Applied Sports Science newsletter – September 26, 2017

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for September 26, 2017

 

One of Jason Witten’s secrets is in parking lot when he arrives daily

ESPN NFL, Todd Archer from

… “My car never pulls in that facility early in the morning or leaves late at night and their cars aren’t there,” Witten said.

“I know they’re not going to try to feed me stuff that’s not true or sell me on a new pitch. People say, ‘Where do you go train?’ I train here. ‘Who do you look to help you play?’ These are my guys. I have a lot confidence in that. It’s what they’ve done in their careers and their experience, but more than that, I know they’re going to be honest with me and come up with the best plan for me.”

For years, the Cowboys attempted to get him to take time off during organized team activities, minicamp and training camp. He finally relented this offseason, not practicing three straight days. Coach Jason Garrett’s message did not change from when they first broached the idea years ago.

 

Has Almiron been used too much by Atlanta United?

AJC.com, Atlanta soccer news, Doug Roberson from

… Almiron, Josef Martinez, Hector Villalba and Yamil Asad all played full games in the 7-0 blowout of New England. That’s one example of Martino leaving the players in deep into games. Payson Schwin noted on mlssoccer.com that “starting with a game against D.C. United on June 21, he’s (Almiron) only been substituted twice: once in the 89th minute in Atlanta’s 3-0 defeat of FC Dallas on Sept. 10, and again in the 79th minute in a 4-0 win over the LA Galaxy last Wednesday.”

Almiron has played the third-most league minutes (2,365) of any Atlanta United player this season. Just Michael Parkhurst and Leandro Gonzalez Pirez have played more, but the minutes logged at centerback are different than what Almiron is asked to do as an attacking midfielder.

 

The Early Bird Catches the Worm? Probably Not, Says Science on School Start Times

RAND, Marco Hafner and Wendy M. Troxel from

… Due to these biological changes, waking a teenager at 6 a.m. is the biological equivalent of waking an adult up at 4 a.m., a wake-up time that many adults would struggle with, even if it was part of their job.

Several recent studies also show that insufficient sleep among teenagers can lead to poor physical and mental health, behavioral problems, suicidal thoughts and attempts, and attention and concentration problems.

Our own study for the RAND Corporation shows that later school start times nationally could also lead to significant financial gains for the U.S. economy—around $140 billion in the space of 15 years.

 

Are Physical Limits All in Our Heads?

The New York Times, Alex Hutchinson from

… It’s a truth universally acknowledged in the sporting world that the toughest obstacles to surmount are those we erect in our own minds. A barrier like the four-minute mile, we’re told, is impregnable — until someone like Roger Bannister shows, as he did in 1954, that it can be breached, and then everyone else follows. Kimetto’s world record, having been bested by such a large (though unofficial) margin, has lost much of its mental force. So will it, as the bookies seem to anticipate, be swept aside with ease?

To me, the bout in Berlin seems like not just a clash of three heavyweights but a real-life test of the “mental barriers” theory of human endeavor. Faith in the primacy of mind over body is a trope as eagerly embraced in board rooms as in locker rooms and Nike commercials — and it’s a message we’ve lapped up, without much evidence, for centuries.

 

Re-imagining the STEM Pipeline through Community Based Sports Programs

Medium, John Drazan from

It may sound strange coming from a faculty member at an engineering university, but I didn’t really enjoy science or math when I was a kid. I was did well in classes because I was a “good” student, however STEM topics (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) didn’t seem to have any relevance to my life. It wasn’t until I was introduced to sport science that I was interested in STEM and decided to study physics in college. As a white male from a suburban household with high parental expectations, if I hadn’t pursued a STEM career, I still would have attended college and gotten a job. Unfortunately, graduation rates in urban schools indicate that high school completion is a challenge, let alone studying STEM in college. This disconnect between the students and academics is not just depriving our society of future engineers, but it is preventing social mobility for the most disadvantaged in society.

One of the most difficult, intractable issues with the present STEM pipeline is its inability to access the students who are most in need of STEM engagement.

 

Don’t teach students the hard way first

David Robinson, Variance Explained blog from

… I talk to people about teaching a lot, and that phrase keeps popping up: “I teach them X just to show them how much easier Y is”. It’s a trap- a trap I’ve fallen into before when teaching, and one that I’d like to warn others against.

 

What an Air Force Academy experiment teaches us about how to help all students shine

The Washington Post, Katherine L. Milkman from

… Leading scholars are exploring when and how peer effects can be leveraged to do just that. And this objective led to a bold experiment a few years ago at the U.S. Air Force Academy. The experiment allocated half of students to squadrons using the usual lottery method, and half using an optimized method intended to leverage peer influence to maximize the GPAs of students in the bottom third of the predicted grade distribution. Specifically, this “optimized” sorting method placed low ability students in squadrons with a large proportion of peers who received high verbal SAT scores, and middle-ability students were sorted into squadrons together.

It did not turn out as hoped, but it taught social scientists a lot.

Interestingly, the low-SAT students actually performed worse when they were surrounded by high-SAT score peers. Within these supposedly optimally designed squadrons, low-performing students avoided interacting with brainy cadets and instead formed smaller homogenous cliques, such that their peers were bad, rather than good, role models.

 

BYU-developed helmet smartfoam signals potential concussions in real time

Brigham Young University, BYU News from

… [Jake] Merrell and others have developed and tested a nano composite smartfoam that can be placed inside a football helmet (and pads) to more accurately test the impact and power of hits.

The foam measures the impact of a hit via electrical signals. The data is collected in real time and sent wirelessly to the tablet or device of a coach or trainer on the sidelines. A coach can know within seconds how hard a player has been hit and whether or not they should be concerned about a concussion.

