Applied Sports Science newsletter – August 16, 2016

The final of the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup was more of a coronation than a contest. It began when Carli Lloyd sprinted into the box unmarked and converted Megan Rapinoe’s corner kick in the third minute. Lloyd struck again in the fifth minute, and again twelve minutes later when she launched the shot heard round the world from the centerline.

There might be only two individuals who weren’t spellbound by the performance that captivated a nation. The first is the star at the center of the USWNT’s first World Cup title since 1999, whose hat-trick was the quickest in World Cup history and paved the way for the 5-2 victory over Japan. The second is her mentor and coach who watched the action 6,000 miles away while on vacation with his family in Greece.

When James Galanis heard his phone ring, it was around 4 a.m. He was still awake. Only an hour had elapsed since Lloyd hoisted the Golden Ball Trophy—awarded to the best player of the tournament.

… The Giants have Tuesday off, and McAdoo said it was too early to say whether Cruz would be ready for Saturday’s game in Buffalo against the Bills.

Cruz came to training camp and was a full go from the start. The team cut back on some of his work in the second week of camp.

“We’re building him up to get to a position where we can make an evaluation,” McAdoo said. “He had the hiccup. Hoping to get him some work on Wednesday.”

When you want to be your best, it takes training, proper preparation, nutrition and hydration to make an impact in any soccer tournament. There is a lot that goes into performing at peak level. A global sport psychologist and author specializing in soccer, Abrahams is based in England and has helped hundreds of professional soccer players – many of them who play in the English Premier League (EPL). Abrahams knows what it takes and gives pro players advice – the importance of playing with focus.

Recently helping a Crystal Palace player succeed on the field, Abrahams has held contracts with QPR, Fulham, and West Ham United among other clubs and works quietly, behind the scenes with many coaches from top clubs across the Atlantic. What works for the professional players provides invaluable insight into youth player development. Here is Abrahams’ advice for being your best on the field.

In a head-to-head race for third against New Zealand at the Rio Velodrome, the Canadians jumped out to the lead on the very first lap and never let it go, finishing in a time of 4:14.627, shattering the national record by three seconds. Team Great Britain took the gold in a world-record time of 4:10.26, almost two full seconds ahead of the second-place Americans.

“We knew it would be fast,” said Calgary’s Allison Beveridge, as she sat on her bike post-race, still perspiring. “It’s my first Olympics and it’s true what they say. The Games’ atmosphere really brings out the best in people, and everything comes together.”

The 23-year-old was once a competitive swimmer but transitioned to cycling after a back injury in her early teens. Jasmin Glaesser, 24, from Vancouver, took to the bike after hurting her hips as a runner. Georgia Simmerling, 27, of Vancouver, competed for Canada as an alpine racer in the 2010 home Olympics, then in the ski-cross at Sochi four years later. She switched to cycling after shattering her wrist in Jan. 2015, starting training within a week of coming out of surgery. Kirsti Lay, 28, from Medicine Hat, AB, was a speed skater for 14-years until she was forced to retire in 2012 due to an ankle injury. And Laura Brown, a 29-year-old from Vancouver who raced in qualifying but not the final, was a gymnast until she too hurt her back.

Higher education and the pursuit of the ‘higher, faster, stronger’ Olympic dream aren’t mutually exclusive. A quick flick through Team GB alumni’s academic records shows sports science degrees for Sir Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton, a psychology BSc for the mighty Jessica Ennis-Hill and a first in French, German and economics for Paula Radcliffe.

The academic and sporting quests complement each other for a number reasons, not least the fact that universities tend to have some pretty serious kit ? and even more serious expertise.

The University of the West of England’s (UWE Bristol) High Performance Athlete scheme offers the full package, according to Kieran Hopkins, sports performance officer at the university’s Centre for Sport. “As well as providing training facilities and expert coaching, our services include strength and conditioning sessions, sports nutrition, sports rehabilitation and physiotherapy, sports psychology and video analysis,” he says.

… the Road to Rio probably went through a college math class, biology lab or a history professor’s lecture.

“The student-athletes benefit because they get to compete at a high level and the colleges benefit for the opportunity to have these great students,” said Sara Wilhelmi, director of collegiate partnerships for the United States Olympic Committee. “And Team USA significantly benefits from having the partnership.”

… The question is whether talent matters. That is, if your goal is to be among the best in the world at something, does talent play a role on top of effort?

This issue was explored in a paper in the July, 2016 issue of Psychological Science by Matthew Makel, Harrison Kell, Davd Lubinski, Martha Putallaz, and Camilla Benbow. They explored the role of academic aptitude in long-term success in professions that involve thinking. This paper presents an analysis similar to one done by several of these authors in a paper in 2013.

In this paper, the authors analyzed the long-term career accomplishments of students who were identified in the Duke Talent Identification Program. This program gives gifted seventh-grade students (who are roughly 13-years-old) the chance to take the SAT. Those students who score highly (above 700 out of a possible 800 on the Math test or above 630 out of 800 on the Verbal test) are included. This project tracks these individuals over the long-term.

Maryland running back Ty Johnson came up hobbling after being crunched into an awkward position during a pass-blocking drill early on in Friday’s practice, only rising to his feet after a couple of coaches helped him up. It was a scary moment for one of the team’s best returning offensive players, but he gingerly walked the strain off before returning to practice. It illustrated the balance that Maryland Coach DJ Durkin and his staff have tried to keep in blasting the physical intensity of their practices while trying to preserve the overall health of the roster.

