Applied Sports Science newsletter – December 29, 2017

The third overall pick in 2013, Jordan was a classic bust—quickly falling into complacency and alcohol and drug abuse that, compounded by injury, cost him more than two full seasons. Through a torturous emotional and physical recovery program, and the help of committed friends, he returned this year with the Seahawks, and has made a cautiously hopeful mark over the past month

For many, this time of year means sledding, santa, ugly sweater parties and most notably, some time off from work. But for pro tennis players, the opposite is true – it’s off-season training time. Some players are gearing up for the year’s first major, the Aus Open, while other less ranked players are prepping for the Future and Challenger circuits – which are also gaining steam come the first week of January.

This means that November and December are busy training months for tennis players. For most, it’s the only true ‘off-season’ a player gets (not including various training blocks throughout the remainder of the year). But what does (and should) an off-season training program for tennis look like? There are many schools of thought on this topic. One commonality, however, that I’ve encountered over the years (and that many pro coaching colleagues of mine agree on) is that this time of year is about getting healthy and fit. In other words, physical training takes priority while tennis practice takes a bit of a back seat.

This is a 2-part post. In today’s article, we’ll take a brief look at the most important physical qualities a player should focus on during the off-season and how to best train them.

In the US, sports from football (soccer in the US) to basketball and baseball to volleyball have seen a sharp decline in the number of children playing on a regular basis.

The shift away from these and other sports has coincided with warnings that only one in three children is physically active every day, and one in five is obese.

And it’s not just the US – concerns about the sedentary habits of youth are heard in countries all over the world.

But could it be that some children have been driven away from sport by adults forgetting it’s all supposed to be fun?

A lumber company, a pretzel factory and a dairy donated $30 each, roughly $525 adjusted for inflation, in 1938 to sponsor the first three teams of Little League baseball. With the Little League World Series now a staple of summer, the NBA is set to launch a youth championship tournament of its own and some youth sports advocates have concerns.

The Jr. NBA World Championship, as reported Monday by The Post’s Tim Bontemps, will draw teams of 13- and 14-year-olds from the United States and countries around the world for a nationally televised playoff at Disney World near Orlando each August. One immediate advantage the league sees: the event’s utility in cultivating young fans.

“We have an appeal that’s clearly unique in the youth basketball space,” David Krichavsky, the league’s vice president of youth basketball development, said in a phone interview. “We don’t shy away from that. We certainly want kids to become fans of our players, of our teams of the NBA, but that hasn’t been the driving force.”

… After opening its doors in Senegal only seven months ago, the NBA Academy Africa — one of six across the world that provides teenagers with NBA-level coaching, facilities and competition, while also stressing educational development — took its first trip ever to Europe for a series of competitive games intended to continue the development process of the 14 players on its roster, hailing from Senegal, Nigeria, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Benin and Central African Republic.

There were some extreme highs — wins over Paris Levallois’ junior team in France and a shocking upset of European youth basketball powerhouse Red Star Belgrade, which is the team that went on to comfortably win the championship game of the Get Better Academy Invitational.

But the long path ahead of the Academies and African basketball also was clear — exemplified by double-digit leads squandered, point-blank layups missed, defensive and boxout assignments blown, a huge number of turnovers and missed 3-pointers — as this group of teenagers, ranging from 14 to 19 years old, continue their quest to develop into professional athletes and represent their countries and continent in U.S. colleges, European basketball leagues and maybe one day, the NBA.

The classic nightmare of suddenly realizing you’re naked in public could soon get a futuristic twist: it might involve the horror of losing not just your modesty but also your pass codes. Scientists recently created magnetic garments that they say can store data, automatically unlock doors or control a nearby smartphone with gestures.

The concept of interactive “smart clothing” has drawn attention in the past couple of years. For example, Google and Levi’s created a touch-sensitive denim jacket that can operate a smartphone. This and other smart garments are made with conductive thread and usually require an attached electronic device.

To eliminate the need for such peripher­al gear, researchers at the University of Washington recently took advantage of what they say is a previously untapped property of conductive thread: its ability to be magnetized. Using magnetic instead of electric properties of the thread “may seem like a small difference, but it’s what makes this work interesting and exciting,” says Chris Harrison, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, who was not part of the research. The new technique allowed the researchers to do something they say is unique among wearables: turn them into storage devices.

… As someone who loves programming, it’s bittersweet to admit that I’ve reached a point in my life where my rate of learning new forms of programming has ground to a halt. Nowadays, coding for me involves using my prior skills and making incremental advances on my existing legacy codebases rather than learning brand-new technologies. In my current career as a full-time research manager for my lab, my main goal is to facilitate my graduate students’ learning and execution of programming-related ideas. My own learning must take a backseat for now. At the end of this article, I’ll reflect on how I’m trying hard to remain technically-relevant even though I no longer have the time (or the career incentive) to write large amounts of code. OK, here we go!!!

