Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 15, 2016

Odell Beckham Jr.’s outbursts — assaulting a kicking net, taking a taunting penalty and throwing tantrums on the sidelines — have been a byproduct of the star New York Giants receiver’s fiery personality.

“That’s not a bad thing,” said Doug Gardner, a sports psychologist who has counseled several NFL players. “I have worked with so many athletes like this. Organizations often want a player to act a certain way, but you never want to take away a person’s intensity. It’s what fuels them and keeps them going.”

… When Carlo Ancelotti took over at Saebener Strasse this summer he recognised the quality of his predecessor’s coaching work, yet found a group of players mentally and physically stressed by the Catalan’s three years leading them. Guardiola’s reign at Bayern was scarred by a litany of soft-tissue injuries and at one point descended into open warfare with Bayern’s globally renowned club doctor Hans Muller-Wohlfahrt.

According to one leading European manager, there is a fundamental issue with Guardiola’s preparation. “Although I love him and I’m his friend, Bayern injuries, it’s not down to the doctor, the problem is Pep’s training,” says the coach. “They do too many strength circuits so he constantly ruptures players. There is very little respect for recovery period, so there are constant muscle problems.”

Still in the phase of the relishing the intelligence and innovation of Guardiola’s footballing ideas, City’s players are yet to hit that wall. Yet Fernandinho, who has shone in playing every Premier and Champions League minute so far this season, referenced the demands placed on the squad following the unexpected draw at Celtic Park.

Manchester United had just won last season’s FA Cup when Coleen Rooney approached Louis van Gaal and said something which suggested that a penny had dropped very late in her husband’s football development. “I want to thank you for giving him responsibility. It’s made him live better,” she said.

The evidence of the past six weeks tells us that Rooney grew up and saw the light too late. Dropped from the Manchester United and England teams in the space of 18 days, he returns to the Premier League arena at risk of dropping out of the football narrative altogether, at the age of 30 (he’ll be 31 in 10 days’ time). It compounds the pain that Cristiano Ronaldo, eight months older than Rooney, said this week that he wanted “to play five or six more years… and keep the level of recent seasons” and no one in Madrid (or anywhere else) questioned him.

Similarly Rooney’s new United team-mate Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who is even older at 34, has rejected any talk of a China adventure because he is confident he can still play football at the highest level.

The Magic want Aaron Gordon to play small forward. The numbers don’t support this plan, but the science behind Orlando’s freak athlete does.

… What will really stand out if you watch long enough – perhaps after watching for a day or two – is the difference in the level of preparation, as well as its consistency over time.

This isn’t to say that all rookie-ball or lower-level players don’t prepare well – that is not what I am getting at. Rather, it is just a general observation of the populations that I’ve worked with. Ultimately it is the players at the lower levels of professional baseball who not only need skill development, but personal and professional development when it comes to their between-game and practice routines.

Where the big league pitcher generally knows exactly what he will do each and every minute leading up to first pitch on his day of the rotation, or each and every day leading up to his start, the younger pitcher in his first years of professional baseball may still walk into the clubhouse on his night to pitch with ice cream and soda, or may neglect to properly warm-up for a lifting session.

We all know the gut-wrenching feeling of being emotionally torn apart while deliberating to make the right decision in a circumstance where both choices have pros and cons. Until now, the neural circuitry involved in making emotional decisions has eluded brain researchers. Yesterday, MIT neuroscientists unveiled a groundbreaking new discovery that pinpoints the brain mechanics involved in making an emotional decision. … Recently, neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) identified neural circuits in the striatum that are directly linked to parts of the brain’s prefrontal cortex and other brain regions that are involved in processing emotions, making emotional decisions, and physical movement.

Adolescence. Nature’s way of preparing parents to welcome an empty nest. Throughout my time as a teacher, I was always fascinated and amused in equal measure by the many paradoxes of the period; a time when we are somehow both at our strongest and at our most vulnerable. It is also, of course, a period with a bad reputation, bemoaned by the Ancient Greeks, Romans and myriad commentators since. The reason for this isn’t perhaps as obvious as it might at first appear. It can’t just be the result of inadequacies on the part of the adolescents; younger children are able to do far less and we don’t share the same degree of frustration at their limitations. The stereotypical and historic frustration with adolescents presumably comes instead from a mismatch between our expectations for their behaviour and the reality; they fall short of the standards that we often set them.

