Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 8, 2016

The 19-year-old winger, who wouldn’t dream of playing for England, explains why his decision to leave Nottingham Forest in a £13m move to RB Leipzig is a lesson for talent hoarding clubs like Chelsea

… “I made a move towards it, but then I decided, ‘If this is my last time on a court as a player, I don’t want this to be the final memory people have of me,'” Mourning says. “So I told them, ‘Man, get that f—ing thing out of here!’

“It’s hard to walk away. It’s a love affair, like a long marriage. I’ve been in a relationship with basketball since I was 5, 6 years old. It’s hard to flip a switch and say, ‘OK, it’s done.'”

… But after all this time, and all these attempts to label him, does anyone really know Bill Belichick? ESPN’s NFL Nation and The Mag teamed up to crack the greatest enigma in sports. The resulting interviews, with coaches, players and other associates, provide the definitive character study, covering Belichick’s genius, failures, partnership with Tom Brady, the pathologies around his controversies and the ultimate debate about his legacy.

In a wide-ranging interview with reporters, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred weighed in on the Designated Hitter rule, minor league pay, and yes — Tim Tebow as well.

A few weeks after expressing optimism about reaching a collective bargaining agreement shortly after the end of the season, Manfred offered few hints about what will be found within a new deal.

But the DH? That appears to be settled law.

I was recently honored with the opportunity to speak at the Sleep Technology Summit, a conference put on by the National Sleep Foundation exploring recent innovations and future projections in sleep technology.

While there, my conversations centered on two parallel themes, (1) can new technologies accurately measure sleep at a level worthy of displacing Polysomnography, the decades-old gold standard, and (2) why bother?

… “With developments in areas ranging from improved helmet designs to the analysis of sports data, science and technology are opening up a host of new opportunities to transform sports and exercise,” said S. Jack Hu, vice president for research. “With the help of industry partners, we seek not only to explore the science underlying new advances, but also to translate new ideas and insights into practice on our campus and beyond.”

ESSI builds on the work of more than 100 faculty and student researchers from such diverse disciplines as kinesiology, medicine, bioengineering, psychology, nutrition, social sciences, and data science will partner with industry and government on projects that address physical activity and human performance across the lifespan.

Right to Dream Africa is a purpose-built, fully residential academy located on the banks of the River Volta in the Eastern region of Ghana, providing scholarship opportunities to young, talented Africans. The Academy program focuses on the development of their student-athletes through football, education, and character development, enabling them to access RtD’s world-class graduate pathways.

Freelap USA: Your history of developing athletes to become national and international level players is uncanny. Can you share how you develop both soccer and general athleticism by instilling a foundation of character development? Some measurable points are easy, like player speed and conditioning, but dedication and focus are more difficult. How do you rate players’ grit and other qualities over the long run with your Academy?

Richard Evans: Character development is at the very heart of what we do, and we have a dedicated curriculum based around seven key character traits that we have identified: Initiative, Passion, Self-Discipline, Winning, Giving Back, Social Intelligence, and Integrity. This curriculum has been built from lessons our athletes, students, and graduates have learned, as well as a large library of texts ranging from Carol Dweck to John Wooden.

Michigan State basketball held its annual Summer Beach Challenge last week.

Strength and conditioning coach Todd Moyer took the Spartans to Grand Haven, Mich., on the shores of Lake Michigan, 100 miles west of East Lansing, for the grueling workout.

The players were broken into two teams, where they participated in eight events, including lugging two 75-pound sand bags and a dead-man carry.

… It’s moments like these when the Football Association has to ask itself what it could be doing differently. The way we nurture our young players is the old chestnut that always crops up; but what about the way we nurture our young managers? The way I see it, there is plenty of room for improvement there too.

A lot of the best managers in the game were forced into it by financial necessity. From Sir Alex Ferguson to Jurgen Klopp, their main incentive to move into coaching after their playing careers was to make a living.

But the game has completely changed. Nowadays, players might be ending their careers with £50 million in the bank. They don’t need to be coaches. In fact, they don’t need to do anything.