Although the University of Colorado Buffaloes aren’t going to a college-football bowl game in 2017-2018, thanks to a mediocre 5-7 record, nine of its fellow members in the Pac-12 conference qualified, with eight of those contests taking place on or after December 26. If the Buffs fall short again next year, though, some of its staffers will still be busy, because CU Boulder has been chosen to coordinate an ambitious research project into traumatic brain injury among student athletes, including those who slam heads on the gridiron, with one of the main tools being EYE-SYNC, a cutting-edge device designed to diagnose concussions by way of eye movement.

“It’s essentially a VR headset that’s got infrared cameras that will track the movement of the eye,” says Matt McQueen, an associate professor of integrative physiology at CU who’s been chosen to serve as one of the study’s main research investigators. “It’s a more objective measure than just asking student athletes questions.”

Research has shown that high levels of stress and stress responsivity can increase the risk of injuries. However, most of the research that has supported this notion has focused on between-person relationships, ignoring the relationships at the within-person level. As a result, the objective of this study was to investigate if within-person changes in perceived stress symptoms over a one-month time period could predict injury rates during the subsequent three months. A prospective design with two measurement points (Time 1 – at the beginning of the season and Time 2 – one month into the season) was utilized. A total of 121 competitive soccer players (85 males and 36 females; Mage = 18.39, SD = 3.08) from Sweden and the United States completed the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (KPDS) and a demographic sheet at Time 1. The KPDS was also completed at Time 2 and all acute injuries that occurred during the subsequent three-month period were recorded. A Bayesian latent change scores model was used to determine if within-person changes in stress symptoms could predict the risk of injury. Results revealed that there was a credible positive effect of changes in stress symptoms on injury rates, indicating that an increase in reported stress symptoms was related to an increased risk for injury. This finding highlights the importance of creating caring and supportive sporting environments and relationships and teaching stress management techniques, especially during the earlier portion of competitive seasons, to possibly reduce the occurrence of injuries.

A talented team of researchers led by Scott Rodeo, M.D., and Christopher Mendias, Ph.D. at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York has been awarded the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF) Clinical Research Grant in Cellular Therapy in honor of James Urbaniak, M.D. in collaboration with National Stem Cell Foundation (NSCF).

The $800,000 grant—the largest in OREF history—will fund a clinical trial to determine if the use of stem cell therapy can improve outcomes for patients who suffer rotator cuff tears.

Despite the risks of head injuries, the University of Georgia and many top-tier athletic programs still fail to systematically track by sport the concussions their athletes sustain, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution survey of 62 programs found.

The AJC’s analysis of NCAA Division I, II and III schools found that about 1 in 6 athletic programs do not count student-athlete concussions by sport, even though such data collection could lead to better safety protocols for their athletes.

The NCAA has run a program to report and track concussions and all other student athlete injuries for research purposes since 1982 — but there is no requirement that member schools report to it.

As Arizona State University continues to create partnerships around the world, one Sun Devils coach is looking to baseball-crazed Japan for potential opportunities.

Tracy Smith, who has been the head baseball coach at ASU since 2014, traveled to Japan for a week earlier this month to forge ties with university and sports counterparts there.

“I wanted to learn about the baseball culture and, from a program standpoint, whether we could we learn anything about the future of recruitment. And on a much broader scale, I wanted to take this opportunity to be an ambassador for ASU,” Smith said.

Becky Hammon was only the beginning. Over the past few years, women have slowly moved into positions of power within NBA front offices. There’s still a ways to go, but for the female decision-makers already in place, the possibility that they could run a franchise themselves isn’t just a theory anymore.

… While Clement, who has been fired after less than a year in the job, is the public face of the club, recruitment was a collective effort, with owners Steve Kaplan and Jason Levien, along with Clement and chairman Huw Jenkins, forming a transfer committee.

Before targets were presented to the committee, they went through a final filter of Dan Altman, who has been the club’s Senior Adviser for Football Operations since December 2016.

Speaking to a Supporters Trust fans’ forum in April, Kaplan explained: “The analytics are not a replacement for what Paul Clement can bring to the club. He is integrally involved.

It comes with great pleasure and excitement for us to announce that Baseball Development Group has brought on Mike Sonne, PhD, as our Research Director. A major reason for founding BDG was to help grow the game of baseball by answering some of the infinite number of unknowns. With all of the advances in rehabilitation, medicine, technology, & sports science, MLB injury rates are still rising, billions of dollars continue to be lost to the disabled list, and the problem is probably worse in the amateur ranks. One of our goals in 2018 is to initiate a research program that will help chip away at this issue. We want to do our part in the baseball community to push the game forwards and bringing Mike on to help direct us is a giant step towards that!