Applied Sports Science newsletter – January 31, 2017

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for January 31, 2017

 

GALLERY: Sporting KC players put in gym session in Tucson

Sporting Kansas City from

Sporting KC’s 2017 preseason, presented by Children’s Mercy, resumed on Wednesday with the first gym session of the year. Head Fitness Coach put the team through an intense workout at Kino Sports Complex to build up their upper and lower body strength. Scroll through our gallery of images from the lift. [slide show]

 

The Use of RPE in Team Sports

SimpliFaster Blog, Troy Cole from

The RPE scale (rate of perceived effort) is a common tool used to assess training intensity in individuals as well as teams. RPE values give a reference point for an individual’s internal load which can be compared with others during a similar session. A team’s sport scientist and coaches can take this data to plan sessions with specific intensities and manipulate training loads to fit into microcyles. When working on a budget in a team setting, there are benefits and challenges when using RPE scales.

RPE: Training Intensity and Variety

The use of the RPE scale is growing in popularity in team sports because the data collection is easy and it accurately assesses the internal load placed on an athlete during a training session. When I started serving as Head Athletic Trainer and Director of Sports Science for the Wilmington Hammerheads, I had played eight years in the lower leagues of professional soccer.

 

Volt Athletics raises more cash to bolster ‘intelligent’ strength and conditioning app

GeekWire, Taylor Soper from

Volt Athletics is raising more cash to help fuel growth of its intelligent strength and conditioning platform.

The 5-year-old Seattle startup just reeled in an additional $770,000, pushing total funding to date to $3 million. The 16-person company will use the fresh cash to further develop its mobile app that prescribes sport-specific workouts based on an individual’s goals and a variety of other factors. The idea is to utilize the smartphone and algorithms to help high school, college, and professional athletes build strength and mitigate injury risk.

The company differentiates itself by focusing on innovating the delivery of training content and expertise, versus only tracking metrics and storing data. Clients include the U.S. National football team, University of Michigan, University of Nebraska, Clemson University, Red Bull Crashed Ice Team USA, Kenya 7s Rugby, the Denver Stampede professional rugby team, the Northamptonshire Steelbacks professional cricket team, and more.

 

mJS – a new approach to embedded scripting

Mongoose OS from

… welcome mJS – a new kid on the block, a new JavaScript engine. It takes a radically different approach:

  • mJS does NOT implement the whole language, but a limited subset.
  • mJS has NO standard library.
  • mJS has NO glue code.
  • That makes mJS fit into ~25k of flash space (!) and less than 1k of RAM (!!).

     

    The Rise of the Quantified Athlete: An Experiential Forum on the Future of Athletic Performance

    The Harvard Innovation Labs from

     

    The merging of humans and machines is happening now

    Wired UK, Arati Prabhakar from

    The merging of machine capability and human consciousness is already happening. Writing exclusively for WIRED, DARPA director Arati Prabhkar outlines the potential rewards we face in the future – and the risks we face

    Peter Sorger and Ben Gyori are brainstorming with a computer in a laboratory at Harvard Medical School. Their goal is to figure out why a powerful melanoma drug stops helping patients after a few months. But if their approach to human-computer collaboration is successful, it could generate a new approach to fundamentally understanding complexities that may change not only how cancer patients are treated, but also how innovation and discovery are pursued in countless other domains.

     

    Sport specialization increases injury risk for high school athletes, study finds

    The Washington Post, Jacob Bogage from

    High school athletes who specialize in a single sport are 70 percent more likely to suffer an injury during their playing season than those who play multiple sports, according to a study released late last month commissioned by the National Federation of High School Associations.

    Researchers from the University of Wisconsin measured the rate of specialization — meaning an athlete significantly sacrificed time with friends or family or participation in other sports — among 1,544 athletes in Wisconsin and tracked lower-extremity injuries. The study found athletes who specialized suffered those injuries “at significantly higher rates” than those who do not.

     

    Medical lightning: NFL’s secret recovery technique revealed

    All 22, Will Carroll from

    Every medical staff in the NFL is looking for a magic bullet. If there was a device that healed injuries faster or helped speed recovery, every team would have one. Well, Pulsed Energy isn’t a bullet, but in ways it seems like a superpower. And while it isn’t in every training room around the NFL, it’s becoming less and less of a secret. All22 was given exclusive access to explain this new treatment to you.

    We’ll see this technology — or at least the results — when the Super Bowl kicks off. The Atlanta Falcons are one of the teams that uses Pulsed Energy’s technology. Even when they head to Houston, they’ll have one of the portable units along, allowing them to keep using the modality on the likes of Julio Jones (sprained toe) and Alex Mack (sprained ankle) almost up to game time.

