Applied Sports Science newsletter – July 28, 2017

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for July 28, 2017

 

Will long hiatus help Novak Djokovic reinvent himself?

ESPN Tennis, Peter Bodo from

… “[Djokovic] may have seen what Fed did and thought, ‘OK, I can do that too,'” Brad Gilbert, an ESPN analyst, told ESPN.com. “I’m not sure it’s that easy. On the other hand, this isn’t some guy ranked No. 40 or 50. You look at his record and think anything is possible.”

Gilbert believes Djokovic’s decision probably was driven by the desire to avoid surgery on perhaps the most critical part of a tennis player’s anatomy, his racket arm. By taking a long break, Djokovic also will avoid the futile stop-and-start struggle that lesser players are forced to wage with injury. That can lead to a loss of confidence — as well as the operating theater.

 

Rebekah Wilson: Ex-GB Olympic bobsleigher says pressure led to self-harm

BBC Sport, Mark Roan from

A British Winter Olympic athlete has told how she self-harmed as she struggled to cope with the demands of elite competition.

Rebekah Wilson, a member of Team GB’s two-woman bobsleigh crew at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, told BBC Sport she would secretly cut – and even try to concuss – herself as the “intense pressure” of training took its toll.

Such were the problems she faced, she quit the sport after Sochi aged just 23, and spent the next 18 months receiving treatment at a specialist mental health hospital.

 

Borussia Dortmund’s Marco Reus hopes to hit full fitness in 2018

ESPN FC, Stephen Uersfeld from

Borussia Dortmund winger Marco Reus is determined to recover his full fitness in 2018 as he sets his sights on the World Cup.

Germany international Reus, 28, has suffered with a succession of injuries in recent years and is currently recovering from knee surgery after sustaining a partial tear of the anterior cruciate ligament during the DFB Pokal final in May.

He is set to miss a significant period at the start of the season but hopes to be at his best when the Bundesliga resumes after the winter break.

 

Rams receiver Cooper Kupp poised to be a starter

Los Angeles Times, Gary Klein from

He walked off the field after his final high school football game without a single college scholarship offer.

On Wednesday, Rams rookie receiver Cooper Kupp arrived at training camp at UC Irvine listed as a probable starter on the initial depth chart.

That’s how much Kupp apparently impressed coach Sean McVay after the Rams selected the record-setting Eastern Washington star in the third round of the NFL draft.

 

An Olympic Marathoner’s Take on the Perfect Running Stride

Runner's World, Sweat Science blog, Alex Hutchinson from

The latest addition to the long-running debate about optimal running form comes from a guy with some serious street (or rather, road) cred. Jared Ward, the statistics whiz from Brigham Young University who finished sixth in the Olympic marathon last summer, is co-author of a new paper about the relationship among running efficiency, stride length, and cadence.

The longstanding conventional wisdom among running researchers is that whatever stride length you naturally pick is probably the “best” one for you. (Cadence, which refers to the number of steps you take per minute, is determined by your stride length at any given speed. So talking about “changing stride length” and “changing cadence” is the same thing: you can’t change one without automatically changing the other.)

There are three caveats to that conventional wisdom. The first is how you define “best.” In this case, “best” means “most efficient.”

 

Canada Soccer Long-Term Player Development (LTPD) survey indicates principles are making a difference

Canada Soccer from

Since the adoption of the Long-Term Player Development (LTPD) model in 2008 when Canada Soccer launched Wellness to World Cup, LTPD principles have become commonplace in a majority of environments where young Canadians are playing the game. According to a recent survey of stakeholders responsible for grassroots development, including players, parents, coaches, referees and soccer administrators, more than 75% of people say they support the principles of LTPD.

“The survey confirms that there is an understanding in the community that Long-Term Player Development principles are vital to ensuring that our next generation of grassroots players have the best opportunity to development in nurturing, standards-based, age and stage appropriate training environments,” said Canada Soccer Director of Development Jason de Vos. “It is crucial that we continue to work to educate the whole soccer community across the country about the reasons behind, and benefits of LTPD.”

