Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 3, 2017

… “Once you get to this level, you realize it’s bigger than talent, skill,” said Vaughn. “It’s mental. That’s what you always hear, ‘The game is 99% mental’ — but they never really went into detail of what that means. So I’m thinking, ‘OK, I need to know all the plays. I need to know who I’m guarding.’

“But now, I know — especially being so young — a lot of your life is predicated on your thoughts. How you think. Things you say to yourself.”

The 21-year-old guard concluded that making choices about his nutrition would fuel him and, ultimately, his career.

But changing the diet is hard.

…

Yet to make a player better, you need the right environment as well as the right individual. And in Pochettino, Davies has found the perfect sensei: a coach who recognises that while players perform on a Saturday, they develop during the rest of the week.

“He’s worked so hard to get to this moment,” Pochettino said. “He’s always been professional, and that is why the club are so proud of him.”

Under Pochettino’s relentless fitness regime, Davies has shed fat and added muscle. Tactically, he has adapted his game to the demands of the wing-back role, becoming more clinical in the final third, finishing chances as well as creating them.

Had Dejan Lovren not been bought as a direct replacement for Daniel Agger, he might have spent enough time in the Danish defender’s company to see the damage that can be done to a footballer’s career by not listening to one’s body. But they were team-mates for no more than a few weeks in 2014. Agger left the damaging high-intensity world of the Premier League behind him for what he hoped would be the easing down of his career at his hometown club Brondby.


Two years after leaving Anfield he retired, with this admission: “I have taken too much anti-inflammatories in my career. I know that full well and it sucks but I did stop it [in the end]. I am not gaining anything personally from saying this but I can only hope that other athletes do. It could be that others take a pill or two less.”
Liverpool’s Dejan Lovren ‘taking five pills before every game’ to ease pain
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They are words that Lovren should bear in mind when he is next holding five pills – the number he said he currently needs to get through Liverpool matches without discomfort.

Invited Session at ECSS MetropolisRuhr 2017 … “Individualisation in Recovery Science” Sleep and Recovery in Elite Athletes – A Good Example for Large Interindividual Variability

The decisive difference in performance is generally tiny in today’s competitive sports. Consequently, going to the limits of bearable training load is critical for success. However, such training “on the edge” is associated with the risk of accumulating fatigue. Therefore, monitoring of fatigue and recovery is an important aspect in the regular fine-tuning of training recommendations. During the last decades numerous fatigue markers have been reported, including a wide range of blood-borne parameters as well as psychological, autonomic and performance measures. Most of these parameters are justified by a significant main effect of fatigue and a clear physiological concept. However, accuracy and precision in the assessment of fatigue status in individual athletes is limited by large variability for all parameters available. This challenge may be addressed by individualizing cut-off values for single markers and / or joint consideration of several parameters. Individualized reference values increase diagnostic accuracy by eliminating between-subject variation, which is relevant for routine markers. Scores, non-linear multivariate classifiers and other forms of parameter combinations provide means to decrease the impact of fatigue-independent variation in single markers and gain information from parameter patterns. This lecture will present some approaches for personalized fatigue diagnostics including directions for future research.

Harvard and MIT researchers have developed smart tattoo ink capable of monitoring health by changing color to tell an athlete if she is dehydrated or a diabetic if his blood sugar rises.

The work, conducted by two postdoctoral fellows at Harvard Medical School and colleagues led by Katia Vega at MIT’s Media Lab, paired biosensitive inks developed at Harvard with traditional tattoo artistry as a way to overcome some of the limitations of current biomedical monitoring devices.

“We were thinking: New technologies, what is the next generation after wearables?” said Ali Yetisen, who is a Tosteson postdoctoral fellow at HMS and Massachusetts General Hospital. “And so we came up with the idea that we could incorporate biosensors in the skin.”

The Mavs spent last summer developing a new practice facility, and they spent this offseason giving their locker room a significant upgrade.

From pumping in clean oxygen casino-style to manipulating light to maximize the players’ circadian rhythm, the new locker room is a futuristic science experiment, one of the most technologically advanced in the NBA. “I really wanted to build it based on science,” owner Mark Cuban said.