… “We let that loss, the last one, feed us into this week and throughout the rest of the season,” Brown said, “because we don’t want to feel like we did last week.”

Players also turned to mantras they developed in the summer with mental conditioning coach Trevor Moawad. There was a focus on staying positive and being resilient amid hardship.

UCLA hasn’t experienced much recent adversity in its rivalry with Arizona, going 4-0 since Mora became coach. But a mention of that success only triggered another catchphrase from Mora about history having no bearing on future results.

… We as coaches can rethink talent.

And then we can rethink the way we discover it and how we nurture it.

If we listen carefully, the story of Pep is the story of Rafi in Seattle, Benito in California, Cody in Canada, and Nick in Virginia. It is the story of a wise coach who looked at the qualities of a player that all others overlooked. It is a story that places intelligence above physical prowess.

How many players have we dismissed as easily as FC Barcelona executives were about to do with Pep?

… “I found it useful to break the Ironman marathon into small pieces. Initially it was ticking off kilometers, then after halfway it was smaller and smaller bits as it got tougher. In the end it was aid station to aid station.”

Frodeno’s explanation of his mental game is version of what Lars Draeger, author of “Navy SEAL Training Guide: Mental Toughness” says is a crucial technique, called setting micro-goals, applied by SEALs in exceptionally demanding training or missions.

By breaking down a job into sequential bits and pieces, overall stress is diminished, energy is focused more into the present, and distractions have less pull on the individual.

Objectives

Biochemical (e.g., creatine kinase (CK)) and neuromuscular (e.g., peak power output (PPO)) markers of recovery are expensive and require specialist equipment. Perceptual measures are an effective alternative, yet most validated scales are too long for daily use.
Design

This study utilises a longitudinal multi-level design to test an adapted Brief Assessment of Mood (BAM?+?), with four extra items and a 100?mm visual analogue scale to measure recovery.
Methods

Elite under-21 academy soccer players (N?=?11) were monitored across five games with data (BAM+, CK and PPO) collected for each game at 24?hours pre, 24?hours and 48?hours post-match. Match activity data for each participant was also collected using GPS monitors on players.
Results

BAM+, CK and PPO had significant (p?<?.05) linear and quadratic growth curves across time and games that matched the known time reports of fatigue and recovery. Multi-level linear modelling (MLM) with random intercepts for ‘participant’ and ‘game’ indicated only CK significantly contributed to the variance of BAM+ scores (p?<?.05). Significant correlations (p?<?.01) were found between changes in BAM+ scores from baseline at 24 and 48?hours post-match for total distance covered per minute, high intensity distance covered per minute, and total number of sprints per minute.
Conclusions

Visual and inferential results indicate that the BAM+ appears effective for monitoring longitudinal recovery cycles in elite level athletes. Future research is needed to confirm both the scales reliability and validity.

… Los Angeles, Texas and Atlanta are the most popular locations for NBA players to reside in the offseason, Wilcox said.

“Our vision was to recreate what the Clippers have done in L.A., and do it at a higher level,” [Wes] Wilcox said. He added that this facility is expected to become an NBA off-season hot spot and a potential host for nearby NCAA basketball teams from Duke University (N.C.), North Carolina University and University of Florida.

In their most basic sense, football and soccer cleats are just shoes with studs that protrude into the ground to keep athletes upright when cutting, faster when sprinting, and stable when pushing. But if you take a look at the footwear of today’s top athletes, we’re a long way from basic.

Nearly a century after the the first mass producing of soccer cleats, today’s shoes use force-plate technology, computer analysis, and advanced materials to maximize an athlete’s performance, whether he or she is on natural grass or an artificial surface. As Nike rolls out its newest advancements this fall—including new anti-clog technology that covers the studs with a water- and mud-repellant film—it’s clear that manufacturers can tailor a player’s cleats to even their specific position on the field.

… The Broncos’ hackathon is open to Colorado college students hoping to earn a degree in science, technology, engineering or mathematics. All of the details are yet to be released, but for now the Tackle STEM Hackathon seems to be different than many other hackathon events. It is a brief weekend event – Nov. 18-20 at Sports Authority Field – but aside from that, it is far more open ended.

