Applied Sports Science newsletter – January 17, 2018

… the evidence also suggests that Dunn, who is nearly 24, will face an uphill battle against inefficiency. His turnover numbers are an improvement over last year, proportionally speaking, but still a bit worrisome considering that Dunn isn’t exactly passing his teammates open. To make matters worse: There are 90 players in the league this season to average as many points per game (13.6) as Dunn has this season. Among them, he ranks 88th in true shooting. Dunn is neither a finisher nor much of a shooter, and at this stage his handle isn’t stable enough to help draw fouls reliably.

This is where the age curve starts to hedge against the optimism surrounding Dunn’s progress. Consider that Dunn, in his second season, is almost the exact same age as Elfrid Payton, now in his fourth. The two have nearly identical stat lines—save that Payton is actually a better shooter. There’s something to be said for years of practical, on-the-job experience, yet Dunn is quickly approaching the age at which most players’ games begin to set. It’s likely that we’re already seeing a rough outline of the player Dunn will ultimately be.

Eliud Kipchoge is a Kenyan long distance runner, and the 2016 Olympic marathon gold medallist. He has been described as “the greatest marathoner of the modern era”.

… A native of Mexia, Texas, Wylie served an assistant strength and conditioning coach with the Dallas Cowboys for four years (1999-02) under former OU strength and conditioning coach Joe Juraszek, helping rehabilitate injured players. In addition to working with the Cowboys, Wylie also spent the spring seasons heading the strength and conditioning program for the Dallas Desperados arena football team.

“There’s nobody in the business I respect more than Bennie Wylie,” said Riley, “and I knew that if I ever had a strength and conditioning opening that I’d love to reunite with him. We had a lot of years together at Texas Tech, and during that time I was able to watch his work and see the impact he had on our players both physically and on their lives overall.

There’s a danger that this article is going feel a bit like a seven-step illustrated guide (or, say, a TED Talk) on how to tie your shoes, but please stick with me. There’s an important message here that’s more subtle than the headline suggests, and it’s something you can fix.

In a recent issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, a team of researchers took aim at one of the oldest and most timeworn questions in sports science: What factors predict who will suffer a training injury? A zillion studies have already tackled this question, but what makes this one different is that it zoomed out to look at a broader-than-usual array of risk factors, including things like self-esteem, stress, nutrition, and sleep.

Automation and technological advances are transforming the future of work. But it is hard to work out exactly how to transform education and training programmes to match the needs of that future workplace.

Soft skills such as communication, teamwork and problem solving, however, are likely to be highly valued by employers of the future.

In the first study of its kind, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has released a report which examines students’ ability to work in groups to solve problems. It ranks the findings by both nationality and gender, with Singaporean girls coming top of the class.

… The key finding is that the participants in the to-do list condition fell asleep more quickly. They took about 15 minutes to fall asleep, on average, compared with 25 minutes for those in the “jobs already done” condition. Moreover, among those in the to-do list group, the more thorough and specific their list, the more quickly they fell asleep, which would seem to support a kind of off-loading explanation. Another interpretation is that busier people, who had more to write about, tended to fall asleep more quickly. But this is undermined by the fact that among the jobs-done group, those who wrote in more detail tended to take longer to fall asleep.

“Rather than journal about the day’s completed tasks or process tomorrow’s to-do list in one’s mind, the current experiment suggests that individuals spend five minutes near bedtime thoroughly writing a to-do list,” the researchers said.

Nokia’s newest health product is a new take on an already-done product.

The Finnish company just announced a gadget at CES called Nokia Sleep, which is described as an “advanced sensor” built into a mattress pad. The mattress pad, which is Wi-Fi connected, slides under your mattress and is supposed to record your sleep patterns. That data is then synced to Nokia’s Health Mate app, where it’s analyzed and contributes to a “sleep score.” In addition to monitoring sleep cycles, Nokia says the sleep sensor will also track snoring patterns.

Two years ago, at CES 2016, we found a pair of smart shoes that could be “laced” by simply tapping a virtual button on a smartphone app. Now, the company behind those sneakers, Zhor Tech, has brought its latest creation to CES 2018: a connected shoe insole. The device is loaded with sensors that count your steps, detect your fatigue levels, analyze your posture and detect any rough vibrations around you. Zhor Tech says that its Safety insole was designed specifically for people who work in construction and other field jobs.

If someone slips, for instance, the insole can detect that and alert a manager or supervisor. Of course, the whole system comes together in an app, where users can view detailed, real-time information and share it with other people. The same technology can be built into a shoe’s midsole, according to Zhor Tech, but right now there are only plans to sell the insole to companies that make safety-conscious footwear. We’re told it will ship in September for $149.

… Scientists and federal regulators say that stories like Rodolf’s illustrate something they are increasingly worried about. As evidence of stem cell therapy’s potential grows, so does confusion over what this emerging medicine can and can’t do. And with few consumer protections in place, unscrupulous doctors are exploiting that confusion for profit. Across the country, clinics like the one Rodolf went to are promoting stem cell therapies for a long list of conditions, including joint injuries, sexual dysfunction, COPD, lupus, and diabetes. These treatments are rarely covered by insurance, and they can cost thousands of dollars. None of them have been proved to work. Some have proved to be dangerous.

“There’s an important difference between the stem cell treatments emerging from slow and careful study and the ones being sold for thousands of dollars without any evidence of safety or efficacy,” says Orly Avitzur, M.D., Consumer Reports’ medical director. “But that difference is not being made clear to consumers.”