Maryland remains relatively healthy through the first five days of camp — senior quarterback Caleb Rowe, sophomore wide receiver Taivon Jacobs and junior linebacker Matt Gillespie have been limited the last few practices with undisclosed ailments, although both have worn full pads and worked with trainers for the entirety of practices — and Durkin has kept his all-around best player, senior dynamo Will Likely, in a yellow quarterback jersey to prevent any unnecessary hitting on the three-way player during drills.

But Durkin has also refused to scale down the physicality of his practices to prevent injuries — he believes he can still be cautious with certain players and situations — largely because the new staff is continuing to implement a new hardcore culture and are still holding open competitions across most of the roster ahead of the season-opener against Howard on Sept. 3. But while training camp injuries are almost a foregone conclusion for any team in August, Durkin and his staff are still trying to preserve as much health as possible because the depth remains unproven and thin at a number of positions.

With all these amazing Olympic performances going on at the moment, I frequently get the urge to put my 18 month-old daughter into her swimmers and take her down to the nearest pool to start her Olympic training to be a world class swimmer by 14, a multi-millionaire by 20, and early retirement for Mrs Hughes and I by 55.

As much as I joke about this, as a physiotherapist I have seen first-hand many unnecessarily injured children who have been pushed into one sport, too aggressively, way too early. So if you’re a parent reading this, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE resist the urge to push your children into one sport, and one sport only, in the attempt that they will be an Olympic champion one day. If you’re a coach reading this, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE consider allowing your young athletes to try different sports in alternate playing seasons to experience different movement patterns and training methods.

Some of Scotland’s top clubs are experimenting with a different approach to youth football in an attempt to develop better technical players.

Biobanding involves bracketing young players according to their stage of physical development instead of the traditional age-based categories.

It comes at a time when the national team has failed to qualify for a major tournament in 18 years and sits 51st in the Fifa rankings.

“We know we have to get to a stage where we are developing technically gifted players, we have to look at every avenue,” said Gerry Britton – Partick Thistle’s head of youth – who is pioneering the approach in Scottish football.

The Irish Research Council (IRC) has revealed a series ongoing projects aimed at improving Ireland’s hopes at future Olympics, covering injury prevention, muscle growth and more.

… It would be entirely unfair to place blame on anyone without a thorough analysis of the particular injuries. Certainly the Bills defense has taken four hits already this year, but are they the fault of the medical staff?

Indeed Buffalo’s first and second round draft picks have been injured. Shaq Lawson aggravated a pre-existing shoulder injury and had surgery. Reggie Ragland tore his ACL. IK Enemkpali has now met the same fate. Manny Lawson injured his pec, but at least his season is not over.

The medical staff doesn’t cause injuries. There is some evidence of effectiveness in soccer of ACL prevention exercises in young players, but it has not been proven in football. Clearly traumatic ligament tears are not the fault of the medical staff. ACL tears are rarely partial and it was too much to hope for that Ragland’s season could be saved.

After a work day that lasted almost 12 hours and began before the sun rose above the campus of Missouri Western State University—home of Kansas City Chiefs training camp—assistant athletic trainer Tiffany Morton walks into the campus cafeteria on this Sunday night knowing she’s going to have to sit and talk about herself for a while.

As Morton sits down at the round table just a few feet from a large group of staff members finishing up their dinner, it doesn’t take long to see that self-promotion isn’t near the top of her character traits.

She listens to the final few seconds of her mentor—head athletic trainer Rick Burkholder—talking about what has impressed him of her over the past few months, and she appears almost uncomfortable to hear such praise in this way.

Morton doesn’t want the attention of being the first full-time female athletic trainer in franchise history, or the fact that she’s one of only five full-time female athletic trainers in the NFL.

So, have a desperate United paid over the odds or does the monstrous outlay make sense? Omar Chaudhuri is Head of Football Intelligence at 21st Club, a consultancy specialising in analytics, who have advised several Premier League teams.

“There was a recent table I saw that looked at record transfers in each season and the portion of revenue that the transfer cost,” he says.

“For Manchester United, the highest were Juan Sebastian Veron in 2001 and Rio Ferdinand the following year. Pogba only ends up being third on that list. So, in that way, the fee isn’t really that obscene in comparison to some of their other transfers.

… In recent years under [Fernando] Clavijo, FC Dallas has made it its business to out-hustle most of the rest of the league to sizzling young players whose reputations haven’t reached critical mass. It’s how they latched on to Diaz, who was hardly on most-wanted lists all over Europe, how they unearthed Fabian Castillo, how they beat everyone else to Michael Barrios, and most recently how they found Brazilian striker Getterson.

Some clubs, notably ones like Orlando City and the Columbus Crew recently under Gregg Berhalter, have quality reputations for finding mixtures of young players, quality buys and high-end contributors (Columbus’s sale of Giancarlo Gonzalez to Palermo was quietly one of the great flip jobs in MLS history). Others are still content to trawl the MLS draft, pick up league retreads and buy the occasional 30-plus European washout. This is less than it’s ever been, but it’s still far too prevalent.

More so, perhaps, because most teams’ scouting networks and contacts lists abroad are woefully inadequate.