Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 10, 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

Life is back to normal for Sydney McLaughlin, if that’s possible for a 17-year-old who made sports history this summer by becoming Team USA’s youngest track and field Olympian since 1972.

McLaughlin, who will begin her senior year at Union Catholic High School in New Jersey this fall, was 17 years old when she advanced to the 400m hurdles semifinal round in Rio. At July’s U.S. Olympic Trials, she was 16 when she placed third in a new national high school record and world junior (U-20) record of 54.15. She turned 17 a week before the Games.

In an exclusive Skype interview, we chatted about the Olympics, people posing as her on social media (weird), the truth about the McDonald’s in the athlete village, and whether or not she’ll turn pro. Watch the three-part interview in its entirety, or skip to a specific part by reading the notations below. [video, 8:10]

Justin Blackmon does not look like a man who has disappeared. He wears no unkempt beard or hibernation paunch, no look of vague suspicion in his eyes. Honestly, he looks pretty good. Shoulders high and wide; arms thick in the appropriate places; legs lean and functional, vaulting him up three flights of stairs. It’s a Wednesday in August and Blackmon is appearing in public, something he used to do quite often but now seems to try his best to avoid. He’s dressed well, if casual. Black and gray henley, buttoned all the way to the top; a pair of khakis over black sneakers; Ray-Bans perched on top of his head.

You don’t need much creativity to imagine this man, just a few years ago, setting fire to secondaries across college football. It’s easy to picture him sitting in the green room at Radio City Music Hall, waiting to be selected in the 2012 NFL draft. He’s still imprinted with the muscles of a former Heisman candidate. But in the past two years, Blackmon has appeared in this drafty room on the third floor of this rural Oklahoma building more often than he’s appeared on an NFL sideline.

He says hi to his lawyer, and then to the bailiff, and when the moment comes he nods politely at the judge. While his former Jaguars teammates are preparing to begin the 2016 NFL season, Blackmon is 1,200 miles away, in a courtroom. And when you ask many of the people who love him, they struggle to explain just how he ended up here.

… Although the game of football has evolved since Archie’s era, there is a prominent distinction in the athletic ability between him and his quarterback sons. The Manning brothers share approximately 50% of their genetic material that they inherited from their parents.

Heritability is a representation of the importance of genetics in determining one’s characteristics at a given trait, whether that trait is eye color, intelligence, or disease risk (1). Athletically relevant traits that are heritable include height, body type, and aerobic endurance (2, 3, 4). Although some athletically-relevant markers have been teased out of the 20,000 genes we possess, there is no one sports gene, or quarterback gene that is deterministic for success.

Given that 50% of the Manning brothers DNA is from an NFL-level athlete may have given them a head start upon entry to the sporting world. Despite carrying around half of Archie’s genes, a distinction of the quarterback play and athleticism of the brothers is evident in comparison to early footage of their father.

What’s a former Olympic athlete to do once they’ve competed on the highest stage their sport has to offer? For almost two dozen, the answer has been to go on “American Ninja Warrior.”

In its eight seasons, the NBC reality competition show has seen 23 Olympians attempt its notoriously challenging obstacle course, including eight gymnasts, seven track and field athletes, and others from luge, rowing, boxing, snowboarding and hockey. One former ninja, Logan Dooley, will compete for Team USA in trampoline at the 2016 Summer Games; Olympic wrestler Jordan Burroughs has already contacted producers about wanting to try out for the show when he returns from Rio de Janiero.

“It’s the challenge. It looks fun,” executive producer Kent Weed says of Olympians’ attraction to the show. “It’s also a great way to get back in shape. Any athlete that’s competitive, it just attracts your competitive side.”

NCAA President Mark Emmert said Thursday that the association’s member schools may want to consider changing rules that allow college athletes to keep money they can receive from national governing bodies for winning Olympic medals while remaining eligible to compete in their sports.

In 2001, the NCAA’s Division I schools adopted a rule that allowed athletes to accept money under the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Operation Gold program, which provides cash based on athletes’ performances at the Olympics or, in non-Olympic years, a world championships or similar competition. In 2015, the schools adopted a rule covering similar payments to non-American athletes.

In an Olympic year, Operation Gold money from the USOC goes only to Olympic medalists, with the basic payout being $25,000 for a gold medal, $15,000 for a silver and $10,000 for a bronze — and athletes can get multiple awards. In addition, some national sport governing bodies add money to these awards and, if the USOC approves, they can be included under the umbrella of Operation Gold.