BACKGROUND:

Although the kicking skill is influenced by limb dominance and sex, how a previous hamstring injury affects kicking has not been studied in detail. Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of sex and limb dominance on kicking in limbs with and without a previous hamstring injury.
METHODS:

45 professional players (males: n=19, previously injured players=4, age=21.16 ± 2.00 years; females: n=19, previously injured players=10, age=22.15 ± 4.50 years) performed 5 kicks each with their preferred and non-preferred limb at a target 7m away, which were recorded with a three-dimensional motion capture system. Kinematic and kinetic variables were extracted for the backswing, leg cocking, leg acceleration and follow through phases.
RESULTS:

A shorter backswing (20.20 ± 3.49% vs 25.64 ± 4.57%), and differences in knee flexion angle (58 ± 10o vs 72 ± 14o) and hip flexion velocity (8 ± 0rad/s vs 10 ± 2rad/s) were observed in previously injured, non-preferred limb kicks for females. A lower peak hip linear velocity (3.50 ± 0.84m/s vs 4.10 ± 0.45m/s) was observed in previously injured, preferred limb kicks of females. These differences occurred in the backswing and leg-cocking phases where the hamstring muscles were the most active. A variation in the functioning of the hamstring muscles and that of the gluteus maximus and iliopsoas in the case of a previous injury could account for the differences observed in the kicking pattern.
CONCLUSIONS:

Therefore, the effects of a previous hamstring injury must be considered while designing rehabilitation programs to re-educate kicking movement.

Juan Dixon won his first career game as a Division I men’s basketball head coach on Monday night, leading his Coppin State Eagles to a double-overtime victory over Florida A&M. Just 48 hours earlier, after his team had blown a late lead against Savannah State to lose its 17th straight game, Dixon rubbed the bags under his eyes and stayed on message. He reminded his group of how difficult it is to win in college basketball, a sermon he has repeated on loop for much of the past two months and reinforced with stories of his time as a player at Maryland.

Winning in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference is especially difficult. Dixon’s team traveled more than 12,000 miles to play its 15 nonconference games, all losses by an average margin of 22.9 points. When Coppin State finally did make it to the MEAC conference opener, an eight-point loss at Norfolk State last week, its four-hour return bus trip was doubled and became an all-nighter because of a snowstorm in Virginia. In Game No. 17 — the Eagles’ third home game of the season — they played in front of 624 fans.

“We just haven’t been in enough close games to know how to win,” Dixon said.

… It is clear that although multiple factors can influence the varying levels of CK across an entire population,6 7 9 ‘naturally’ higher levels can be found in elite athletes;1 3 12 however, it is not clear exactly by how much values may differ from those of the general population. Footballers in particular, due to the nature of their profession, experience excessive physical outputs throughout their sporting calendar, but it is unclear how much this work load influences their CK level.

]
We aimed to discover whether higher CK values were found in professional footballers than in the healthy, military population and to create an accurate reference range for healthy CK among professional footballers. [full text

During the offseason, the second-best player on a championship contender went to management and requested a trade. Despite being on one of the league’s best teams and playing alongside one of the league’s best players, he said he wasn’t enjoying himself. He wasn’t happy with his role in the offense. The team knew he was unhappy but was stunned he was this unhappy.

This is the story of Kyrie Irving, and the story of LaMarcus Aldridge.

Their cases and circumstances were different, of course. But the most relevant difference may have been how their franchises reacted. Specifically, how the organizational stability with the San Antonio Spurs allowed them to manage their unpleasant development. The Cleveland Cavaliers, meanwhile, were forced to deal with their curveball during a management shake-up, which likely limited their options.

Selling our best player is an immensely difficult decision. We are naturally loss averse, and want to protect what we have. We imagine all the things that could go wrong without them. This is even harder in January, when it is felt the disruption is magnified.

Key decision makers at Liverpool probably went through this process in recent weeks. Philippe Coutinho seemed to make the team tick, and there’s a sense his departure could derail their season entirely.

One way to fight these feelings is to look at the evidence. If we look historically at clubs who had a high net income in the January window – that is, they sold valuable player(s) without bringing expensive talent in – many saw performance deteriorate. However, the deterioration was much less than many would assume; after accounting for fixtures and the role of luck, the biggest drops in performance were less than 0.1 points per game. Over half a season, that’s less than 2 points.

… Agents are logging discussions with teams and the union hunting for patterns to explain why clubs, whose franchise values have exploded from $18.1 billion to $46.1 billion over the last five years, will propose top players contracts with average annual values in excess of $20 million or deals for more than three years but are loath to offer both. “It’s way too uniform,” one agent said. “The book has been printed. It’s out there.”

Maybe, of course, the agents are just reading the wrong book, looking in the conspiracy section when the answer is under business disruption. Over the last month, as Yahoo Sports spoke about the state of the market and the possibility of collusive behavior with more than four dozen people – officials from MLB and the union, agents, executives and players – what emerged was a game asking itself questions far more important than whether collusion exists: Is the foundation of the sport, a structure in place since the advent of free agency in the 1970s, still viable? Or is baseball’s economic system, its underpinning, broken?

What’s clear is the free-agent impasse represents a reckoning long in the making – one that marries shifting power in labor relations, the emergence of analytics and cookie-cutter front offices, and the willingness of teams to treat competitiveness as an option, not a priority.