Applied Sports Science newsletter – March 31, 2018

Applied Sports Science news articles, blog posts and research papers for March 31, 2018

 

Tulowitzki stuck in neutral as Blue Jays teammates head north

Sportsnet.ca, Shi Davidi from

Day after day during a largely productive spring training for the Toronto Blue Jays
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, Troy Tulowitzki arrived early at Dunedin Stadium and stayed late, taking batting practice, fielding groundballs, getting treatment, and doing whatever he could. Sometimes he’d hold court by his locker in the most spacious corner of the clubhouse, grabbing one of the bats neatly lined up against the wall, resting it on his shoulder as he chatted with neighbours Marcus Stroman, Josh Donaldson and Aaron Sanchez.

Yet as his teammates incrementally and methodically built toward opening day Thursday versus the New York Yankees, the star shortstop remained stuck in neutral throughout camp, still dealing with the after-effects of the gruesome right ankle injury he suffered last July 28. And as the Blue Jays headed north for a pair of exhibition games in Montreal, Tulowitzki stayed back, still seeking answers on what it will take for him to eventually rejoin them.

“I don’t think I’ve made much progress here in spring training just because I came in, honestly, with the expectation I’d be ready by opening day,” he says during an interview. “That was the goal, and as I was going along that just became not a possibility because of certain tests I was put through and I was still having some of the pain and some of the issues. We had to kind of back off, regroup a little bit, put together another plan, and that’s kind of where we’re at right now.”

 

Zlatan Ibrahimovic calls Galaxy ‘right place for me’ – Daily News

Los Angeles Daily News, Damian Calhoun from

… Coincidentially, he joins a Galaxy club hampered by injuries during the early weeks of the new season. … “It is frustrating,” Schmid said of the injuries. “We’ve talked about it as a staff, we’ve looked at it. There are unique circumstances for some of them, but for any coaching staff when you have something that happens like this, you have to look at it.

 

It Matters That This Pro Athlete Is Open About His Eating Disorder

HuffPost, Lindsay Holmes from

Mike Marjama didn’t think his behavior was alarming until he ended up on a stretcher in the emergency room.

The Seattle Mariners catcher was a junior in high school when he was admitted to a week-long inpatient program for an eating disorder. For several years, he had been going through cycles of drastically cutting his food intake, overexercising, and binging and purging. He finally got help after he dropped a severe amount of weight ― around 14 pounds, he said ― in the span of a few days.

“My theory was that if I didn’t eat anything and worked out a ton, I would get big and strong,” said Marjama, now 28.

“I didn’t think anything was wrong,” he added. “But when I got put in that program, I realized that I was … doing so much damage to my body. When that came about, that made it clear that I really did have an issue.”

 

Lundqvist and rebuilding Rangers brace for rough road ahead

Associated Press, Stephen Whyno from

Henrik Lundqvist got an early glimpse into the New York Rangers’ rebuilding future.

It’s not pretty.

Lundqvist roiled with frustration after a rookie defensemen left an opponent wide open for a tying goal that led to New York’s 44th loss of a lost season. As Zen-like as he was earlier in the day about the new organizational direction toward youth and away from trying to win now, the face of the franchise for more than a decade was bothered by a mistake caused by inexperience that’s sure to be repeated over the coming years.

“So frustrating,” Lundqvist said.

 

Raising the Ceilings of Performance with Aaron Davis

SimpliFaster Blog from

Freelap USA: What is the role of blood oxygen levels in determining how a particular workout will impact an athlete?

Aaron Davis: Oxygen gives us a proxy on the bio-energetics of the cells, specifically how the protein-ion-water system of the cell is behaving. Regardless of the physiological reaction we are aiming for during a workout, monitoring O2 can assist with understanding load (e.g., knowing when enough is enough).

In regard to training density, frequency is a powerful adaptive stimulus. However, there are too many times we can’t take advantage of it because we overdose workouts for the sake of the workout looking sexy or our admiration of our own coaching ego on paper. These workouts generally elicit emotional responses from the athletes that satisfy some small spot in us as observers.

 

Examining the LA Galaxy’s new and improved fitness regimen

SB Nation, LAG Confidential, Mike Gray from

… After Juan Carlos Osorio hinted this year’s Galaxy might be in better physical condition, the hard work showed vs. the Timbers. Yes, it was the first match and legs would eventually become heavy but LA were a noticeably fitter side. Emmanuel Boateng is someone who has struggled with fatigue in the past but thrived in a strong 83-minute showing.

There are some caveats to the Frenchman’s methods. A steep learning curve can compromise players unaccustomed to the rigors of such intense training. (Famously Barrieu used to send USA regulars impossible routines as a joke)

In the past few weeks, all the work may have taken a toll on the Galaxy’s legs. Giovani dos Santos, Romain Alessandrini and João Pedro have been sidelined with hamstring injuries, and now Jonathan dos Santos is out after suffering a hamstring pull of his own during a closed-door scrimmage with Mexico. Additionally Michael Ciani suffered a groin injury vs. NCYFC.