Injuries devastated the A’s this year. They set an Oakland record by using the disabled list 27 times and by losing 1,762 days of player availability.

So it makes sense that the team would partner with a local sports-science-technology company that specializes in injury prevention. On Thursday, Kitman Labs of Menlo Park will announce that the A’s are using the company’s biomechanical and markerless motion-capture analytics system to help assess risk and provide advanced data to improve health and performance.

The A’s executive vice president of baseball operations, Billy Beane, joined Kitman Labs’ advisory board last season. Several other teams, including the NFL’s Miami Dolphins, have implemented the system, and the A’s began using the system with rookie-ball pitchers in July. Kitman Labs CEO Stephen Smith described it as “the early stages of the process,” basic data-gathering, which will provide unique analysis for each player.

… What started as a solution to medical problems is beginning to feed into the philosophy of transhumanism, which aims to use science and technology to help us evolve beyond our current physical and mental limitations.

Artist and “cyborg” Neil Harbisson is a living example of this trend. Born with a form of color blindness that means he sees the world in greyscale, he had an antenna featuring a camera implanted in his skull that can convert colors into audible vibrations whose frequency is determined by the hue of the visual scene. He now claims to experience a form of synesthesia where he can ‘hear’ paintings, but also ascribe colors to particular sounds.

More importantly, his antenna allows him to perceive infrared and ultraviolet — frequencies beyond the normal human visual spectrum.

… the importance of Under Armour’s digital platform growth is not just in direct revenue generation. Under Armour has more than 180 million users across its suite of apps and the continued growth each quarter is impressive. When asked why this new partnership with Mindbody matters, Under Armour Chief Digital Officer Mike Lee said that it’s important that Under Armour can play a role in helping its consumers to increase their activity and overall health.

Aside from the potential for direct sales from services like this one, Under Armour has been adamant about how its investment in digital could help to expand sales across all of its other segments. This focus on using digital to drive apparel revenues is evident in the summer launch of UA Shop, a mobile shopping app that pulls an individual’s data from the other Under Armour apps to provide specific sales recommendations and offers

… Athletes commonly choose to have surgery following an ACL injury in an attempt to return to sport. “We need to be thinking a lot about whether that is appropriate” says Dr Ardern.

She published a review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine on return to sport following ACL reconstruction surgery. This review found just 45% of athletes returned to competitive sport following surgery.

Sports Injury prevention specialists, Kitman Labs have produced a report entitled – Tackling Football Injuries Guide.

The Guide covers best practices that a Sports Scientist, Athletic Trainer, Strength and Conditioning coach or any other professional managing footballers’ workload should take into consideration.

… Just a few months ago the FDA cleared a system called EYE-SYNC from SyncThink, a firm based in Boston, MA, for helping to assess concussions. It relies on eye tracking built into an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset to quickly detect if a person has a poor ability keeping the eyes synced with moving objects.

We met with Jamshid Ghajar MD, PhD, Director of the Stanford Concussion and Brain Performance Center and President of the Brain Trauma Foundation, and who is also Chairman of the Board and Scientific Adviser of SyncThink. He essentially came up with the idea for the EYE-SYNC and helped turn it into reality.

Since the initial reporting of salivary hormone measurements in marathon runners in the early 1980s, the practice of utilizing salivary testosterone (T) and cortisol (C) to reflect acute and rhythmic changes to their systemic counterparts has gained considerable momentum. However, substantial variability exists between studies with respect to methodological protocols, laboratory techniques, and interpretation of study findings. These differences can directly influence the salivary hormone values, thus hampering interpretation, limiting cross-study comparison, and constraining the generalizability of individual study findings. This article examines the current body of literature before proposing a sequence of practical guidelines to minimize sample variability in salivary hormone research. The guidelines are grouped into 3 major categories that limit comparison between studies; A) study design, B) sample acquisition and biological variation, and C) technical and analytical error. To achieve this, the present article critically appraises research employing salivary T and C measurements, identifies potential sources of error before proposing appropriate methodological considerations for researchers and practitioners wishing to obtain T and C measurement from saliva. [full text]

During the 2014-15 season, Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski coined the phrase “Eight is enough” to describe the Blue Devils’ championship run driven by eight players in the team’s rotation.

