Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 7, 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

Andrés Iniesta says he heard the silence and knew that all he had to do was wait for Isaac Newton. The ball sat up; gravity would bring it down again and, when it did, he would score. It was the 116th minute in Johannesburg and he did score, running to the corner and pulling off his shirt to reveal the message underneath, written in blue marker by Hugo the kit man: “Dani Jarque, always with us”. Ten thousand miles away Spain erupted and Jessica cried. Through the tears she saw it: Dani, her Dani.

The 2010 World Cup final was the first game Jessica had watched since her husband had died 11 months earlier, aged 26. She watched on television with her mother, María, and daughter, Martina, 10 months, as the ball sat up. What followed was more than just a goal, Iniesta reveals – for all of them. It is sunny in Sant Joan Despí as, six years on, he explains how that moment pulled him from “a dark place”.

Iniesta might not have been there then and without that goal he does not know where he would be now. Perhaps not here at Barcelona’s training ground, one of the world’s most celebrated footballers.

Sammy Watkins’ parents stood in the middle of Barker Boulevard and bickered the way a couple might quibble whether that’s the same actress from that thing they saw on TV that one time.

“Right here is where Willie Fletcher was shot and murdered,” Nicole McMiller said, pointing to a spot near a speed bump.

“Nah,” Mike McMiller said, “you’re thinking of Michaud Mitchell. Left the big blood stain they had to wash off.”

There’s less than a week left until the kick-off of the 2016/2017 NFL season. The question is, will we see more coaches implementing rugby tackle training into their practice sessions?

The current Seattle Seahawks coach, Pete Carroll, has overseen the introduction of rugby tackle technique training in his team’s practice sessions since he took over in 2010. The emphasis of this is to use the shoulder as the primary point of contact during tackling and to avoid direct contact with the head. Here is the franchise’s tackling instructional video for those of you who have not yet seen it. The Seahawks boast quite an impressive recent performance record as they have qualified for the play-offs in five of the past six seasons, were winners of Super Bowl XLVIII in the 2013/2014 season, and were runners-up in Super Bowl XLIX in the 2014/2015 season. Their success is often attributed to their highly efficient and stingy defensive unit. Could this be in part due to the introduction of this rugby tackling protocol?

Recent research has revealed that having learners study and practice a motor skill with the expectation of having to teach it enhances motor learning. However, the mechanisms underlying this effect remain unknown. We attempted to replicate this effect and elucidate the mechanisms underlying it. Thus, participants studied golf putting instructions and practiced putting either with the expectation of having to teach another participant how to putt or the expectation of being tested on their putting. During this acquisition phase, participants’ motivation, anxiety, and information processing (the duration they took preparing each putt) were indexed as possible mechanisms underlying a motor learning effect. One day and seven days after the acquisition phase, learning was assessed by testing all participants on their golf putting. Results revealed that expecting to teach enhanced motor learning, replicating the original finding. Moreover, expecting to teach increased the duration participants took preparing each putt, which was correlated with superior motor learning. Thus, results suggest expecting to teach enhances motor learning by increasing information processing during practice.

This study investigated the effects of 24 weeks of morning vs. evening same-session combined strength (S) and endurance (E) training on physical performance, muscle hypertrophy and resting serum testosterone and cortisol diurnal concentrations. Forty-two young men were matched and assigned to a morning (m) or evening (e) E+S or S+E group (mE+S n=9, mS+E n=9, eE+S n=12 and eS+E n=12). Participants were tested for dynamic leg press 1 repetition maximum (1RM) and time to exhaustion (T_exh) during an incremental cycle ergometer test both in the morning and evening, cross-sectional area (CSA) of vastus lateralis and diurnal serum testosterone and cortisol concentrations (7:30h; 9:30h; 16:30h; 18:30h). All groups similarly increased 1RM in the morning (14-19%; p<0.001) and evening (18-24%; p<0.001). CSA increased in all groups by week 24 (12-20%, p<0.01), however, during the training weeks 13-24 the evening groups gained more muscle mass (time-of-day main effect; p<0.05). T_exh increased in all groups in the morning (16-28%; p<0.01) and evening (18-27%; p<0.001), however, a main effect for the exercise order, in favor of E+S, was observed on both testing times (p<0.051). Diurnal rhythms in testosterone and cortisol remained statistically unaltered by the training order or time. The present results indicate that combined strength and endurance training in the evening may lead to larger gains in muscle mass, while the E+S training order might be more beneficial for endurance performance development. However, training order and time seem to influence the magnitude of adaptations only when the training period exceeded 12 weeks.