 

How to Think about “Implicit Bias”

Scientific American; Keith Payne, Laura Niemi, John M. Doris from

When is the last time a stereotype popped into your mind? If you are like most people, the authors included, it happens all the time. That doesn’t make you a racist, sexist, or whatever-ist. It just means your brain is working properly, noticing patterns, and making generalizations. But the same thought processes that make people smart can also make them biased. This tendency for stereotype-confirming thoughts to pass spontaneously through our minds is what psychologists call implicit bias. It sets people up to overgeneralize, sometimes leading to discrimination even when people feel they are being fair.

Studies of implicit bias have recently drawn ire from both right and left. For the right, talk of implicit bias is just another instance of progressives seeing injustice under every bush. For the left, implicit bias diverts attention from more damaging instances of explicitbigotry. Debates have become heated, and leapt from scientific journals to the popular press. Along the way, some important points have been lost. We highlight two misunderstandings that anyone who wants to understand implicit bias should know about.

 

The relationship between strength asymmetries and jumping performance in professional volleyball players. – PubMed – NCBI

Sports Biomechanics journal from

Knee peak torque (PT) is associated to jump performance in volleyball players. It is not clear whether muscle strength imbalances of the knee joint can influence jump performance. The purpose of study was to analyse the association between PT and knee muscular imbalances with jump performance in professional volleyball players. Eleven elite male volleyball players (90.3 ± 9.7 kg body mass and 1.94 ± 0.06 m height) were evaluated in an isokinetic dynamometer at speeds of 60, 180 and 300 deg/s. Muscle strength imbalances were obtained through calculation of contralateral deficit between limbs and the conventional ratio (hamstrings/quadriceps). Countermovement jump (CMJ) was performed on a force plate to calculate mechanical power and height. Association was found between knee extensor PT at 180 deg/s with CMJ power (r = 0.610, p = 0.046). Conventional ratio at 300 deg/s showed negative association with CMJ (r = -0.656, p = 0.029). The optimal ratio between knee extensors PT in relation to the flexors PT is associated with the greater mechanical power in CMJ. Contralateral deficit does not seem to be associated with the CMJ performance. Considering the knee extensor PT is associated with CMJ power, our findings suggest that strength-based training in volleyball athletes should not omit the conventional muscle ratio.

 

Juan Carlos Osorio on working in Colombia, Mexico and the USA, his goals for the future and how the Chicago Bulls changed him

SoccerAmerica, Mike Woitalla from

… American influence on your coaching career. At Southern Connecticut, we did a lot of sports research, learning about the role of the brain. … I watched how the hockey teams train, the basketball teams play, even American football. I learned a lot from different sports and considered what I could apply to soccer.

One thing that had a great impact on me was how Americans approach the games. They’re very honest about it. I learned in my early days in America that you give your 100 percent. And athletically you compete at your best. You respect the opponents. No cheating. For you to become strong mentally you have to do the other things that make you a better athlete. Eat properly. Sleeping enough hours. Being disciplined. My time in the United States definitely marked my life forever.

 

Big Read: How John Gibbons has become the ultimate survivor

Sportsnet.ca, Stephen Brunt from

… “You’ve got to look at what you’ve got,” Gibbons explains a few days later. “If you don’t have a whole lot of team speed and you have a team that strikes out a whole lot, it’s a stupid move to try and steal a base. You have to gear your strategy to your personnel.”

Joe Maddon or AJ Hinch would tell you the same thing.

“Baseball is not all X’s and O’s, unlike other sports like football,” Gibbons continues. “I think managing is just about holding the group together. The game a lot of times dictates what you’re going to do. Someone might have a different philosophy, but the game kind of sets itself up. I’ve always believed that it’s a manager’s job to hold them all together over a long season and run a pitching staff. Very rarely does anybody outsmart anybody [else] in this business. Usually what it comes down to is one team plays better than the other.”

 

Exploring the effects of mental and muscular fatigue in soccer players’ performance