Background

Good physical fitness seems to help the individual to buffer the potential harmful impact of psychosocial stress on somatic and mental health. The aim of the present study is to investigate the role of physical fitness levels on the autonomic nervous system (ANS; i.e. heart rate and salivary alpha amylase) responses to acute psychosocial stress, while controlling for established factors influencing individual stress reactions.
Methods

The Trier Social Stress Test for Groups (TSST-G) was executed with 302 male recruits during their first week of Swiss Army basic training. Heart rate was measured continuously, and salivary alpha amylase was measured twice, before and after the stress intervention. In the same week, all volunteers participated in a physical fitness test and they responded to questionnaires on lifestyle factors and personal traits. A multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to determine ANS responses to acute psychosocial stress from physical fitness test performances, controlling for personal traits, behavioural factors, and socioeconomic data.
Results

Multiple linear regression revealed three variables predicting 15 % of the variance in heart rate response (area under the individual heart rate response curve during TSST-G) and four variables predicting 12 % of the variance in salivary alpha amylase response (salivary alpha amylase level immediately after the TSST-G) to acute psychosocial stress. A strong performance at the progressive endurance run (high maximal oxygen consumption) was a significant predictor of ANS response in both models: low area under the heart rate response curve during TSST-G as well as low salivary alpha amylase level after TSST-G. Further, high muscle power, non-smoking, high extraversion, and low agreeableness were predictors of a favourable ANS response in either one of the two dependent variables.
Conclusions

Good physical fitness, especially good aerobic endurance capacity, is an important protective factor against health-threatening reactions to acute psychosocial stress. [full text]

With sports lovers still basking in the gleam of Great Britain’s Olympic medal haul from Rio and now looking forward to a clutch of golds at the Paralympics, a BBC campaign is encouraging British school children to “Get Inspired” by Team GB’s success and emulate their sporting heroes.

However laudable this is, it comes amid a general decline in children’s basic skills at running, jumping, throwing, catching and kicking. Worrying findings across the world show that the movement skills of today’s children are less well developed than previous generations. A recent study in the UK also found children’s movement skills to be poor.

Without these basic skills at moving, most children will fail to find “their sport”. Research has found that children who are skillful tend to be more confident in their ability to perform these skills and, consequently, are more likely to engage in physical activity, which in turn creates opportunities for further skill development. The reverse is also true. Children with low skill levels are less likely to have confidence in their abilities, are less likely to engage in physical activity and, over time, are more likely to drop out of sport and become obese.

One of the hardest concepts to get across to youth athletes is the importance of age-appropriate training methods. If it isn’t advanced, complex, or professional-grade, it probably isn’t going to satisfy many initially. But, with a steady dose of patience and education, combined with a consistent message based on long-term development, eventually most athletes will jump on board enough to become compliant with the program, if not actually enjoy it.

Recently, there’s been a surge in the popularity of workout programs like Bodypump, P90x, and ClassPass, all of which are based on “muscle confusion,” or the premise that constantly switching up your workout routine — i.e., “confusing” your muscles — is the pathway to fitness gains. It’s an enticing idea, as evidenced by the numbers: Since 2004, P90x has sold five million copies, and last year alone, ClassPass brought in over $60 million in revenue. Unfortunately, muscle confusion doesn’t work.

“All the crap you hear about your body needing a different stimulus each week or a new ‘workout of the day’ is garbage,” says Brett Bartholomew, CSCS*D, director of performance at Unbreakable, a Los Angeles gym that Yahoo called the most elite gym in America. “The number-one reason people don’t get results is that they don’t have the attention span to stick with something.” (At the Cut, Kathleen Hou once wrote that ClassPass is like “being in an open relationship with exercise.”)

Technique, or form, has always been taught and trained in all sports. So, why should running be any different? Running is simple, you just put your shoes on and go run. But if you want to improve you need to run regularly, do strength work and long runs. However, many runners do all these and don’t improve because they forget their technique. In running, technique is often overlooked because people think that it comes naturally. But it doesn’t!

A correct running technique will help you to be a better, faster and more efficient runner. But more important is that you will reduce your chances of getting injured.
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In the 2014 edition of the Boston Marathon, Meb Keflezighi reinforced the importance of running form in his victory “If it wasn’t for form, I don’t think I would have won. I think about my feet, where they’re going to land. My hips, knees, legs, arms, neck. Where my head should be positioned. Where my chin should be going uphill, downhill.”

Check out a few notes and pictures that we’ve prepared to give you some guidance on running technique, highlighting the main technical points.

Chris Johnson, an NBA development coach for Jimmy Butler and a host of others, explains how professionals work during their off-season.