Background The Nine Plus screening battery test (9+) is a functional movement test intended to identify limitations in fundamental movement patterns predisposing athletes to injury. However, the interseason variability is unknown.

Aim To examine the variability of the 9+ test between 2 consecutive seasons in professional male football players.

Methods Asymptomatic Qatar Star League players (n=220) completed the 9+ at the beginning of the 2013 and 2014 seasons. Time-loss injuries in training and matches were obtained from the Aspetar Injury and Illness Surveillance Program. No intervention was initiated between test occasions.

Results A significant increase in the mean total score of 1.6 points (95% CI 1.0 to 2.2, p<0.001) was found from season 1 (22.2±4.1 (SD)) to season 2 (23.8±3.3). The variability was large, as shown by an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.24 (95% CI 0.11 to 0.36) and a minimal detectable change (MDC) of 8.7 points. Of the 220 players, 136 (61.8%) suffered a time-loss injury between the 2 tests. There was an improvement in mean total scores in the injured (+2.0±0.4 (SE), p<0.001) group but not in the uninjured group (+0.9±0.5, p=0.089). The variability from season 1 to season 2 was large both in the injured (ICC 0.25, 0.09 to 0.40, MDC 8.3) and uninjured (ICC 0.24, 0.02 to 0.43, MDC 9.1) groups.

Conclusions The 9+ demonstrated substantial intraindividual variability in the total score between 2 consecutive seasons, irrespective of injury. A change above 8 points is necessary to represent a real change in the 9+ test between seasons.

Imagine a busy day at work. One of your coworkers walks over to your office and asks for your help — he is struggling to understand some financial projections. You put aside what you’re doing and spend the next 45 minutes helping him sort through the formulas and numbers. He leaves your office with a better understanding of the projections.

How would you feel after this interaction? Happy that you helped a coworker in need? Worried that this interruption interfered with your own work? Tired because you spent mental energy working through his problem? Most of the published research on helping suggests that you would feel happy and energized. My personal experiences (and, I am guessing, yours) tend to be mixed.

Indeed, my recent research suggests that responding to help requests at work is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, helping coworkers in need is energizing and replenishing, particularly when that help is perceived as beneficial to coworkers — in other words, when you can see that your help has actually made a positive difference. On the other hand, helping coworkers in need drains the helper’s cognitive and emotional resources, leaving them too tired and depleted to perform subsequent work tasks.

New Head Coach of Team Wellington in New Zealand’s National League, Jose Manuel Figueira discusses the core principles around his methodology. Jose outlines ideas as to how you can create high quality practices that are demanding for your players and ensure a positive learning environment.

The role of a coach has become more complex in recent years. No longer is it a case of an individual coming up with a fitness program, passing on tips they have gained during their own athletic and coaching careers, or perhaps just shouting out encouragement from the sidelines. Today a coach must be an expert in many areas in order to guide their athlete in terms of fitness, strength, skill and technique, but there are many other related areas that go into getting the athlete into the best possible position to perform. For example, a coach needs to have knowledge of areas like nutrition, sleep, early signs of injury, rehabilitation and, of course, psychology, among others. As a result, there is no doubt that a coach requires assistance in dealing with all the various aspects of an athlete’s program. Not only is collecting this information a challenge but an essential component of this valuable data is being able to access it easily, understand it easily and then being able to act on the information in order to benefit the athlete.

The recent advances in technology have allowed coaches the opportunity to monitor all areas essential in helping an athlete achieve peak performance. Most important of all is that this information is gathered in a central hub of data that is regularly updated and easily accessible, ensuring that all information gathered is reliable and relevant. This allows the coach to evaluate it and analyse it, which in turn helps them get the best possible performance out of the athlete.

Silicon Valley is rethinking one of its least glamorous and most ubiquitous building blocks, the circuit board, in a bet that flexible, form-fitting alternatives could reshape electronics and spur more manufacturing in the U.S.

Backers envision ultrathin boards like skin patches that could analyze the sweat of soldiers and pilots, wrap around gas pipelines and act as leak detectors, or provide grids of flexible sensors able to detect stress on airplane wings.