Why is this? What leads to this discrepancy between expectations and behaviour? I think that there are three factors at play here. Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, adolescents are increasingly adult in appearance, so this superficial physical resemblance may lead us to expect that they will also behave like adults. Secondly, the consequences of adolescent shortcomings have the potential to be much more serious than for younger children. Adolescents are given a greater degree of freedom to explore their environment than younger children, and so have a much greater scope to display risky behaviours and find themselves in perilous situations. This explains why adolescents are consistently at the top of the ‘accidental deaths by age’ charts1. The third reason, however, is the most interesting from a psychological and neuroscientific perspective (as well as being probably the most frustrating for parents and teachers everywhere). This is that we know that teenagers CAN produce the behaviours that we would like them to; they just don’t (at least, they don’t all the time).

Albert Breer went down to the University of Houston to chat with head football coach Tom Herman on how he uses social media to connect with a new generation of players and recruits to make sure they aren’t swiping left on the Cougars

The right cadence for runners is a hotly debated topic among runners and triathletes. While there is no perfect single number, there is a range that you should aim for. Improving your cadence not only will help you run faster with the same or even less effort, it can also lessen your chance of injury. Most running injuries result from three aspects of your form: heel striking, over-striding and/or cadence. The good news for runners is that cadence is probably the most important of these three and, when improved, will also improve your chances of having zero knee issues1.

The aim of the present study was to compare 1) the maximal sprinting speed (MSS) attained by soccer players during matches (MSSmatch) according to their level of play (professional 1st French division vs. elite amateur 4th French division) and the playing positions; and 2) the MSS attained by professional soccer players during 14 different types of small-sided games (SSG, MSSSSG) and match-play. All players monitored through the study performed a 40-m sprint test to assess individual MSS (MSStest) and compare it to the training and match activity, with the calculation of the percentage of MSStest (%MSStest) reached. No differences were found according to the level of play, however positionally, wide players achieved a higher MSSmatch, %MSStest, and MSSSSG compared to central players (both defenders and midfielders) during matches and SSG. MSSmatch were higher than all MSSSSG, and MSSSSG were positively correlated with the area of the pitch (0.45, p<0.001), its length (0.53, p<0.001) and the number of players involved (0.38, p<0.001). The closer SSG was to match situation in term of rules, the higher the MSSSSG. Wide players reached higher MSS in match and SSG than central players, confirming the relevance of using SSG close to match situation to specifically prepare elite players to the maximal running speed demand of the match.

In the 1950s, medical research was primarily done on Caucasian males. It was thought it would be simpler to study only one group. But in reality, race, culture, and gender all play a role in how we respond to medications. The study of individual differences in medicine is a relatively recent development.

A special issue of the journal Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics discussed “pharmacoethnicity,” which is how ethnicity affects how drugs are processed by the body. Even within ethnicities, people process drugs differently. For example, genetic allele necessary to process antidepressants was less prevalent in Ethiopian (9%), Tanzanian (17%), and Zimbabwean (34%) populations than other African populations.

Just as we might be nearing a future of personalized medicine, maybe we need to think of our training and diet in a more personalized manner, too. A personalized training plan would play up to our unique strengths and address our individual weaknesses.

Darren Burgess is one of Australia’s most influential high performance coaches, being involved in many different types of sporting team around the world, including Liverpool FC, Football Australia and AFL. Darren is now the High Performance Manager at Port Adelaide AFL Club. We wanted to find out how Darren trains his athletes and the methods that he is currently applying at Port Adelaide AFL Club.

1. Darren, prior to your role at Port Adelaide Football Club, you were Head of Fitness and Conditioning at Liverpool Football Club for over 2 years. During your time with the club, player injury rates were lower compared to when you departed the club. What were the key processes you implemented in order to achieve the reduced injury rates at Liverpool?

When we were going to Liverpool, really the thing that we implemented was just do the basics really well. We introduced GPS which they hadn’t used before, so we monitored their training loads. I had three managers in my time there, and each of them I can say were really receptive to what we were trying to do as a department, and they were ok with us taking players out from time to time if their loads were too high. So, some pretty good monitoring, we had great physiotherapy and medical staff and excellent sport science staff and we just kept it really simple and did the basics well, so good nutrition, good recovery, individualised the player loads so that if game times got too high we gave them rests rather than just continually flogging them, so nothing really special, we just did the basics really really well.

Here are a few take-away points from the article:

No one has figured out how to objectively quantify how to evaluate a strength and conditioning coach.

Administrators cannot quantify comparable measures between coaches and become apathetic to turnover in those positions.