In his engaging new book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, to be published this December by Basic Books, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang argues that respite is an essential component of both productivity and creativity. Pang, a senior consultant at Strategic Business Insights and a visiting scholar at Stanford University, draws on biographical accounts of famous artists and scientists and a trove of psychological studies to make his case, exploring the benefits of sleep, naps, play, sabbaticals and exercise. Contributing editor Ferris Jabr, who wrote “Give Me a Break” for our special workplace package in this issue, spoke with Pang to learn more about the importance of giving rest and relaxation the respect it deserves.

… 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?

JS: At the beginning, everything surprised me—I was like Holy s**t what the [bleep] is all this, how can it really tell me all this??? But really it was an eye opener about looking deeper into how each individual responds to training differently, and that adaptation really is a variable process among each athlete. For example, looking at how athletes respond differently to recovery modalities, specifically ice baths. This is a typical and frequently used modality (unfortunately, too often in my opinion—but that’s a whole different topic). But, using the Omegawave allowed me to look and see if guys were really recovering or responding positively from ice baths and what adaptations where occurring. Lo and behold, guys responded differently—some positively, while others it drove them deeper into autonomic fatigue. That’s a big deal if you are using that to recover for an important event coming up in the next day or two.

Since early man started wearing VR goggles, the goal has been simple: escape reality. With Microsoft’s radical new wearable computer, reality has never before been so gloriously real.

… Now in its third year as a sideline staple, Microsoft’s tablet is evolving from an expensive piece of product placement to a legitimate tool in the hands of coaches and players. And while coaches like Rivera are trying to turn back the clock, others are looking for new ways to integrate the technology into their game plans.

Jeff Tran, the director of sports marketing and alliances at Microsoft, told the Daily Dot that Denver Broncos head coach Gary Kubiak, Rivera’s counterpart who got the best of him in Super Bowl 50, has happily adapted to the tablet.

“Microsoft technology continues to transform industries of all kinds from healthcare to education to small businesses by putting real time data and insights in people’s hands when they need it most,” he explained, stating the company’s approach to working with the NFL was no different.

… Following that display of waterborne prowess we got to see some fancy photos of their swimming ‘lab’ setup to determine more accurate calories while swimming. Of course, that in turn depends on more accurate HR sensor data, which we know the Apple Watch isn’t exactly world-class in (no matter how many times TV crews visit that fitness lab, nor have Jony Ive narrate it). It’s good, but not great compared to other optical sensor options in the market today. On the flipside (literally), the display is of course market-leading.

Apple and Nike teamed up for a unique version of the Apple Watch Series 2, called Apple Watch Nike+. The watch has a special breathable watch band (which looks like swiss cheese), and Nike watch faces which simplifies and stylizes the interface to focus on fitness and flashy motivational phrases. Nike also has a new social network of sorts, called Nike+ Run Club, that the Watch will be happy to integrate with, and even some special Siri commands. To declare the corporate commitment this watch embodies, there’s even a Nike swoosh carved in the aluminum back. RIP FuelBand, it’s like we never even knew you.

Apple Watch Nike+ will sell for the same price as the regular Series 2 Watch, $369, but won’t be available until late October.

Personal tracking tools — technologies that meticulously count our daily steps, map our runs, account for each purchase – fall in and out of favor in users’ lives.

People abandon self-tracking for different reasons, University of Washington researchers have found. Some don’t like what their Fitbit or financial tracking tools reveal, others find collecting data a hassle, don’t quite know how to use the information or simply learn what they need to know about their habits and move on.

“We got curious about what it’s like for people after they stop using self-tracking tools,” said Sean Munson, a UW assistant professor of human centered design and engineering. “Do they feel great, do they feel guilty, do they feel like they’ve gotten everything they need?”

… research in recent years says something quite different: Receiving many less severe hits to the head over time may be even more dangerous to the brain than a single concussion.

The long-term impact from repetitive hits can be quite serious, says neurologist Andrew Russman, DO.

A little while ago I posted the video below on the Running Physio Facebook page and a couple of interesting things happened…first of all it went a bit viral with over 60,000 views and secondly it prompted a heated debate on Trust Me, I’m a “Physiotherapist”. You can find the video here.

