Applied Sports Science newsletter – November 7, 2016

… “She is sort of the Kenyan Ingrid Kristiansen,” Michael Joyner, a Mayo Clinic physician whose research has focussed on distance runners, told me. “Kristiansen used to go out, have children, and come back and run fast. And there’s a theory that, when people are pregnant, they get a big expansion in their blood volume . . . which could translate to improved endurance performance over time.”

But what’s the secret to her finishing power? And how has she lost only four races, at any distance, since 2011? One answer, most obviously, lives back in Iten, where female runners train in relative isolation among high-altitude hills and a bevy of élite male runners with faster personal bests than their own. “You have to watch your teammates,” Keitany told me. “See if you are comfortable with pace, and if you feel like moving.” Coach Nicola puts her through long sessions with two-to-four-mile intervals alternating at elevated and relaxed paces, to make speed increases at pivotal spots second nature.

But there’s something subtler going on as well. I asked Keitany about her final split from last year’s race—how she ran her fastest time in her last mile. She responded, “No! Really? Wow.” She thought about it. “Well, maybe. I’m not remembering how I did.”

This is how Keitany works: through a method of unknowing.

… DeRozan wound up posting a true-shooting percentage of 55 in 2015-16, comfortably above the league average and with a 29.8-percent usage rate. Given the accepted trade-offs between volume and efficiency, it’s hard to spin last year’s version of DeRozan as an inefficient scorer overall. His true-shooting percentage has jumped to 61.4 here early on. That’s aided by a 58.5-percent mark on pull-up jumpers that’s likely to regress close to the 40-percent mark, but he’s still third in the league in points off of drives and 10th in free-throw attempts. (Thanks to a small-sample anomaly, DeRozan actually has a points percentage higher than 100 on drives.)

In other words, DeRozan is going to cool off when fewer jumpers drop, but he’s not doing anything that he hasn’t done before, stylistically. He’s just getting better and better at the shots he takes, pushing them ever-closer to the rim as the years go by. Heralded for his tireless work ethic, DeRozan’s earned a reputation as someone who brings something new to his game every season. Fans and critics have waited for the 3-point shot to be one of those additions for years, and while it’s probably not coming in a significant way, DeRozan’s evolved demonstrably inside the arc over the years.

The long road back spanned 60-some miles on Interstate 476, the main highway extension connecting Philadelphia and Allentown, Pa., and opened for business on Oct. 6, 2015, the day Andrew MacDonald cleared waivers and headed to the minor leagues. It contained stops both humbling and illuminating, with signposts reminding the 30-year-old defenseman why his career had come to this. “Sometimes,” he says, “you just need a little push to help things out.”

Last season, according to CapFriendly.com, 139 NHL players carried salary cap hits of $5 million or higher. Aside from MacDonald, only one of those—then-Florida forward Dave Bolland ($5.5 million)—appeared in the American Hockey League at any point. Demoted on a conditioning assignment to cure his struggles, Bolland skated just twice for the Portland Pirates before persistent ankle injuries shut him down indefinitely. He is still recovering, currently residing as dead salary in Arizona.

MacDonald, on the other hand, spent four months and 43 games with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms after failing to make the NHL roster in training camp, facing an internal conflict unusual for others at his pay grade. “A lot of guys will go down, sit and pout: Poor me, poor me, poor me,” Flyers GM Ron Hextall says. “It’s not easy to be in the NHL for years and all of a sudden get sent down.”