Dallas hadn’t given the facility inside American Airlines Center a wholesale face lift since the arena opened 16 years ago. At the time, the Mavs’ home was renowned at the time because each player had a TV and PlayStation inside their locker. Over the years, though, players are taking body maintenance much more seriously in order to increase the length of their careers, so amenities like casino-style re-oxygenating air vents and facial recognition software that will send coaching notes and workout plans straight to players’ tablet upon entry mean a whole heck of a lot more than a video game console.

Can you hear me now? Runners aren’t a super chatty bunch—every breath counts—but this new earpiece technology could change the way we communicate with one another on the road or trail.

How does it work?

The Bonx Grip earpiece ($140) enables group communication with up to 10 users anywhere in the world. It uses Bluetooth technology on your phone, and the Bonx app taps into your cellular reception to connect everyone in the same chat room. Precise voice detection helps distinguish human voices from outdoor noises. And because the earpieces are meant for active users, its hand-free design is both shock-resistant and waterproof. A grip-like ear hook ensures it stays on your ear during the roughest activities.

… trava is trying to build a social network for the world’s most active athletes, so active employees are almost a necessity. The company, which was founded in 2009 and has raised around $70 million, has gained popularity with cyclists because it lets them track and then share data about their rides with other cyclists through Strava’s app. Strava has “tens of millions” of registered users, Quarles said, though it doesn’t share a monthly active users metric like larger social networks.

In May, Quarles came in from running business operations at Instagram to be the company’s new CEO — and to help Strava expand into more sports, classes and business models. (Instagram exec Kevin Weil is also on Strava’s board.) Users can post their activity data to the app today, but Strava is preparing to open it up so that users can post other things, too, like links or questions.

… We humans are time-keeping machines. And it seems we need regular sleeping and eating schedules to keep all of our clocks in sync.

Studies show that if we mess with the body’s natural sleep-wake cycle — say, by working an overnight shift, taking a trans-Aatlantic flight or staying up all night with a new baby or puppy — we pay the price.

Our blood pressure goes up, hunger hormones get thrown off and blood sugar control goes south.

Dr. Saurabh Mehta and his colleagues have been developing the NutriPhone – a mobile device-based diagnostic platform that can determine micronutrient concentrations by testing a blood sample from a finger prick, the results of which are then displayed on an app within a few minutes. When the NutriPhone is ready for market, it is envisioned to be an important tool for health care facilities and community health workers all over the world, including the most remote regions. Availability of this easy to use technology will enable accurate and inexpensive assessment of nutritional status at point-of-care in both home and field settings.

… “You can have three great guys in basketball and go win a championship. That just doesn’t happen in baseball. It’s much more of a developmental, more of an organizational challenge in baseball. If you’re a GM in basketball, not only do you know every player in the league, you might know their families. In baseball, it’s not uncommon to make a trade for a player you had never heard the name of until 30 minutes before.”

I thought of that conversation a few months ago while listening to an episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast “Revisionist History” about the weak-link concept.

The notion was floated in a book called “The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong” by Chris Anderson and David Sally. Basically, they found that in soccer, a team is really only as strong as its weakest link.

… In the beginning, digital-native tech companies (like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon — GAFA) created value from data essentially by applying advanced machine learning techniques to a few key problems (how to make ads relevant, recommendations effective, etc.). Their problems were technically fairly challenging, but the means to solve them was fairly simple: hire 50 PhDs and talented engineers, and you’re probably bound to succeed.

Traditional enterprises, on the contrary, have a murkier path to success because they have to transform and optimize existing products and services step-by-step, and their business problems are not only technically difficult, but also difficult to work with. As a consequence, these organizations need to adopt a more systemic approach, looking for productivity gains in the same way one looks for productivity gains in a factory.

It’s often suggested that a consequence of lack of managerial job security is a lack of opportunities for young players. After all, if a head coach is fearful of losing his job, why would he take on a perceived risk?

However, the evidence suggests that this isn’t the case. In the big 5 European leagues, managers who have been in their job longer do not tend to give more opportunities to under-23s. In some leagues, managers have actually given fewer opportunities to young players over time.

… A former player who thinks much like an “Ivy League GM” would offer the best of both worlds. He would know what it’s like to go through the grind of a 162-game schedule, and he’d also place a high value on objective analysis while showing a willingness to think outside the box.

I asked a cross section of players, coaches, managers, and front-office executives if they think such a trend is forthcoming.