… One company is taking personalization to another level by delivering nootropics to its customers based on around-the-clock health-readings. Arizona-based startup STYR Labs made a tracker that gathers data about the user and recommends a specific blend of vitamins and supplements that can be ordered via an app. The company has two initial supplement baseline plans, one vegetarian and one protein-focused. Information such as calorie intake, motion patterns, environmental data and behavioral inputs decides what supplements the app will recommend. STYR Labs allows anyone to leverage tailored supplements through data, a way of thinking that can be applied to several other services as well.

Thin-film electronics intimately laminated onto the skin imperceptibly equip the human body with electronic components for health-monitoring and information technologies. When electronic devices are worn, the mechanical flexibility and/or stretchability of thin-film devices helps to minimize the stress and discomfort associated with wear because of their conformability and softness. For industrial applications, it is important to fabricate wearable devices using processing methods that maximize throughput and minimize cost. We demonstrate ultraflexible and conformable three-color, highly efficient polymer light-emitting diodes (PLEDs) and organic photodetectors (OPDs) to realize optoelectronic skins (oe-skins) that introduce multiple electronic functionalities such as sensing and displays on the surface of human skin. The total thickness of the devices, including the substrate and encapsulation layer, is only 3 ?m, which is one order of magnitude thinner than the epidermal layer of human skin. By integrating green and red PLEDs with OPDs, we fabricate an ultraflexible reflective pulse oximeter. The device unobtrusively measures the oxygen concentration of blood when laminated on a finger. On-skin seven-segment digital displays and color indicators can visualize data directly on the body. [full text]

Warwick Mills shows the kind of innovative know-how common among American textile companies that have survived the fierce global competition for the recent years.

The small private company in New Hampshire has climbed steadily up the economic ladder of its industry to produce specialised fabrics that weave in ceramics, metals and fibreglass. These high-value materials are used in products like safety gloves for industrial workers and body armour for the police and military.

Now, Warwick Mills is joining the Defense Department, universities including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and nearly 50 other companies in an ambitious $320 million project to push the American textile industry into the digital age. The key to the plan is a special ingredient: embedding a variety of tiny semiconductors and sensors into fabrics that can see, hear, communicate, store energy, warm or cool a person or monitor the wearer’s health.

There is now an app that can track elite athlete’s moods, sleep patterns, training regiment and more. This isn’t something out of a science fiction movie set in the future. The app, known as Iris, was released Monday and uses athlete’s genetic profiles to make recommendations to improve overall performance.

The app suite created by Athletigen Technologies, a sports genetics company, examines athlete’s genetic traits and monitors data daily to help athletes achieve their performance goals.

Dr. Jeremy Koenig, the founder and CEO of Athletigen said in a statement about the app that genetics are “an important piece of the human performance puzzle.”

“We built Iris to empower athletes to understand how their performance training can be augmented through an understanding of their genetic foundation especially when considered in combination with variables that coaches have considered for more than half a century,” he said.

Bob Ellicott’s vision of an athletic centre of excellence was realised the day the Australian Institute of Sport was officially opened – a grand endeavour conceptualised and brought to life.

The achievement represented a milestone in Australian sport – and with it a change in attitude, approach and professionalism that became a hallmark of this country’s sports culture.

On Thursday 13th October 2016, The Hon Robert Ellicott QC will be honoured for his long service to Australian sport when he is inducted as a general member of the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.

The Carolina Panthers aren’t off to a good start this season, but they’re hoping some high-profile pieces of technological equipment can help turn their season around.

Some Panthers’ players – including Luke Kuechly and Greg Olsen – are wearing GPS tracking devices during practice that monitor how their body respond throughout the course of a long and drawn-out day on the field.

Wrist-worn fitness and heart rate (HR) monitors are popular.1,2 While the accuracy of chest strap, electrode-based HR monitors has been confirmed,3,4 the accuracy of wrist-worn, optically based HR monitors is uncertain.5,6 Assessment of the monitors’ accuracy is important for individuals who use them to guide their physical activity and for physicians to whom these individuals report HR readings. The objective of this study was to assess the accuracy of 4 popular wrist-worn HR monitors under conditions of varying physical exertion.

The Tensiomyography (TMG) is an innovative technique that allows us to assess the state of the muscle. This technique of muscular valuation has gained popularity in recent years because of its simplicity, safety, reliability and high performance both in the world of sports training (control of training loads), and prevention and rehabilitation of injuries. It is a must for any athlete to improve performance is very important a correct initial assessment.