Such possibilities—the focus of a new manufacturing consortium here backed by the U.S. Department of Defense and others—require materials and production techniques that differ from conventional circuit boards, made of stiff plastic.

Danny van Dijk couldn’t afford to waste anyone’s time. USC was preparing to face Nebraska in the Holiday Bowl in 2014 and he was just an unpaid intern on the strength and conditioning staff.

But 15 wearable GPS devices, given to the program to test, were collecting dust. Van Dijk was sure he could make use of them.

Ivan Lewis, USC’s head strength and conditioning coach, carried a message for him to then-coach Steve Sarkisian: “Look, I have a guy downstairs who really understands this stuff,” Lewis said. “I think he could really help us.”

Word of Van Dijk, a curious Australian who’d shown up one day looking for work, trickled up the USC food chain. Sarkisian was all in. Mark Jackson, a senior associate athletic director at the time, was intrigued. Pat Haden, then the athletic director, purchased 60 devices and gave Van Dijk a full-time job.

With that, the Trojans started tracking their players with data-collecting devices that could be worn during practices and games. And as USC stares down the rest of its punishing schedule after a 52-6 loss to Alabama, the technology is helping the Trojans track the progress of recovering players and the workload of their healthy ones.

If you follow baseball at any level, pitch counts are a part of your life. Some people hate them, some people think they need to be more heavily enforced for amateurs. They impact our thinking about pitcher health, durability, and effectiveness. Every broadcast tracks them.

The interest in pitch counts isn’t simply a media/outsider-driven affair, either. Teams have significant financial and competitive incentives to keep pitchers healthy and effective, and it certainly seems like they’ve stopped pushing their pitchers as much within individual games over the last decade.

But even amid this general trend, something significant happened over the last two seasons. Instead of following the long-term trends, pitch counts fell sharply starting last year and have fallen again in 2016. While we can’t offer a definitive explanation without spending time inside the heads of MLB’s managers, the evidence seems to suggest that the culprit is something other than a newfound appreciation for protecting arms.

… For many, it’s the experience of continually picking up new things and meeting fresh challenges that keeps us going, making the inevitable plateau of success uncomfortable. But that plateau isn’t wrong or bad—it’s not an indication that you’ve failed. It’s a sign that you’ve succeeded, and now have to sort out what comes next.

The sigmoid function (or “S-curve”) is a mathematical model that tech researchers often draw upon. It maps progress over time, and it also applies to learning and change. When drawn on a graph, the curve resembles an S tilted forward. Many natural processes follow this pattern: a slow start, an accelerated middle, and leveling progress toward the end. In terms of career advancement or company growth, once you push past the plateau, you begin a new S-curve—one that builds upon the last.

Plateaus, in other words, are a natural part of the change cycle. To reject them, and punish ourselves for feeling bored or stagnant or unhappy, is to reject new information entering our awareness.

Harry Redknapp recently took a phone call from a scout, who told him he’d just watched the best prospect he’d seen in his 30-year search for talent.

The man – or schoolboy – in question was Exeter City’s 15-year-old prodigy Ethan Ampadu. The centre-back was named man-of-the-match on his professional debut, nearly a year before sitting his GCSE exams.

He’s a teenager in demand. Representatives from Arsenal and Manchester United have already been dispatched to St James Park and returned to their clubs with glowing reports.

But what exactly do scouts look for when they watch players and is there a secret to unearthing a star? FFT spoke to some of football’s finest talent spotters to find out…

Sam Presti tacked the black-and-white photo on the large bulletin board eye level with the computer screens on his desk, a spot where the image would catch his gaze regularly.

It’s a movie studio shot of the original “Ocean’s 11” cast. The Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. bunch is clustered together in their skinny ties and smart suits, gazes locked intently on something in the distance.

It has nothing to do with basketball. It has everything to do with how the Thunder general manager runs his NBA franchise.

In less than a decade, Presti has built a franchise that regularly pushes boundaries. It doesn’t always do business like every other pro franchise, whether bringing in a college coach to take over a contending team or courting a superstar with substance instead of flash. It isn’t necessarily afraid to yin when the court of public opinion believes it should yang, whether trading beloved players or drafting young talent higher than expected.

The reason? The team.