But eight was not nearly enough to count the number of post-practice recovery smoothies the team consumed on a regular basis. Duke got in the habit of tweeting pictures of its smoothies throughout the season, with one photo showing at least 24 smoothies with five different flavors for the Blue Devils to refuel. Part of the team’s nutrition room includes an iPad that displays various recipes for Gatorade recovery shakes.

On the football field, head coach David Cutcliffe and company have also prioritized nutrition, switching their caterer in Fall 2015 and dubbing this season the “year of the beast.”

Protein supplementation during resistance exercise training augments hypertrophic gains. Protein ingestion and the resultant hyperaminoacidemia provides the building blocks (indispensable amino acids – IAA) for, and also triggers an increase in, muscle protein synthesis (MPS), suppression of muscle protein breakdown (MPB), and net positive protein balance (i.e., MPS?>?MPB). The key amino acid triggering the rise in MPS is leucine, which stimulates the mechanistic target of rapamycin complex-1, a key signalling protein, and triggers a rise in MPS. As such, ingested proteins with a high leucine content would be advantageous in triggering a rise in MPS. Thus, protein quality (reflected in IAA content and protein digestibility) has an impact on changes in MPS and could ultimately affect skeletal muscle mass. Protein quality has been measured by the protein digestibility-corrected amino acid score (PDCAAS); however, the digestible indispensable amino acid score (DIAAS) has been recommended as a better method for protein quality scoring. Under DIAAS there is the recognition that amino acids are individual nutrients and that protein quality is contingent on IAA content and ileal (as opposed to fecal) digestibility. Differences in protein quality may have important ramifications for exercise-induced changes in muscle mass gains made with resistance exercise as well as muscle remodelling. Thus, the purpose of this review is a critical appraisal of studies examining the effects of protein quality in supplementation on changes in muscle mass and strength as well as body composition during resistance training. [full text]

… The agents, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the talks, are concerned about trends in free agency that they perceive to be troubling, and money that is going to unproven Cuban players rather than established major leaguers and domestic amateurs, among other issues.

The players’ union is the certified representative of the players in collective bargaining, but internal differences of opinion during labor talks are not unusual on either side; agents might differ with union officials, just as owners from low-revenue clubs might disagree with owners from high-revenue teams.

One prominent agent, however, said the current CBA is “replete with provisions that have a practical impact of depressing salaries while cloaked in the delusional belief that it promotes parity.”

Effective data-based assessment of individual player performance in team sports must resolve the three basic conceptual problems of separability, multiplicity and measurability. These problems are most acute in the invasion-territorial sports.

In statistical terms, the win-contribution approach to player rating systems can be seen as a multivariate problem of identifying and combining a set of skill-activity performance metrics to model team performance.

Regression analysis is the simplest statistical method for estimating the skill-activity weightings to be used in a win-contribution player ratings system with multiple skill-activities.

Do high-fives help a team win? The Phoenix Suns want to find out.

“We have a high-five stat,” coach Earl Watson said earlier this week. “I’m being honest with you. This is true. So we want to keep track of how many high-fives we get per game to each other.”

On the surface it seems a little crazy to track high-fives, but it kind of makes sense. Having teammates that constantly support one another should help camaraderie and team chemistry. But at the end of the day, this is a league that cares about wins, so will this help lead to dubs?

Possibly.

Where do college hockey players come from? Dom Liberatore(@YeaDom18) created this Google Map to find out. He’s plotted out of the hometown of every rostered NCAA hockey player in this fun, interactive map.

John Chayka is sure veteran Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Lou Lamoriello doesn’t know what to make of him.

“He’s still trying to figure me out,” the Arizona Coyotes GM said with a laugh.

It’s understandable if Lamoriello needs time to get a read on Chayka because Lamoriello was a general manager in the NHL two years before Chayka was born. At 73, Lamoriello is 46 years older than Chayka.