One of the main uses of the method is the ability to analyze and compare muscles or complete muscular structures that detect asymmetries in the case of being raised or maintained over time, can be a source of injury if they are not compensated or controlled. We talk about what is called lateral symmetries and functional symmetries: differences in responses of agonists and antagonists, or differences in the muscles of both sides.

A single concussion experienced by a child or teenager may have lasting repercussions on mental health and intellectual and physical functioning throughout adulthood, and multiple head injuries increase the risks of later problems, according to one of the largest, most elaborate studies to date of the impacts of head trauma on the young.

You cannot be an athlete, parent of an athlete, sports fan or reader of this newspaper and not be aware that concussions appear to be both more common — and more dangerous — than most of us once thought. According to a report released last week by the health insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield, based on data from medical claims nationwide, the incidence of diagnosed concussions among people under the age of 20 climbed 71 percent between 2010 and 2015. The rates rose most steeply among girls, with the incidence soaring by 119 percent during that time, although almost twice as many concussions over all were diagnosed in boys.

The report acknowledges that the startling increase may partly reflect a growing awareness of the injury among parents, sports officials and physicians, which has led to more diagnoses. But the sheer numbers also suggest that more young people, particularly young athletes, are experiencing head injuries than in the past.

OBJECTIVES:

To examine test-retest reliability of the SCAT3 for two consecutive seasons using a large sample of professional male ice hockey players, and to make recommendations for interpreting change on the test.
DESIGN:

A cross-sectional descriptive study.
METHODS:

Preseason baseline testing was administered in the beginning of the seasons 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 to 179 professional male hockey players in rink side settings.
RESULTS:

The test-retest reliabilities of the SCAT3 components were uniformly low. However, the majority of athletes remained grossly within their own individual performance range when two pre-season SCAT3 baseline scores were compared to published normative reference values. Being tested by the same person or a different person did not influence the results. It was uncommon for the Symptom score to worsen by ?3 points, the Symptom Severity score to worsen by ?5 points, SAC total score to worsen by ?3 points, M-BESS total error points to increase by ?3, or the time to complete Tandem Gait to increase by ?4s; each occurred in less than 10% of the sample.
CONCLUSIONS:

The SCAT3 has low test-retest reliability. Change scores should be interpreted with caution, and more research is needed to determine the clinical usefulness of the SCAT3 for diagnosing concussion and monitoring recovery. Careful examination of the natural distributions of difference scores provides clinicians with useful information on how to interpret change on the test.

UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen’s status for Saturday’s game at Washington State remains up in the air, and coach Jim Mora said Wednesday the team will factor in both what makes sense in the short and long term when making a final decision.

Rosen will be heavily involved in the process, as will several others around the team.

“Not only Josh but our medical team is outstanding and his dad’s a doctor,” Mora said. “So we’ve got him surrounded by people who understand what’s going on and I think at the end of the day you help him make the best decision for him, but you let him make the right decision. If it’s safe. We’re not going to let him make a decision that puts himself in further jeopardy.”

The NHL is adding a staff of spotters to better help identify players who may have sustained a concussion and have them removed from games for evaluation.

In an enhancement of its concussion protocol, the league announced the spotters will monitor all game broadcasts from the NHL’s headquarters in New York. The spotters are certified athletic trainers who have hockey experience and educated in identifying signs of potential concussions.

The former Broncos’ quarterback and other retired and active NFL players believe cannabidiol, or CBD, a nonpsychoactive compound in cannabis, could be an alternative to potent painkillers used by players in the league.

A large proportion of empirical research and reviews investigating the ergogenic potential of sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) supplementation have focused predominately on performance outcomes and only speculate about underlying mechanisms responsible for any benefit. The aim of this review was to critically evaluate the influence of NaHCO3 supplementation on mechanisms associated with skeletal muscle fatigue as it translates directly to exercise performance. Mechanistic links between skeletal muscle fatigue, proton accumulation (or metabolic acidosis) and NaHCO3 supplementation have been identified to provide a more targeted, evidence-based approach to direct future research, as well as provide practitioners with a contemporary perspective on the potential applications and limitations of this supplement. The mechanisms identified have been broadly categorised under the sections ‘Whole-body Metabolism’, ‘Muscle Physiology’ and ‘Motor Pathways’, and when possible, the performance outcomes of these studies contextualized within an integrative framework of whole-body exercise where other factors such as task demand (e.g. large vs. small muscle groups), cardio-pulmonary and neural control mechanisms may outweigh any localised influence of NaHCO3. Finally, the ‘Performance Applications’ section provides further interpretation for the practitioner founded on the mechanistic evidence provided in this review and other relevant, applied NaHCO3 performance-related studies. [full text]

