Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 5, 2016

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When physical therapist David Reavy watches an NFL game, he sees a series of car crashes. Linemen are like large trucks, linebackers and running backs like sedans, and receivers and cornerbacks are sports cars. Instead of fenders and quarter panels, these on-field “vehicles” have knees, hips and shoulders that get dented and bent on impact. Reavy can attest to the damage: He has put NFL running back Matt Forte back together time and time again.

“Because of the hits, bones can shift and you can get out of alignment,” says Forte, who signed with the Jets in March after eight seasons with the Bears. Forte, 30, has worked with Reavy since November 2011, and he credits the therapist’s methods—balancing the body through muscle release and activation techniques—for keeping him on the field over the last four years.

Collaboration is about enhancing each other’s work and creating a harmony. It’s following a smart plan to avoid confusion and waste. Collaboration is creating something greater as a group than would be possible for an individual. Design collaboration in large companies can be difficult because you might try to force rigid protocols into the creative design process (which is naturally free-flowing).

… For me, practice did not make perfect. Lo and behold, I now have scientific validation.

A meta-analysis in Perspectives in Psychological Science looked at 33 studies on the relationship between deliberate practice and athletic achievement and found that practice just doesn’t matter that much.

More precisely, the analysis found, practice can account for 18 percent of the difference in athletic success. Put another way, if we compare batting averages between two baseball players, the amount of time the players spent in the batting cage would only account for 18 percent of the reason one player’s average is better than the other.

Even more simply: Some people are just better at sports than others, and the difference cannot be made up by practice alone. There was a reason I lagged behind my peers on the lacrosse field. They probably had a natural advantage on me.

They train NFL stars, UFC fighters, German soccer giants, Chinese Olympians, U.S. Special Forces—even employees at Adidas and the Mayo Clinic. So what do the “performance specialists” at Exos know about getting fit—and eating right—that you don’t?

Sleep deprivation is known to suppress circulating trophic factors such as insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-I and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). This experiment examined the effect of an intervention involving 6 nights of extended sleep before total sleep deprivation on this catabolic profile. In a randomized crossover design, 14 young men (age range: 26-37 years) were either in an extended (EXT; time in bed: 2100-0700 h) or habitual (HAB: 2230-0700 h) sleep condition, followed by 3 days in the laboratory with blood sampling at baseline (B), after 24 h of sleep deprivation (24h-SD), and after 1 night of recovery sleep (R). In the EXT condition compared with the HAB condition, free IGF-I levels were significantly higher at B, 24h-SD, and R (P < 0.001), and those of total IGF-I at B and 24h-SD (P < 0.05). EXT did not influence growth hormone, IGF binding protein 3, BDNF, insulin, and glucose levels. The only effect of 24 h of sleep deprivation was for insulin levels, which were significantly higher after R compared with B. In a healthy adult, additional sleep over 1 week increased blood concentrations of the anabolic factor IGF-I before and during 24 h of sleep deprivation and after the subsequent recovery night without effects on BDNF. With further research, these findings may prove to be important in guiding effective lifestyle modifications to limit physical or cognitive deficits associated with IGF-I decrease with age.

As college football season kicks off this weekend, stadiums will be cheering, beer will be flowing, and data will be extracted. College football has dabbled in the data collection space for the last couple years, but not until recently has a major player actually put a stake in the ground. And this stake proudly flies a Swoosh atop it.

Michigan and Nike came to one of the largest apparel agreements in history this year, and in it Nike has procured the rights to Michigan’s “Activity-Based Information.” In a collegiate space already littered with legal issues surrounding player likeness, unionization, under-age rights, and concussions, everyone has kept data rights on the sidelines until now. This data & tech ecosystem is filled with some of sports smartest and most innovative people, thrilled to finally get their chance to play.

The use of nanomaterials in textiles is one of the earliest commercial applications of nanotechnology. Nanomaterials have given us stain-resistant fabrics and enabled a range of wearable electronics. But they’ve yet to solve what has been the most vexing problem in clothing: keeping us cool in hot weather.

Now researchers at Stanford University have taken a nanomaterial called nanoporous polyethylene, or nanoPE (which has been mass produced for use in batteries), and tested it to see how it would tackle the challenge of creating a fabric that can keep us cool. The results reveal that it may be far more effective at keeping us cool than any other synthetic or natural fabrics.

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As a researcher in AR, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get the right information onto a user’s screen, in just the right place, at just the right moment. I’ve learned that showing too much information can confuse the user, but not showing enough can render an application useless. We have to find the sweet spot in between.

A crucial element of this, it turns out, is knowing where users are looking. Only then can we deliver the information they want in a location where they can process it. Our research involves measuring where the user is looking in the real scene, as a way to help decide where to place virtual content. With AR poised to infiltrate many areas of our lives – from driving to work to recreation – we’ll need to solve this problem before we can rely on AR to provide support for serious or critical actions.

Medical advances have made it possible for injured athletes such as Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater to return from dislocated knees and ligament tears, according to physicians interviewed Wednesday, but they nonetheless face long and uncertain roads to recovery.

Doctors at Northwestern University analyzed orthopedic injuries suffered by 559 NFL athletes, and found the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) tear to be one of the most career-damaging. Those who underwent ACL surgeries needed 378 days to recover, on average, and their careers wound up shorter than those of players recovering from other orthopedic injuries, according to results being printed Thursday in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.

