Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 6, 2016

I recently joined an applied research group at Georgia Tech, the Wearable Computing Center (WCC).

WCC is interdisciplinary and skilled in both technology development and communication. The group works with industry through contract services or on an ongoing basis. So if you are a sports team that isn’t getting desired results from athlete performance technology, the Center can create an educational workshop that gets your organization on the same page technically. WCC can also develop custom technology to help achieve unmet objectives. If you are a sports technology vendor, WCC can help with content, service designs, user interfaces and business models. Please get in touch if I can tell you more or if you have questions I can answer.

And I have gotten serious about adding content to the blog at http://sports.bradstenger.com where I am writing essays that work on making sense of the rapid and often technical advances in sports science. There is also a searchable archive of past Applied Sports Science newsletters dating back to April 2015. Last week there was a disruption in some newsletter mailings and if you missed any emails, those newsletters are available via the archive.

Thanks.
-Brad Stenger

… “I’ve seen both sides of it,” Taylor says. “I was a backup for four years, so I’ve seen the side where people may not even know your name. You take it now, I’m definitely blessed to be in this situation, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about playing football, it’s about winning games and doing whatever it takes, understanding that the quarterback can’t do it alone. It takes 10 other guys on offense.”

“He’s taken more of a leadership responsibility this year and a lot of that’s because he’s the guy,” Wood says. “Last year he was one of three guys. None of those guys wanted to step on people’s toes. A lot of times it was myself saying what needed to be said.

“This year, a lot of times it comes from Ty. He’s taken over that role tremendously. He’s got one of the best work ethics I’ve ever been around and he leads by his actions. And when he speaks, people listen because he earned it and we all have a lot respect for him.”

Objectives

Describe the effects of eastward long-haul transmeridian air travel on subjective jet-lag, sleep and wellness in professional football (soccer) players prior to the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.
Design

Single cohort involving twenty-three male professional football players representing a national football team.
Methods

Data was collected from players prior to and following international travel from Sydney, Australia to Vitoria, Brazil. In total there were three flights, 19-h and 14,695?km of travel east across 11 time-zones. Training load and wellness measures were obtained in the week prior to and following travel, whilst sleep and jet-lag measures were collected on the day prior to travel (Pre), the day of arrival and for five days following travel (Post 1 to 5).
Results

Compared to Pre, perceived jet-lag was significantly increased on Post 1 to 4, with significantly greater levels on Post 1 compared to Post 5 (p?<?0.05). Self-reported sleep duration during travel was 5.9 (4.8-7.0) h, which was significantly lower than all other nights (p?0.01), except for the night of arrival, where time in bed and sleep duration were significantly reduced compared to Post 1, 2, 3 and 4 (p?0.01). Lastly, compared to the week prior to travel, mean wellness was significantly reduced during the week following travel (p?0.01).
Conclusions

Self-reported sleep disruption during and following eastward long-haul transmeridian air travel, together with exacerbated jet-lag symptoms may result in reduced player wellness. Consequently, player preparedness for subsequent training and competition may be impeded, though physical performance data is lacking.

…
Attention & awareness is important. If you “fix your brain” (meditation, mindfulness activity of choice, etc), you’re better able to attend to/be aware of your internal & external experience. And vice versa. The better your attention & awareness is, the healthier/”more trained” your brain will be.

Attention & awareness allows you to observe & not react to internal/external stressors. This decreases your perceived stress level. Less stress leads to a healthier autonomic nervous system (think heart rate variability). This likely shows up in practice as less neuromuscular fatigue.

Decreased neuromuscular fatigue -> decreased injury risk.

It’s been said that you’re only as strong as your weakest link, but guess what? When you push your body to the brink of failure, that weakest link becomes one of the single most likely areas for injuries to occur. Sure that sounds pretty simple, but what if I were to tell you that the “weak link” may not be what you think it is?

Here’s how the kinetic chain model of training and assessment can prevent injuries before they rear their ugly heads, and how to incorporate this system into your training, coaching and programming.