The major discussion point was are these Nordic type exercises ‘functional’ for the hamstring? This blog aims to answer this question and determine what we mean by ‘functional’ and what functional hamstring rehab might involve…

On Wednesday September 7th, Kasper Janssen will defend his PhD thesis “Brace versus Balance Board”, on the cost-effectiveness of preventive measures against secondary ankle ligament injuries. Prevention of ankle sprains could preserve health in people who participate in high-risk sports and in those who have suffered a previous ankle ligament injury. Chapter 2 of this thesis summarizes all the available evidence on the effectiveness of measures to prevent ankle sprains in athletes. Based on the available evidence, neuromuscular (NM) training and bracing were considered the two main secondary preventive interventions for further research. Subsequently, chapter 3 to 5 present the design and results of the first RCT that evaluated, following usual care, the (cost-)effectiveness of combined bracing and NM training, versus stand-alone bracing, versus the use of NM training, with recurrences of ankle sprain as the primary outcome. Chapter 6 provides a secondary analysis of the compliance with these interventions to reveal potential predictors of this compliance. In chapter 7 a user survey of three different ankle braces in soccer, volleyball and running describes subjective factors that can influence the acceptability of ankle brace use by athletes.

Concussion is increasingly recognized as a risk of participation in contact and collision sports. There have been few examinations of athletes’ perceptions of their susceptibility to concussion or concussion-related health consequences. We examine college football players’ perceptions of their risk of sustaining a concussion and concussion-related health consequences in their future, whether these perceptions change over time, and how concussion history is related to perceived future risk of concussion and concussion-related health consequences. A survey was administered to NCAA Division I Football Championship Series athletes on ten teams in 2013 and to nine of those teams in 2014. Athletes answered questions assessing their perceptions of concussion and potential concussion-related health consequences. Approximately 40% of athletes believed there was a strong possibility that they would sustain a concussion in the future, while approximately one-in-four thought a concussion would make them miss a few games. About one-in-ten athletes predicted they would develop dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy from concussions. These beliefs were stronger among athletes who had sustained prior concussions. Across the two years studied, athletes’ perception of risk of concussion and missing a few games due to concussion decreased significantly. Overall, a substantial proportion of college football players believe they will suffer long-term health consequences as a result of sustaining sport-related concussions. The true incidence and prevalence of many of these outcomes are unknown. Further research is needed to determine if athletes have an accurate perception of the risks of developing these outcomes.

Prevention programs are effective at reducing the risk of ankle injuries by 40 percent in soccer players, according to a new study appearing in today’s issue of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.

It has been reported that nitrate supplementation can improve exercise performance. Most of the studies have used either beetroot juice or sodium nitrate as a supplement; there is lack of data on the potential ergogenic benefits of an increased dietary nitrate intake from a diet based on fruits and vegetables. Our aim was to assess whether a high-nitrate diet increases nitric oxide bioavailability and to evaluate the effects of this nutritional intervention on exercise performance. Seven healthy male subjects participated in a randomized cross-over study. They were tested before and after 6 days of a high (HND) or control (CD) nitrate diet (~8.2 mmol?day?1 or ~2.9 mmol?day?1, respectively). Plasma nitrate and nitrite concentrations were significantly higher in HND (127 ± 64 µM and 350 ± 120 nM, respectively) compared to CD (23 ± 10 µM and 240 ± 100 nM, respectively). In HND (vs. CD) were observed: (a) a significant reduction of oxygen consumption during moderate-intensity constant work-rate cycling exercise (1.178 ± 0.141 vs. 1.269 ± 0.136 L·min?1); (b) a significantly higher total muscle work during fatiguing, intermittent sub-maximal isometric knee extension (357.3 ± 176.1 vs. 253.6 ± 149.0 Nm·s·kg?1); (c) an improved performance in Repeated Sprint Ability test. These findings suggest that a high-nitrate diet could be a feasible and effective strategy to improve exercise performance. [full text]

The regulation and function of sleep is one of the biggest black boxes of today’s brain science. A new paper published online on August 2 in the journal Brain Structure & Function finds that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is suppressed by adenosine acting on a specific subtype of adenosine receptors, the A2A receptors, in the olfactory bulb. The study was conducted by researchers at Fudan University’s School of Basic Medical Sciences in the Department of Pharmacology and the University of Tsukuba’s International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine (WPI-IIIS). The research team used pharmacological and genetic methods to show that blocking A2A receptors or neurons that contain the A2A receptors in the olfactory bulb increases REM sleep in rodents.

Adenosine has long been known to represent a state of relative energy deficiency and to induce sleep by blocking wakefulness. The new findings demonstrate for the first time that adenosine also inhibits REM sleep.

Carnosine, comprised of two amino acids, beta-alanine and histidine, is one of the few molecules in muscle that is capable of buffering the release of hydrogen ions generated from glycolysis, a process of creating energy during sustained or intermittent high intensity exercise. Synthesis of carnosine in muscle occurs locally and is limited by the availability of beta-alanine. Studies have shown that the amount of carnosine in muscle can be doubled by supplementing with beta-alanine over several weeks.1

The greater the increase in muscle carnosine, the greater the increase in hydrogen ion buffering capacity, and the greater the effect on exercise capacity.1,2 This is of major interest to athletes and sports enthusiasts competing in events involving anaerobically fueled exercise, as well as during training, which also involves high intensity exercise. Examples include: 2000m rowing; road and track cycling; mountain biking; speed skating; ice-hockey; rugby, high intensity and weight training workouts in the gym. Today, beta-alanine is recognized as one of the most effective performance enhancing dietary supplements available; it is found naturally in the diet, is not banned by sporting authorities.