 

Why Urban Meyer won’t start training camp until a week after players report

CoachingSearch, Chris Vannini from

Ohio State reports to camp this week, but Urban Meyer says training camp won’t actually start for another week.

The ban on two-a-days has extended fall camp for a lot of schools, including into July. But Meyer is worried about pushing players too much, so he’s treating the first days of fall camp like more summer workouts.

“I wish we would’ve went two-a-days without contact,” Meyer said on the Big Ten Netwok. “I think we’re going to get 28 practices, but we’re starting Thursday. Now we’re into July. That’s almost five weeks of training camp. That’s too much.

 

How to Build Resilience in Midlife

The New York Times, Well blog, Tara Parker-Pope from

Much of the scientific research on resilience — our ability to bounce back from adversity — has focused on how to build resilience in children. But what about the grown-ups?

While resilience is an essential skill for healthy childhood development, science shows that adults also can take steps to boost resilience in middle age, which is often the time we need it most. Midlife can bring all kinds of stressors, including divorce, the death of a parent, career setbacks and retirement worries, yet many of us don’t build the coping skills we need to meet these challenges.

The good news is that some of the qualities of middle age — a better ability to regulate emotions, perspective gained from life experiences and concern for future generations — may give older people an advantage over the young when it comes to developing resilience, said Adam Grant, a management and psychology professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

 

When is stress good for you?

Aeon, Bruce McEwen from

Stress pervades our lives. We become anxious when we hear of violence, chaos or discord. And, in our relatively secure world, the pace of life and its demands often lead us to feel that there is too much to do in too little time. This disrupts our natural biological rhythms and encourages unhealthy behaviours, such as eating too much of the wrong things, neglecting exercise and missing out on sleep.

Racial and ethnic discrimination, along with lack of educational opportunities and economic advancement take their toll on a large segment of the population in the United States. Incarceration is the rule rather than the exception for some of the most vulnerable. Adverse experiences in infancy and childhood, including poverty, leave a lifelong imprint on the brain and body, and undermine long-term health, increasing the incidence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression, substance abuse, anti-social behaviour and dementia. How does all of this stress ‘get under our skin’? What does it do to our brains and our bodies? What can we do about it? And is stress so multifaceted and pervasive that we could have trouble controlling it at all?

 

The relationship between movement speed and duration during soccer matches

PLOS One; Kai Roecker et al. from

The relationship between the time duration of movement (t(dur)) and related maximum possible power output has been studied and modeled under many conditions. Inspired by the so-called power profiles known for discontinuous endurance sports like cycling, and the critical power concept of Monod and Scherrer, the aim of this study was to evaluate the numerical characteristics of the function between maximum horizontal movement velocity (HSpeed) and t(dur) in soccer. To evaluate this relationship, GPS data from 38 healthy soccer players and 82 game participations (≥30 min active playtime) were used to select maximum HSpeed for 21 distinct t(dur) values (between 0.3 s and 2,700 s) based on moving medians with an incremental t(dur) window-size. As a result, the relationship between HSpeed and Log(t(dur)) appeared reproducibly as a sigmoidal decay function, and could be fitted to a five-parameter equation with upper and lower asymptotes, and an inflection point, power and decrease rate. Thus, the first three parameters described individual characteristics if evaluated using mixed-model analysis. This study shows for the first time the general numerical relationship between t(dur) and HSpeed in soccer games. In contrast to former descriptions that have evaluated speed against power, HSpeed against t(dur) always yields a sigmoidal shape with a new upper asymptote. The evaluated curve fit potentially describes the maximum moving speed of individual players during the game, and allows for concise interpretations of the functional state of team sports athletes.

 

Microsoft scrambles to become player in new game of sports analytics

The Seattle Times, Matt Day from

… Steve Fox, the Microsoft manager who led the development of the software, said the company is increasingly trying to grow by building programs that cater to specific industries, rather than one-size-fits -all products.