Human Movement Science journal from

This study examined the effects of induced mental and muscular fatigue on soccer players’ physical activity profile and collective behavior during small-sided games (SSG). Ten youth soccer players performed a 5vs5 SSG under three conditions: a) control, playing without any previous activity; b) muscular fatigue, playing after performing a repeated change-of-direction task; c) mental fatigue, playing after completing a 30 min Stroop color-word task. Players’ positional data was used to compute time-motion and tactical-related variables. The muscular fatigue condition resulted in lower distances covered in high speeds (∼27%, 0.3; ±0.5) than the control condition. From the tactical perspective, the muscular fatigue condition resulted in lower distance between dyads and players spent ∼7% more time synchronized in longitudinal displacements than the control condition (0.3; ±0.3). Additionally, players spent ∼14% more time synchronized with muscular fatigue than with mental fatigue (0.7; ±0.3). The mental fatigue condition resulted in a very likely more predictable pattern in the distance between dyads than in muscular fatigue condition (0.4; ±0.2). Also, the mental fatigue possibly decreased the teams’ stretch index when compared with control (0.2; ±0.3) and likely increased compared with muscular fatigue (0.5; ±0.5). The better levels of longitudinal synchronization after muscular fatigue, might suggest the usage of tactical-related tasks after intense exercise bouts. The lower physical performance and time spent longitudinally synchronized after mental fatigue, should alert to consider this variable before matches or training activities that aim to improve collective behavior. [full text]

 

Kinematic and kinetic differences between left-and right-handed professional baseball pitchers. – PubMed – NCBI

Sports Biomechanics journal from

While 10% of the general population is left-handed, 27% of professional baseball pitchers are left-handed. Biomechanical differences between left- and right-handed college pitchers have been previously reported, but these differences have yet to be examined at the professional level. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare pitching biomechanics between left- and right-handed professional pitchers. It was hypothesised that there would be significant kinematic and kinetic differences between these two groups. Pitching biomechanics were collected on 96 left-handed pitchers and a group of 96 right-handed pitchers matched for age, height, mass and ball velocity. Student t-tests were used to identify kinematic and kinetic differences (p < 0.05). Of the 31 variables tested, only four were found to be significantly different between the groups. Landing position of the stride foot, trunk separation at foot contact, maximum shoulder external rotation and trunk forward tilt at ball release were all significantly greater in right-handed pitchers. The magnitude of the statistical differences found were small and not consistent with differences in the two previous, smaller studies. Thus, the differences found may be of minimal practical significance and mechanics can be taught the same to all pitchers, regardless of throwing hand.

 

Modelling Movement Energetics Using Global Positioning System Devices in Contact Team Sports: Limitations and Solutions

Sports Medicine journal from

Quantifying the training and competition loads of players in contact team sports can be performed in a variety of ways, including kinematic, perceptual, heart rate or biochemical monitoring methods. Whilst these approaches provide data relevant for team sports practitioners and athletes, their application to a contact team sport setting can sometimes be challenging or illogical. Furthermore, these methods can generate large fragmented datasets, do not provide a single global measure of training load and cannot adequately quantify all key elements of performance in contact team sports. A previous attempt to address these limitations via the estimation of metabolic energy demand (global energy measurement) has been criticised for its inability to fully quantify the energetic costs of team sports, particularly during collisions. This is despite the seemingly unintentional misapplication of the model’s principles to settings outside of its intended use. There are other hindrances to the application of such models, which are discussed herein, such as the data-handling procedures of Global Position System manufacturers and the unrealistic expectations of end users. Nevertheless, we propose an alternative energetic approach, based on Global Positioning System-derived data, to improve the assessment of mechanical load in contact team sports. We present a framework for the estimation of mechanical work performed during locomotor and contact events with the capacity to globally quantify the work done during training and matches.

 

Study suggests method for boosting growth of blood vessels and muscle

MIT News from

As we get older, our endurance declines, in part because our blood vessels lose some of their capacity to deliver oxygen and nutrients to muscle tissue. An MIT-led research team has now found that it can reverse this age-related endurance loss in mice by treating them with a compound that promotes new blood vessel growth.

The study found that the compound, which re-activates longevity-linked proteins called sirtuins, promotes the growth of blood vessels and muscle, boosting the endurance of elderly mice by up to 80 percent.

 

Wearable tech to quantify human performance in the field

University of Michigan, Mechanical Engineering from

Most biomechanics research takes place in laboratory settings, in part because conventional approaches, such as optical motion capture, require reflective markers and substantial calibration to effectively measure human movement. This makes them ineffective for working in the field.

Noel Perkins, Donald T. Greenwood Collegiate Professor and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in Mechanical Engineering, is helping researchers break free of that constraint.

In a three-year research project sponsored by the U.S. Army, Perkins and his team are developing an automated measurement system to quantify the physical performance of individuals as they move through an outdoor obstacle course.

The Army uses performance on such courses to understand whether soldiers are adequately trained for the situations and environments they may face and how their performance is impacted by the gear they carry.

“If you only look at gait speed and how long it takes to complete a particular obstacle to assess performance, you miss a lot of the biomechanical movements that are responsible for it,” Perkins said.

 

YOLO v3New release of Object Recognition framework…

Rich Oglesby, prosthetic knowledge blog from

You only look once (YOLO) is a state-of-the-art, real-time object detection system. On a Pascal Titan X it processes images at 30 FPS and has a mAP of 57.9% on COCO test-dev.