    This technology is not new, but like many medical technologies, teams don’t like to talk about it. Pulsed Energy has been around since 2002, when the San Francisco 49ers began using the machine. Even the Falcons have had the device several years, with one of the PER 2000 devices seen in use during the Falcons’ season on “Hard Knocks”. While the Falcons, like most teams, will not comment on medical matters like modalities, sources close to Jones indicate that he’s been using the electrical device to help his toe during his rehab.

     

    Glycogen Primer: What it is and What it Means For Your Performance

    TrainingPeaks, Sam Bassetti from

    You may have heard your riding buddies mumbling something about replacing glycogen stores while stuffing their face with a personal-sized pizza post ride. So what is glycogen and why is it important? First, it’s important to understand the relationship between carbohydrates, glucose and glycogen:

    Carbohydrates

    Carbohydrates can also be referred to as saccharides, and are a group of organic molecules that includes sugars, starches and cellulose (1). They can be made up of multiple saccharide molecules linked together (polysaccharides), two saccharide molecules (disaccharides) or a single saccharide molecule (monosaccharide).

     

    Bad sugar or bad journalism? An expert review of “The Case Against Sugar”.

    Stephan Guyenet from

    The Case Against Sugar is a journey through sugar history and science that argues the point that sugar is the principal cause of obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease, and many other common noncommunicable diseases. This differs from the prevailing view in the research and public health communities that obesity and noncommunicable disease are multi-factorial, with refined sugar playing a role among other things like excess calorie intake, physical inactivity, cigarette smoking, alcohol and illegal drug use, and various other diet and lifestyle factors. I side with the latter view. In case anyone is wondering, I’ve never had any contact with the sugar industry and I have no other relevant conflicts of interest.

    I’ll break the review into two parts, the first covering the historical aspects of the book, and the second covering its scientific aspects.

     

    Following the signs

    The Washington Post, Rick Maese from

    Everyone is a star on National Signing Day. A look back at 2007’s top recruits shows anything can happen from there.

     

    N.H.L. Goalies Face Growing Offense and Shrinking Pants

    The New York Times, Tal Pinchevsky from

    … Stopping the N.H.L.’s best players was challenging for the eight goalies invited to the Staples Center, where the Metropolitan Division won the tournament by defeating the Pacific Division, 4-3, in the final. But with an equipment change on the horizon and potentially more alterations in the offing, goaltenders may have an even greater transition to make in the coming months.

     

    The NFL’s Newest Mastermind Eyes the Throne

    The Ringer, Robert Mays from

    … Over the past 13 years, [Chris] Simms has watched every stop of Shanahan’s climb through the coaching ranks, from his hiring as Houston’s 28-year-old offensive coordinator (the youngest in the league at the time) in 2008 to his stint as the architect of Washington’s attack during Robert Griffin III’s rookie season in 2012. Shanahan has evolved with every experience, to the point that he now orchestrates a Falcons offense that’s lit up scoreboards all the way to the Super Bowl. “You have to learn from everything,” Shanahan says. “You have to learn from when you’re successful and when you’re not successful. This league is always changing. It’s always adjusting. And you always have to change.”

     

    What experts who met with NCAA say about changes to tourney selection process

    CBSSports.com, Matt Norlander from

    … I contacted everyone who was invited and got a response from all but one. (ESPN’s Ben Alamar has yet to respond to my emails. If he does reply, I will update this post with his thoughts.) I’ve edited and condensed some responses for clarity and brevity. I wanted to do this in an effort to give basketball fans, coaches and media an enhanced look at why these changes are taking place — and what disagreements surfaced during the meeting.

    For me, the most interesting ongoing dilemma: There’s a debate regarding how the NCAA would introduce a composite. It might not be six or seven accepted metrics tossed into a blender and accepted as one universal 1-351. There could be two well-defined matrix composites to draw from. The first would use only predictive metrics (KenPom, Sagarin, BPI), the other only results-oriented (RPI, KPI, ESPN’s Strength of Record). I’m also told the door is not closed on still looking at one or two other metrics (LRMC? Massey? Team Rankings?) to include in a composite.

     

    Where Predictive Modeling Goes Astray

    John Myles White from

    I recently reread Yarkoni and Westfall’s in-progress paper, “Choosing prediction over explanation in psychology: Lessons from machine learning”. I like this paper even more than I liked their previous paper, but I think a few notes of caution should be raised about the ways in which a transition to predictive modeling could create problems that psychologists are seldom trained to deal with.

    In particular, I think there are three main dangers one encounters when engaging in predictive modeling with the aim of gaining generalizable insights about the world.

    Danger 1: What kinds of predictions are needed?

     

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