“The standard measurement systems on the market today directly measure the acceleration, but just measuring the acceleration is not enough and can even be erroneous,” Merrell said. “Our XOnano smartfoam sensors measure much more than just acceleration, which we see as a vital key to better diagnose head injuries.”

 

Mount Sinai & Fit3D: Partnership & New Body Fat Algorithm

Fit3D from

… We are very proud to announce that Fit3D and the Health Data and Design Innovation Center (HD2i) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (“MSSM”) have begun a relationship to further understand how body shape affects overall health and wellness. Through this partnership, Fit3D, HD2i, and MSSM will revolutionize how we evaluate our health and wellness through body shape, IE. where mass sets within our bodies, as opposed to other more antiquated metrics like BMI and total body fat percentage, which do not generally differentiate between visceral and subcutaneous fat.

While we have a very audacious goal, our first task was to improve the Fit3D body fat algorithm because that is what is still used today as we transition to the future, and we are proud to announce the new body fat algorithm will be launched into Fit3D platform on September 21, 2017. We will focus the remainder of this post on how MSSM and Fit3D arrived at Fit3D’s v4.0 body fat algorithm and some of the more technical results.

 

How Gut Bacteria Can “Hijack” Your Intestinal Circadian Rhythm, Causing Weight Gain

Chronobiology.com from

… Like all organ systems, our GI tract has a distinctive circadian rhythm. This rhythm is partially set by external factors, especially what times we eat. This, in turn, affects gut bacteria. Bacteria, like humans, partially set their internal clocks by what times they are most active. When we eat, they also must “eat.”

Changing our mealtimes or our sleep-wake cycles can dramatically alter the circadian rhythms of bacteria in our GI tract. Some bacteria flourish under these changes and can quickly become the predominant bacteria in our intestines when we rapidly change our sleep-wake cycles.

 

Big Read: Coyotes GM John Chayka has the drive to bring winning hockey to the desert

Sportsnet.ca, Ryan Dixon from

More than just an analytics whiz kid, Arizona Coyotes GM John Chayka has the drive to bring winning hockey to the desert.

 

NBA Hackathon serves as combine for front office hopefuls

SI.com, NBA, Jake Fischer from

The NBA’s version spawned from the league office’s own analytics department. Staffers kick around theoretical questions just like buddies at a bar. At what distance behind the three-point line does a triple actually become less valuable than a two-pointer? How can you truly measure a player’s pick-and-roll IQ? So, why not gauge those discussions with the NBA’s most intelligent observers? “The idea of leveraging that fan base, and also giving them an opportunity and a platform to display their work in front of teams and league office personnel, there was a lot of untapped potential out there,” says Jason Rosenfeld, the NBA’s director of basketball analytics.

That’s the key: 20 teams are sending a total of 39 representatives to this year’s competition, essentially morphing a brainteaser into the NBA Draft Combine for statisticians, engineers and developers. Only 207 applicants were accepted. “We vet these competitors pretty darn carefully,” Rosenfeld says—therefore only introducing the most talented crop of students to the league’s front office personnel.

 

For How Long Can Hitters Keep Pace?

FanGraphs Baseball, Travis Sawchik from

In spring of 2016, during batting practice before a game, I was speaking with a front-office executive. Our conversation had turned to the increasing velocity in the sport. The official wondered aloud when the trend would subside or, if it were to continue increasing, at what point hitters would really struggle to react. Or, he added, were hitters somehow adapting?

There has to be some limit. After all, if a pitcher could reach Mach 1 with his fastball, it would be impossible for a batter to react. But what is that limit?

 

Even college baseball teams are now embracing the big data approach

CBSSports.com, R.J. Anderson from

… “What you’re seeing is just technology playing a bigger role in baseball,” said Iowa’s first-year pitching coach Desi Druschel, who had spent the previous three years as the college’s director of baseball operations. Druschel was responsible for planning the travel and the meals — boring if necessary stuff like that — but his job had a bigger scope than secretary. He leveraged his head-coaching experience at smaller programs to serve in a quality assurance role — whether it was overseeing the instruction given to players, or identifying the gadgets they should buy.

The Hawkeyes have transitioned from a non-entity to one of the best programs in the Big Ten conference since head coach Rick Heller took over in 2013. Iowa has won 30-plus games in each of Heller’s four seasons, that after winning 30 in just two of the previous 14 years. Last spring, the Hawkeyes won their first conference tournament in school history, and in August they became the first American representative to win a medal in the World University Games.

 

Turf Type and NFL Injuries: Part II

Football Outsiders, Zachary O. Binney from

In the first part of this series, last week, we found that, on average, natural grass has lower injury rates than artificial turf, particularly for knee injuries. However, the turf type itself isn’t the whole story: how turf is maintained can play a big part in how it affects injuries. With that in mind we analyzed injury rates by stadium from 2012 to 2015, looking only at injuries to visiting teams to remove any impacts of the home roster and training staff. We also limited the 49ers to Levi’s Stadium, excluded Buffalo’s two games in Toronto in 2012 and 2013, and ignored the Vikings because of the Metrodome’s roof collapse at the end of 2013. The Giants and Jets are combined into the same stadium (“NYC”), and neither one is a visitor when they play there. Results are provided for the Georgia Dome in Atlanta even though the Falcons now play in the Mercedes-Benz Dome since they did not change turf manufacturers and some of the grounds crew likely remains the same. For stadiums that switched turfs during the study period (Cincinnati, Houston, and the NYC stadium), the turf that was there the longest is used below — in all cases this was three out of four seasons with the indicated turf. Only Houston switched from grass to artificial — more on that below.

 

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