Their blood is analyzed for nutritional deficiencies, metabolic health, kidney, liver, and reproductive health, and inflammation, among other things. They can also ask to be checked for food allergies. Exos dietitians then use these results to suggest diet modifications and supplements.

Here’s what I learned from my test—who knows what yours might reveal?

It is often said that you should not believe everything you see on the internet. But with the advent of immersive technology – like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) – this becomes more than doubly true.

The full capabilities of these immersive technologies have yet to be explored, but already we can get a sense of how they can be used to manipulate us.

You may not think you are someone who is easily duped, but what if the techniques used are so subtle that you are not even aware of them? The truth is that once you’re in a VR world, you can be influenced without knowing it.

Last spring, a student I was tutoring told me his back hurt. The boy, a 14-year-old in Northwest Washington, had played on school and travel soccer teams in the fall. Despite his pain, he was still playing travel ball, competing in weekend tournaments and practicing twice a week. I watched him struggle to squeeze in schoolwork around these commitments — even when he was reduced to lying on the floor with his feet up against the wall as we worked to prepare him for quizzes.

After a few weeks of this, he saw a doctor, who diagnosed a spinal stress fracture. In an email to me, his mother faulted all the soccer he had played — even after his back began to hurt.

This story is hardly unique. Every year, thousands of kids suffer injuries — including stress fractures and jumper’s knee — caused by intense sport specialization and overuse. As a tutor and a medical writer, I see how students are affected. Having suffered from overuse injuries when I was a youth athlete, I also know how they feel.

Background

The continuing circulation of MERS in the Middle East makes the international dissemination of the disease a permanent threat. To inform risk assessment, we investigated the spatiotemporal pattern of MERS global dissemination and looked for factors explaining the heterogeneity observed in transmission events following importation.
Methods

We reviewed imported MERS cases worldwide up to July 2015. We modelled importations in time based on air travel combined with incidence in Middle East. We used the detailed history of MERS case management after importation (time to hospitalization and isolation, number of hospitals visited,…) in logistic regression to identify risk factors for secondary transmission. We assessed changes in time to hospitalization and isolation in relation to collective and public health attention to the epidemic, measured by three indicators (Google Trends, ProMED-mail, Disease Outbreak News).
Results

Modelled importation events were found to reproduce both the temporal and geographical structure of those observed – the Pearson correlation coefficient between predicted and observed monthly time series was large (r?=?0.78, p?<?10?4). The risk of secondary transmission following importation increased with the time to case isolation or death (OR?=?1.7 p?=?0.04) and more precisely with the duration of hospitalization (OR?=?1.7, p?=?0.02). The average daily number of secondary cases was 0.02 [0.0,0.12] in the community and 0.20 [0.03,9.0] in the hospital. Time from hospitalisation to isolation decreased in periods of high public health attention (2.33?±?0.34 vs. 6.44?±?0.97 days during baseline attention).
Conclusions

Countries at risk of importation should focus their resources on strict infection control measures for the management of potential cases in healthcare settings and on prompt MERS cases identification. Individual and collective awareness are key to substantially improve such preparedness. [full text]

While people are debating whether the new organic version of Gatorade is healthier, our Sports Medicine expert—who’s a distance runner—has an alternative idea: make your own.

Timothy Miller, MD, director of the Endurance Medicine Program at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, said sports drinks have more sugar than you need and can irritate your stomach if you down one after a long run, bike ride, swim or fitness competition.

For decades, sports scientists have been searching for ways to banish the “delayed-onset muscle soreness,” or DOMS, that plagues athletes the day after a hard workout. The latest candidate: curcumin, the potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory found in the curry spice turmeric.

But there’s a problem, according to new data from scientists at the University of Guelph and the University of Prince Edward Island: It may work too well. Post-workout inflammation and the associated soreness, it turns out, may be a crucial part of getting fitter. Lose the DOMS, and you may also lose some of the workout’s benefits.

Background: Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries can have negative consequences on the careers of National Football League (NFL) players, however no study has ever analyzed the financial impact of these injuries in this population.

Purpose: To quantify the impact of ACL injuries on salary and career length in NFL athletes.

Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3.