The duration that exercise can be maintained decreases as the power requirements increase. In this review, we describe the power–duration (PD) relationship across the full range of attainable power outputs in humans. We show that a remarkably small range of power outputs is sustainable (power outputs below the critical power, CP). We also show that the origin of neuromuscular fatigue differs considerably depending on the exercise intensity domain in which exercise is performed. In the moderate domain (below the lactate threshold, LT), fatigue develops slowly and is predominantly of central origin (residing in the central nervous system). In the heavy domain (above LT but below CP), both central and peripheral (muscle) fatigue are observed. In this domain, fatigue is frequently correlated with the depletion of muscle glycogen. Severe-intensity exercise (above the CP) is associated with progressive derangements of muscle metabolic homeostasis and consequent peripheral fatigue. To counter these effects, muscle activity increases progressively, as does pulmonary oxygen uptake (VO2), with task failure being associated with the attainment of
max. Although the loss of homeostasis and thus fatigue develop more rapidly the higher the power output is above CP, the metabolic disturbance and the degree of peripheral fatigue reach similar values at task failure. We provide evidence that the failure to continue severe-intensity exercise is a physiological phenomenon involving multiple interacting mechanisms which indicate a mismatch between neuromuscular power demand and instantaneous power supply. Valid integrative models of fatigue must account for the PD relationship and its physiological basis.

… In a report that just came out1, researchers measured potential sleep debt in young men. The subjects were able to sleep up to 12 hours for over a week, followed by one night of being awake, and another night of sleeping up to 12 hours. Not a bad study to sign up for.

The scientists were looking to measure how much the subjects normally sleep versus how much they could sleep if uninterrupted by life. Using this difference, say 7 hours of sleep normally versus 9 uninterrupted, we can predict how much sleep debt you may be in. Since individuals vary in how much sleep is required, this could be a rough method to determine the magic number for sleep on an personal basis. I use the range of 7 to 9 hours, but being able to be specific would be ideal.

The researchers found that it takes around 4 days of sleeping-in to bring you back to normalized levels after even 1 hour of sleep debt (or not sleeping to optimal level). It was a decent study because they also tracked blood markers. After catching up on sleep, cortisol was slightly lowered, glucose metabolism slightly improved, and thyroid function was slightly better. Small improvements but it was a short duration study using only young males. It gives hope for future studies.

Ever wonder what life is like for Gabrielle Reece and Laird Hamilton? Well, wonder no more. Gabby and Laird, along with Brian MacKenzie, a human performance specialist, have created The XPT Experience, a three-day turbo-charged immersion into their lives. XPT stands for Extreme Performance Training and for $5000, you get full access to this trio and a roster of the most buzzed about – although you may not have heard about them yet — trainers, coaches, health and wellness experts. The XPT Experience is an action-packed program of workouts, lectures, and playtime too, all of which comes from the cutting edge training, nutrition and recovery these professional athletes have integrated into their daily lives.

For those who don’t know this Amazonian beauty, Gabby Reece is a former professional beach volleyball player, model, best-selling author, mother, and world-renowned fitness personality, most recently seen as the host of NBC’s Strong. At 6’3 she is a towering presence, and at 47 years old, as gorgeous and fit as ever, enhanced by a big heart and generosity as large. Husband Laird Hamilton is the world-famous big wave surfer, who at 53 defies age and gravity, riding massive walls of water for a living and inventing new water sports for the rest of us to enjoy. He is recognized as the creator of Stand Up Paddleboarding. His rock hard physique and hunky good looks are hard to ignore, along with an engaging stream of dialogue that questions many common assumptions on health and fitness, while offering alternative ways of thinking with the latest discoveries in human performance.

We take a look at the vital role Pepijn Lijnders – the Reds’ first-team development coach – plays, as the club aim to promote talent from their academy to the first team.

Ever since the publication of Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline, 25 years ago, companies have sought to become “learning organizations” that continually transform themselves. In our era of digital disruption, this goal is more important than ever. But even the best companies still struggle to make real progress in this area.

One problem is that they’ve been focused on the wrong thing. The problem isn’t learning: it’s unlearning. In every aspect of business, we are operating with mental models that have grown outdated or obsolete, from strategy to marketing to organization to leadership. To embrace the new logic of value creation, we have to unlearn the old one.

Unlearning is not about forgetting. It’s about the ability to choose an alternative mental model or paradigm. When we learn, we add new skills or knowledge to what we already know. When we unlearn, we step outside the mental model in order to choose a different one.