“We all look at Adrian Peterson” who had a record-setting season one year after an ACL injury, said Dr. Harry Mai, a lead author. “But that is the absolute best-case scenario. This paper shows that after (most ACL injuries), there is a significance decrease in performance and career length.”

Background: In soccer, although hamstring flexibility is thought to play a major role in preventing hamstring injuries, the relationship between hamstring flexibility and hamstring injuries remains unclear.

Purpose: To investigate the relationship between hamstring flexibility and hamstring injuries in male amateur soccer players.

Study Design: Case-control study; Level of evidence, 3.

Methods: This study included 450 male first-class amateur soccer players (mean age, 24.5 years). Hamstring flexibility was measured by performing the sit-and-reach test (SRT). The relationship between hamstring flexibility and the occurrence of hamstring injuries in the following year, while adjusting for the possible confounding effects of age and previous hamstring injuries, was determined with a multivariate logistic regression analysis.

Results: Of the 450 soccer players, 21.8% reported a hamstring injury in the previous year. The mean (±SD) baseline score for the SRT was 21.2 ± 9.2 cm. During the 1-year follow-up period, 23 participants (5.1%) suffered a hamstring injury. In the multivariate analysis, while adjusting for age and previous injuries, no significant relationship was found between hamstring flexibility and hamstring injuries (P = .493).

Conclusion: In this group of soccer players, hamstring flexibility (measured with the SRT) was not related to hamstring injuries. Age and previous hamstring injuries as possible confounders did not appear to influence this relationship. Other etiological factors need to be examined to further elucidate the mechanism of hamstring injuries.

ACL injuries are some of the most common and debilitating injuries in athletes. In this podcast, Tim Hewett and Kate Webster talk about the biomechanical risk factors for ACL injury, the role and potential of screening, and the use of ACL prevention programmes. [audio, 18:41]

… It doesn’t matter how much water you fill a bucket with if it continues to leak. Programs that fail to retain top talent are often punished like Sisyphus of Greek Mythology, forced to watch their hard work come to nothing, and condemned to strive and fail repeatedly. Teams take time to gel and work together, and coaches can’t succeed at the elite levels without talent. When talented players leave, confidence and cohesion crumbles, and vital experience is lost.

Money is the quick and easy retention strategy used by most. And in the short term it often works. But placating people with money does little to inspire performance or loyalty in the long run.

Suddenly, Le Havre A.C. has choices. As is the case with most teams in France’s second division, money is usually tight for Arnaud Tanguy, Le Havre’s chief executive. There are salaries to be paid and bills to be settled. Tanguy’s job, more often than not, is to make ends meet.

This summer, though, Le Havre finds itself with a windfall, in some ways an unwelcome one. The club came out of Europe’s summer transfer window some $10 million richer, thanks almost exclusively to the Premier League’s insatiable appetite for talent. It is not enough to make Le Havre a financial powerhouse, but it is enough to aim a little higher, to think a little bigger.

… “A lot of people think they’re prepared for these things when you get the opportunities,” [Hue Jackson] says. “Then all of a sudden you look up, and you really, truly understand, it does take a village to do this job. Outside of Amy Trask, who was my right hand … it felt like we were [on our own]. When Al died, that was hard. No instructions, no manual, no ‘If this happens, do this …’ I think I grew a lot; now I know for a fact that I don’t have all the answers.”

That newfound open-mindedness was a key component of Jackson’s decision to accept Haslam’s offer. On Jan. 3, a few hours after the Browns’ regular-season finale, Haslam had promoted Sashi Brown, a Harvard-educated lawyer, from general counsel to executive vice president of football operations. Two days later, Haslam made a move that was even more stunning to the NFL community: He hired New York Mets analytics guru Paul DePodesta as chief strategy officer. DePodesta, the inspiration for the Peter Brand character (played by Jonah Hill) in the film “Moneyball,” had spent two decades as a baseball executive; his only prior football experience had come as a Harvard wide receiver. (Two weeks later, with Jackson’s input, the Browns would hire a third Harvard grad, 28-year-old Indianapolis Colts pro scouting coordinator Andrew Berry, as vice president of player personnel.)

To some football traditionalists, the promotion of Brown and the hiring of DePodesta signified a full-scale Nerd Alert that compromised the very essence of the sport. Jackson, however, was intrigued about the potential for such an arrangement, partly because he enjoyed interacting with his brainy counterparts, and partly because he knew they would strongly value his input on all football-related decisions.

All around the NFL, teams are paring down rosters to the mandatory 53-man limit before the league’s deadline on Sept. 3 at 4 p.m. ET. Beginning Sept. 4 at 1 p.m., teams can start assembling practice squads, groups of 10 players who practice with the team throughout the week but are not eligible to be active on game days.

Many times, teams use practice squads to keep players who have potential but need development. It gives teams an opportunity to invest in players in a low-cost (by NFL standards) and low-risk way. It also provides teams with a stash of backup players who are familiar with the scheme and system, which is helpful in the event of injury.

The NFL tweaked its rules for practice squad eligibility this year. In 2014, the NFL and NFLPA agreed to a rule that expanded the practice squad roster limits from eight to 10 players. The rule expired prior to the 2016 league year, but it has been renewed. In addition, last year teams could have two of the 10 practice squad spots filled by players who had two or more years of experience on an NFL roster. This year, that number has been increased to four players.