

Thought goes into the matchups for the Tug O’ War drill. It doesn’t work the way you might think.

… Short of giving away the farm, I can provide some insight into how sprint training can be the foundation of a training program because of the wide range of qualities that are required to become a good sprinter. In many cases, as I have alluded to previously, some of the simplest solutions can yield the broadest range of benefits. Think of two of the most highly touted recovery and performance solutions being promoted these days: sleep and drinking water. Go figure! How many of you needed a PhD in sport science to figure out that these are two of the most important elements of a training program? The same could be said of running. I truly believe that sprinting is the purest expression of “fight-or-flight”. Back in prehistoric and ancient times, prior to the domestication of horses, your ability to run fast determined whether or not you would live or die, whether you were chasing your dinner or being chased for dinner.

For some reason, it is hard for many people to understand why sprinting is such an important cornerstone of a complete training program. Just like sleep and drinking water, many people do not sprint enough (or in many cases – they do not sprint at all) and find that their performance and resiliency suffers as a result.

The Homeland Security Department is looking for early-stage companies that are developing the next generation of wearable technology — and wants to adapt it for first responders.

The DHS Science and Technology Directorate on Aug. 8 announced its next accelerator topic, EMERGE 2016: Wearable Technology. The accelerator program partners DHS with the Center for Innovative Technology and TechNexus to engage entrepreneurs in research and development.

According to DHS: “With EMERGE 2016: Wearable Technology, we want to enable today’s firefighters, police and emergency medical technicians to communicate seamlessly with fellow responders, to survey a scene in advance, and to track their health status as they put themselves in harm’s way.”

Since Thomas Dooley was appointed Head Coach of the Philippine Football Federation, the team has attained its highest ever FIFA ranking. Aiming even higher and with an objective to achieve a finals appearance in the 2016 AFF Suzuki Cup followed by qualification for the 2019 AFC Asian Cup, the Philippines Football Federation recently rewarded the highly experienced and soft spoken Dooley with a two-year contract extension.

In addition to the skills and knowledge the former United States team captain has brought to the role, a major addition having a direct impact on the team’s improvement has been his implementation of new systems and technology.

This has included California-based Match Analysis’s state of the art video and statistical analysis product suite that has successfully been adopted by the Azkals.

… In June, wearables company Misfit and well know sports swimming brand Speedo announced the launch of their second Speedo-branded activity, swim, and sleep tracker, Misfit Shine 2 Swimmers Edition. Misfit and Speedo’s proprietary lap counting algorithms track a swimmer’s lap count with industry-leading accuracy and work for all stroke types.

Elite marathoner Shalane Flanagan has logged thousands of miles in her training for Rio 2016, where she’ll represent the United States for the fourth time on the Olympic stage. At age 35, Flanagan has figured how to fuel her 5’5”, 113-pound frame. Whether it’s the offseason, race day or before a recovery session, Flanagan’s diet—(mostly) absent of processed foods and sugar and full of nutrient-dense foods—is the same and she says it keeps her energized and primarily injury-free. In her new cookbook, Run Fast, Eat Slow, written in conjunction with former college teammate and chef Elyse Kopecky, Flanagan gives foodies, fans and runners a look into her everyday diet and recipes for foods such as her go-to race-day oatmeal, chipotle hummus or runner’s high peanut sauce. (Scroll down for a recipe for a coconut-kale smoothie that will help you go the extra mile.) We caught up with Flanagan ahead of her Rio 2016 debut to talk about preparing for the Olympics, indulgences, pre-race meals and more.

… In 1972, Sweden’s Gunnar Larsson beat American Tim McKee in the 400m individual medley by 0.002 seconds. That finish led the governing body to eliminate timing by a significant digit. But why?

In a 50 meter Olympic pool, at the current men’s world record 50m pace, a thousandth-of-a-second constitutes 2.39 millimeters of travel. FINA pool dimension regulations allow a tolerance of 3 centimeters in each lane, more than ten times that amount. Could you time swimmers to a thousandth-of-a-second? Sure, but you couldn’t guarantee the winning swimmer didn’t have a thousandth-of-a-second-shorter course to swim

Information and circumstances change constantly in the worlds of investing and business. As a consequence, we have to constantly think about what we believe, how well those beliefs reflect the world, and what tools we can use to sharpen our decisions. Because we operate in a world where we can succeed only with a certain probability, we have to learn from our mistakes. Hence, the theme for the Thought Leader Forum in 2016 was “What Being Wrong Can Teach You About Being Right.”

This year’s forum featured a venture capitalist, a computer scientist, an economist who focuses on decisions, and a leading sports executive. Each explored an area of how our thinking and decisions can come up short of the ideal. We heard about how assumptions deeply shape how you assess a company’s potential and how well-intentioned incentive systems can go awry. There was an exploration of how computers, through machine learning, can serve as a new source of knowledge, complementing evolution, experience, and culture. Notwithstanding the potential benefits of augmenting our intelligence through computers, we discussed why we humans have an aversion to algorithms and how to overcome it. And then there is the issue of the old and new guard: how can we convince some who have been successful in an old regime to accept new and better ways of doing things?

… Some athletes, like USA cyclist Taylor Phinney, seem to have followed the suggestion of the Swedish physiologist Per Olaf Astrand, who once joked, “If you want to be an Olympic champion, then choose your parents wisely.” Phinney’s parents are cycling royalty. His mom, Connie Carpenter-Phinney, won a gold medal in the 1984 Summer Olympics in the women’s road race. His dad, Davis Phinney, was a bronze medalist in the 1984 Olympics and a stage winner in the Tour de France.

Among U.S. distance runners, Shalane Flanagan has a similarly unmatched pedigree. Her mother was the first female marathoner to break 2:50, her father a 2:18 marathoner and several times a member of the U.S. team that competed in the World Cross Country Championships.

However, it is not just genes that make a great athlete. Getting an early start in sports also seems to benefit future Olympians. A study conducted at the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal found that most of the Olympians surveyed had at least one older sibling. The scientists speculated that trying to keep up with an older brother or sister helped them develop essential motor skills for sport.