The Sports Performance Platform’s data visualizations are based on Microsoft’s Power BI data-analytics tool, and, behind the scenes, the data housed by the system lives in the Azure cloud-computing platform. It was built over the course of 18 months by a seven-person team. Another 10 contributed a portion of their time through Microsoft’s Garage experimental software program.

 

Giants implementing new technology to aid camp practices

247Sports, Dan Schneier from

The New York Giants and head coach Ben McAdoo will debut some new technology when the team holds their first training camp practice this Friday.

In year one, McAdoo revamped the Giants’ strength and conditioning program under Aaron Wellman, he introduced GPS systems to help monitor and prevent injuries, and he even tried his hand with drones at practice. Now, in year two, McAdoo is stepping up his game again.

McAdoo and the Giants will debut life-sized screens that will help aid walkthroughs and game film analysis with virtual reality.

 

Change of Mind

NCAA.org, Tony Rehagen from

… as director of the Institute to Promote Athlete Health & Wellness at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, [David] Wyrick is watching that culture of silence slowly begin to thaw. And along the way, he has gathered these tips for athletics departments looking to start that conversation.

Talk about it.

Tell your team about services available on campus. Invite an outside educator to do a presentation on mental health. Promote a culture of care-seeking. The coach sets the team’s culture, and talking openly about mental health frees students to do the same.

 

No Superior Adaptations to Carbohydrate Periodization in Elite Endurance Athletes. – PubMed – NCBI

Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise journal from

PURPOSE:

The present study investigated the effects of periodic CHO restriction on endurance performance and metabolic markers in elite endurance athletes.
METHODS:

Twenty-six male elite endurance athletes (VO2max: 65.0 ml O2[BULLET OPERATOR]kg[BULLET OPERATOR]min) completed 4 weeks of regular endurance training, while matched and randomized into two groups training with (Low) or without (High) carbohydrate (CHO) manipulation three days a week. The CHO manipulation days consisted of a 1-hr high intensity bike session in the morning, recovery for 7 hrs while consuming isocaloric diets containing either high CHO (414±2.4 g) or low CHO (79.5±1.0 g), and a 2-hr moderate bike session in the afternoon with or without CHO. VO2max, maximal fat oxidation and power output during a 30-min time trial (TT) were determined before and after the training period. The TT was undertaken after 90 mins of intermittent exercise with CHO provision before the training period and both CHO and placebo after the training period. Muscle biopsies were analyzed for glycogen, citrate synthase (CS) and β-hydroxyacyl-coenzyme A dehydrogenase (HAD) activity, carnitine palmitoyltransferase (CPT1b) and phosphorylated acetyl-CoA carboxylase (pACC).
RESULTS:

The training effects were similar in both groups for all parameters. On average, VO2max and power output during the 30-min TT increased by 5 ± 1% (P<0.05) and TT performance was similar after CHO and placebo during the preload phase. Training promoted overall increases in glycogen content (18 ± 5%), CS activity (11 ± 5%) and pACC (38 ± 19%) (P<0.05) with no differences between groups. HAD activity and CPT1b protein content remained unchanged. CONCLUSION:

Superimposing periodic CHO restriction to 4 weeks of regular endurance training had no superior effects on performance and muscle adaptations in elite endurance athletes.

 

Factors associated with using research evidence in national sport organisations: Journal of Sports Sciences: Vol 0, No 0

Journal of Sports Sciences from

The purpose of this study was to explore factors associated with the use of research evidence in Canadian National Sport Organisations (NSOs). Data were collected via individual semi-structured interviews with 21 representatives from Canadian NSOs. A qualitative description approach was used. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and subjected to an inductive-to-deductive thematic analysis. A research implementation framework (Rycroft-Malone, 2004) was used to organise inductively derived themes into the higher-order categories of evidence (use of evidence, disconnection between research and practice), context (lack of capacity, organisational structure), and facilitation (personal connections with researchers and sport scientists, formal meetings with stakeholders). Overall, NSO representatives did not have a clear understanding of evidence and lacked capacity to access and translate research. However, some context factors, along with internal and external facilitators, were in place and could be used to enhance research implementation.

 

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