There’s two things that we care about the most in evaluating the range of an outfielder: how much distance does he have to cover, and how much time does he have to cover it. Distance over time. That’s the definition of speed. The entire problem with fielding metrics is the concept of uneven opportunities. You see, when it comes to hitters, they all face very similar opportunities: they face similar pitchers throwing to a similar strike zone in similar parks with similar fielders. It’s not as if what Mike Trout is facing is much different than what Josh Donaldson is facing. Whatever differences exist is very much on the periphery.

But for fielders, we don’t have that situation at all. A fielder can get a bunch of balls hit right at him for easy outs, or he can get a bunch of balls that even Willie Mays might have problems with. It’s like crediting Barry Bonds with an out instead of an IBB, because he didn’t get a hit. We need to be able to understand the quality of opportunities for our fielders.

… a vast majority of the Premier League’s transfer money was spent on imports: $214 million to Germany’s Bundesliga, $199 million to the Spanish Liga, $182 million to Serie A in Italy, $161 million to France’s Ligue 1, and hundreds of millions more to Brazil, Belgium, Poland and all points in between.

The tendency, whenever the Premier League dips into its ever-expanding pockets, is to focus on what impact that spending has on the English game: whether the players are of the quality needed to improve the Premier League, and whether they detract from the country’s beleaguered national team.

If anything, though, the effects are even more profound on the continent. As the window slammed shut on Wednesday, Coates remarked that selling a player to the Premier League can keep European clubs “going for a couple of years.” That is an exaggeration, but one that, in a way, encapsulates the problem.

The success or failure of an expansion team is not only influenced by how the team is originally put together, but also by the dynamic of the competition it is entering. Expansion teams by their very nature tend to be low Cohesion – in it’s simplest form bringing a group of team members together for the first time will always require time to create connections and shared experience.

Expansion teams can be created with different philosophies in mind.

Is the team aiming to be competitive from the beginning and aiming for success in the short term?

With the summer now over, life goes back to a sense of normality. Football season is in action, kids are back at school and it gets a bit darker and colder in England. As we enter September it also means the start of the football season for youth football, both at grassroots and in Academies. After a hectic summer of tournaments, working on recruitment and team-building in order to get the teams and clubs ready for the season, the debates around youth development arise once again. This article will address the biggest issue in youth sports and development; size. As well as touch on the important aspects which mentality, psychology and emotional maturity have on the development of footballers.

Chelsea have a list of clubs they refuse to loan players to after breaking promises to give youngsters first team action, it has been claimed.

The Premier League giants sent 38 players out on loan during the summer transfer window.

But according to Mark Ashton, Bristol City’s chief operating officer, bosses at Stamford Bridge will not do business with certain clubs.

The Cubs played and won two 13-inning games in the past week. But the length and result are where the similarities between the two games end.

And therein lies the problem with the final month of the Major League Baseball season. It is a much different game than the one played from April to the end of August because of expanded rosters (September call-ups).

… Noise is often insidious: It causes even successful companies to lose substantial amounts of money without realizing it. How substantial? To get an estimate, we asked executives in one of the organizations we studied the following: “Suppose the optimal assessment of a case is $100,000. What would be the cost to the organization if the professional in charge of the case assessed a value of $115,000? What would be the cost of assessing it at $85,000?” The cost estimates were high. Aggregated over the assessments made every year, the cost of noise was measured in billions—an unacceptable number even for a large global firm. The value of reducing noise even by a few percentage points would be in the tens of millions. Remarkably, the organization had completely ignored the question of consistency until then.

It has long been known that predictions and decisions generated by simple statistical algorithms are often more accurate than those made by experts, even when the experts have access to more information than the formulas use. It is less well known that the key advantage of algorithms is that they are noise-free: Unlike humans, a formula will always return the same output for any given input. Superior consistency allows even simple and imperfect algorithms to achieve greater accuracy than human professionals. (Of course, there are times when algorithms will be operationally or politically infeasible, as we will discuss.)

In this article we explain the difference between noise and bias and look at how executives can audit the level and impact of noise in their organizations. We then describe an inexpensive, underused method for building algorithms that remediate noise, and we sketch out procedures that can promote consistency when algorithms are not an option.