Objectives

To investigate the magnitude of the home advantage in the National Hockey League (NHL) as games proceeded from regulation, to overtime, to the shootout, while adjusting for team quality.
Design

Archival.
Method

Binary logistic regression analyses were conducted using data from the 2005–2006 through 2013–2014 NHL seasons (N = 10,534 games) to compare home teams’ odds of winning in regulation, overtime, and the shootout.
Results

Compared to games decided in regulation, higher quality home teams’ odds of winning were slightly lower when games concluded in either overtime or the shootout. Further, regardless of team quality, home teams’ odds of winning were moderately lower when games concluded in the shootout rather than overtime.
Conclusions

The shootout may affect home team players’ psychological and behavioural states, generally resulting in a decrease in home teams’ odds of winning in the shootout relative to overtime.

This is part 1 of a two part series by Shayna Goldman that shares insights from six hockey analytics experts about how they integrate analytics into hockey analysis.

Analytics are becoming more deeply integrated into hockey analysis. But as with anything that strays from the traditional approach––in this case, using the “eye test” to analyze hockey––there has been significant criticism. By using the eye test, a game is analyzed solely based on what is seen, rather than looking deeper into what analytics can reveal.

Javier Baez is the Chicago Cubs’ current starting second baseman. It’s a new role for him. In four postseason games, he’s made four starts at the position. By contrast, he’d already played 38 regular-season games before he made his fourth start at second, on June 2. It’s not a role he took over at the All-Star break or even later in the season, like teammate Addison Russell did at shortstop last year. Baez made just 38 starts at the position all year long, and as the team prepped for playoffs in September, Baez received just six starts at second base in the final month. Baez’s versatile regular season — as well as the versatility of other Cubs teammates like Kris Bryant and Ben Zobrist — prepared for any role in the postseason, and that versatility enabled by Joe Maddon has played an important role in the team’s success.

Baez is the most shining example of that versatility on the Cubs. He’s played more than 25 games at each of second base, third base, and shortstop — one of only 68 players in history to accomplish that feat, per the Baseball Reference Play Index. While it isn’t so unique that Jedd Gyorko and Darwin Barney weren’t able to also do it this season, Baez’s age is a differentiating factor. Turning 24 years old in December, only Joe Dugan and Rogers Hornsby nearly a century ago accomplished the feat at a younger age (both by just a few months). Baez is also one of only 66 players in history to record at least 50 games at both second and third base. Given that he’s the only name on both lists, it appears safe to say he’s the only player in baseball history with at least 25 games at shortstop, 50 games at second base and 50 games at third base.

After taking over as coach of the underperforming Pittsburgh Penguins last December, Mike Sullivan assessed his personnel, as any other new coach would do in any other sport. He figured that the best way for the Penguins to improve quickly was to rely more on the team’s speed.

Centers Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, forward Phil Kessel and defenseman Kris Letang, in addition to being the Penguins’ top players, were among the team’s top skaters. Sullivan simplified the Penguins’ attack so they could launch breakouts from their own zone.

“It was an easy sell, quite honestly, for our players because they want to play a fast game, and I think it starts with our core guys,” Sullivan said this week. “Players like Sid and Geno, Kris Letang and Phil Kessel are all skaters. They want to play north-south; they want to come through the neutral zone with speed. We wanted to give them a plan where they could play to their strengths.”

The use of advanced analytics in sports isn’t taboo anymore. Franchises have shifted significant resources toward building departments strictly focused on powerful statistic and metric systems.

Using these systems to recruit, sign players and determine ways to win have become a serious part of the narrative in professional sports.

The slideshow you’re about to embark on provides a detailed look at eight teams that have done a wonderful job creating analytics departments, spanning the NHL, NFL, MLB and NBA. With so many franchises pushing dollars toward the analytics movement, we only selected teams considered to be the most advanced of the bunch.

… “Parents today are tricked into thinking their child is going to be a Division I player as long as they participate on a particular Club Team or AAU Team,” said Tim Clive, the girls soccer and basketball coach at Sauquoit Valley. “It leaves the high school coach struggling when we don’t recruit players. I have had to deal with more parents in the past few years who have been paying big dollars for their daughter to play at the Club or AAU level. Most problems arise out of playing time and can get quite annoying. Even after we have parent/coaches meetings prior to each season and the ground rules are discussed in detail.”

The No. 1 problem with parents, according to coaches in the Syracuse.com survey, is about playing time for their children. In the survey, 38 percent of 197 respondents said playing time topped the complaining charts.