Methods: Any player in the NFL suffering an ACL injury from 2010 to 2013 was identified using a comprehensive online search. A database of NFL player salaries was used to conduct a matched cohort analysis comparing ACL-injured players with the rest of the NFL. The main outcomes were the percentage of players remaining in the NFL and mean salary at 1, 2, 3, and 4 years after injury. Cohorts were subdivided based on initial salary: group A, $2,000,000. Mean cumulative earnings were calculated by multiplying the percentage of players remaining in the league by their mean salaries and compounding this each season.

Results: NFL athletes suffered 219 ACL injuries from 2010 to 2013. The 7504 other player seasons in the NFL during this time were used as controls. Significantly fewer ACL-injured players than controls remained in the NFL at each time point (P < .05). In group A, significantly less ACL-injured players remained in the NFL at 1 to 3 seasons after injury (P < .05), and in group B, significantly less ACL-injured players remained in the NFL at 1 and 2 seasons after injury (P < .05). There was no significant decrease in group C. Players in groups A and B remaining in the NFL also had a lower mean salary than controls (P < .05 in season 1). The mean cumulative earnings over 4 years for ACL-injured players was $2,070,521 less per player than uninjured controls.

Conclusion: On average, ACL-injured players earned $2,070,521 less than salary-matched controls over the 4 years after injury. Players initially earning less than $2 million per year have lower mean salaries and are less likely to remain in the league than uninjured controls. The careers of players initially earning over $2 million per year, meanwhile, are not negatively affected. This demonstrates the degree of negative impact these injuries have on the careers of NFL players. It also indicates that a player’s standing within the league before injury strongly influences how much an ACL injury will affect his career.

… City have been active in the transfer market this summer, bringing in some of the world’s most exciting young talents to complement our Academy stars, sewing seeds in a bid for success way beyond this upcoming campaign.

Gabriel Jesus, Marlos Moreno and Aleksandar Zinchenko are three such newcomers still in their teenage years and City’s Director of Football Txiki Begiristain believes that these captures have big futures ahead of them.

Begiristain told ManCity.com: “Our global network of scouts are working continuously to identify and recruit the best young talent on the planet to develop with our methodology and coaching here in Manchester.

“Equally important to us is bringing in the best local talent from here in Manchester – we have a clear idea on how we want our young players to play and so we identify footballers who we believe can play in this style, no matter where they’re from.”

We all know the story of Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s, right? How, using maths, the second poorest team in Major League Baseball went on a record-breaking winning streak and changed the way baseball scouts and general managers operated. The story was turned into a Hollywood blockbuster and the word ‘Moneyball’ became synonymous with statistical analysis in sport. Well, a similar story is underway in football. By combining the roles of head of scouting and head of analysis, Daniel Stenz is changing the game. CONQA Sport spoke with Stenz ahead of his move to the Hungarian Football Federation.

Don’t look now, but European football is edging towards a break-even point. And we’re talking the European game as a whole, more than 700 clubs across UEFA’s 55 member nations and not just the top echelon we keep hearing about.

According to UEFA’s eighth annual benchmarking report — basically, a fine-tooth study of the club game — losses in 2015 amounted to around $360 million. In 2011, they stood at $2,314 million — or $2.3 billion with a “B.” In other words, the past four years have seen an annual drop in losses and a cumulative decline of 84 percent.

That’s pretty staggering by any measure. And it doesn’t end there, either, because those figures are based on last season. From this season, under the new TV deal, Premier League clubs have seen their cumulative broadcast rise from around $2.4bn to around $3.75bn. Throw in bumps in revenue across other European leagues and increases in commercial income, and we could be looking at close to another $2bn splashing around the continent. We might even see the game as a whole become profitable.

… If we want to measure 10+ year careers, we need to look at players who entered the NFL in 2006 or earlier. To have a large enough sample, I picked 20 years, which means we’ll be looking at all players who entered the NFL from 1987 to 2006. There were 1,062 players who entered the league during that time frame and played for 10+ years, or roughly 53 per year.

255 of those players, or 24%, were first round picks. Undrafted players? Well, that’s limited to just 182 players.