… Fifteen assistant coaches from AFL clubs, including Michael Voss and Ryan O’Keefe, will descend on Canberra next week for a five-day development camp that will incorporate the annual World Class to World Best high performance conference, which will be attended by former All Blacks coach Graham Henry.

It’s the brainchild of AIS head of performance coaching and leadership Darlene Harrison.

She’s created a two-day course specifically tailored for the rigours of coaching in the AFL in conjunction with the AFL Coaches Association, then the coaches will spend a day with a military theme including a visit to the Australian War Memorial before joining the conference.

We can all recognise that feeling of muscle fatigue after taking a brisk walk, cycling, running or playing football.

Our ability to engage in physical activity for long periods of time is thanks to efficient energy production in the mitochondria — the small “powerhouses” in our muscles.

The more mitochondria we have, the longer we can exert ourselves. This connection has been known for over 40 years, and today it is widely accepted that regular endurance training increases the number of mitochondria in our muscles. This is why many endurance athletes have more than twice as many of these “powerhouses” as non-athletes.

With a new nanoparticle-based thermosensor, researchers have revealed minute variation in temperature along the muscle fibers of a beetle as it prepares for flight (ACS Sens. 2016, DOI: 10.1021/acssensors.6b00320). The work is one of the first to trace the internal temperature of a live animal on the scale of micrometers.

Tracking temperature at the microscale in cells and live organisms could help researchers answer fundamental questions in physiology and developmental biology, and even design more precise cancer therapeutics. In one approach toward this goal, scientists use temperature-sensitive fluorescent probes that can be visualized under a microscope. But there are challenges in applying this method in live samples. For one thing, naturally present biomolecules, such as certain coenzymes and other proteins, can generate their own fluorescence and create background noise. Additionally, when cells or organisms move under a fluorescence microscope, the focus changes, generating more noise.

Hospital patients could have their vital signs tracked without cumbersome wires and complex monitors once a new startup’s wearable monitoring patch hits the market.

VitalConnect is building a lightweight, disposable patch that can be affixed to a patient’s chest and wirelessly sends vital signs including heart rate, ECG read out and rate of breathing to a mobile app. The patch has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and provides clinical grade accuracy in monitoring, the company said.

“It is very small, comfortable and fully disposable,” Dr. Nersi Nazari, VitalConnect’s CEO, said on Wednesday during a demonstration at the Fortune Brainstorm Health conference. One patch can be worn for four to five days and can survive getting wet in the shower, he noted.

LipNet is doing lipreading using Machine Learning, aiming to help those who are hard of hearing and revolutionises speech recognition.

What are the most common/’costly’ football injuries?

Hamstring Injuries

Hamstring injuries are the most common injuries in football. The findings are consistent across studies. In fact, hamstring injury rates seem to be increasing in elite football.1 The long head of biceps femoris is most at risk, sustaining more than 80% of the hamstring injuries/strains. Approximately every eighth injury leading to time-loss in football is associated with hamstrings. Hamstring injury affects more than one fifth of elite players over a season. Additionally, hamstring injuries are one of the most ‘costly’ injuries in football in terms of time-loss. The median time-loss from a hamstring injury is about two weeks, but due to their high incidence they comprise approximately 14% of the total days lost from the sport.

Researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center found that regaining full function after an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury is more than just physical – it requires retraining the brain.

A new study, published in the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy, shows parts of the brain associated with leg movement lagged during recovery from an ACL injury. Through comparing brain scans, researchers could see the differences in brain activity in healthy adults, versus those recovering from ACL injuries, when extending and flexing the knee.

“The brain fundamentally changed in how it processes information from an injured knee,” said Dustin Grooms, a researcher who conducted the study at Ohio State and is currently employed at Ohio University. “We think those changes play a big role in why people who recover from ACL injuries don’t trust their knees entirely and tend to move them differently.”