 

Why You Must Rotate Running Shoes

Amanda Brooks, RunToTheFinish blog from

… When I worked onsite at New Balance creating their wear test program, the shoe engineers (yup it’s a massive job) told me that cushioned shoes can need up to 24 hours to fully bounce back and thus stay in the proper form to support your foot.

Thus giving them time to return to their full cushion makes them feel better, prevents injury and prolongs use. Bonus points because it’s wonderful when your shoe just feels softer too!

 

Valencell wins a spot in Cleveland business accelerator Plug and Play (video)

cleveland.com, Kaylee Remington from

Valencell has been chosen to be mentored through the Plug and Play Cleveland business accelerator program.

Learn more about the company in the video above.

Valencell, one of 12 companies picked, creates heart rate sensors that can be worn in ear buds, arm bands, patches and clothing.

The sensor works during all activities and is highly accurate, according to the company’s website.

 

Purdue Engineering team works 30 hours straight to construct an elbow brace for Isaac Haas

Purdue University, News from

When Eric Nauman got the call from Purdue Sports Medicine, he was ready.

“We’ve been working with sports medicine here at Purdue for more than 10 years,” said Nauman, professor of mechanical engineering. “We’ve done concussion studies and built braces and other assistive devices for athletes of all ages. But this one was unique.”

Isaac Haas, the 7-foot-2-inch men’s basketball star, had fractured his elbow in Purdue’s second-round NCAA Tournament game on March 16. He had attempted to play in Sunday’s game with a brace, but the NCAA wouldn’t allow a device with “nonpliable material.”

That’s when Nauman and his team of graduate students got to work in his lab, the Human Injury Research and Regenerative Technologies Lab (HIRRT).

 

The Present and Future of Flexible, Hybrid and Printed Electronics

Printed Electronics Now, David Savastano from

… How large is the market for flexible, hybrid and printed electronics systems, which can appear in anything from sensors and wearables to displays and lighting and more? This is uncertain. What is clear is that these systems are appearing in many commercial applications.

General Electric (GE) uses Optomec’s Aerosol Jet technology to print passive strain sensors made of a ceramic material directly onto the turbine blades, saving the company millions of dollars in unnecessary replacements and service. L’Oreal’s My UV Patch, a stretchable skin sensor that monitors UV absorption that L’Oreal developed in conjunction with La Roche-Posay, L’Oreal’s skin care brand, and MC10 Inc., has sold more than one million patches since the heart-shaped patch was introduced in January 2016.

For its Med-ic Syringe Pack, Information Mediary Corp. uses NFC to connect a temperature monitored smart package with printed electronic traces, which records real-time information for each syringe, providing data on whether a patient is actually using the medication. The company reports more than a million units sold to date.

 

Sensors at the heart of the matter

Electronics Weekly from

Wearable fitness devices require precision and low power operation in space-constrained designs. An optical pulse oximeter and heart-rate sensor can measure accurately without draining battery life.

 

National Football League Head, Neck and Spine Committee’s Concussion Diagnosis and Management Protocol: 2017-18 season

British Journal of Sports Medicine from

One of the National Football League’s (NFL) Head, Neck and Spine Committee’s principal goals is to create a ‘best practice’ protocol for concussion diagnosis and management for its players. The science related to concussion diagnosis and management continues to evolve, thus the protocol has evolved contemporaneously. The Fifth International Conference on Concussion in Sport was held in Berlin in 2016, and guidelines for sports concussion diagnosis and management were revised and refined. The NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee has synthesised the most recent empirical evidence for sports concussion diagnosis and management including the Berlin consensus statement and tailored it to the game played in the NFL. One of the goals of the Committee is to provide a standardised, reliable, efficient and evidence-based protocol for concussion diagnosis and management that can be applied in this professional sport during practice and game day. In this article, the end-of-season version of the 2017–18 NFL Concussion Diagnosis and Management Protocol is described along with its clinical rationale. Immediate actions for concussion programme enhancement and research are reviewed. It is the Committee’s expectation that the protocol will undergo refinement and revision over time as the science and clinical practice related to concussion in sports crystallise

 

Decision to Return to Sport After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction, Part I: A Qualitative Investigation of Psychosocial Factors. – PubMed – NCBI

Journal of Athletic Training from

CONTEXT:

  Return-to-sport criteria after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury are often based on “satisfactory” functional and patient-reported outcomes. However, an individual’s decision to return to sport is likely multifactorial; psychological and physical readiness to return may not be synonymous.
OBJECTIVE:

  To determine the psychosocial factors that influence the decision to return to sport in athletes 1 year post-ACL reconstruction (ACLR).
DESIGN:

  Qualitative study.
SETTING:

  Academic medical center.
PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS:

  Twelve participants (6 males, 6 females) were purposefully chosen from a large cohort. Participants were a minimum of 1-year postsurgery and had been active in competitive athletics preinjury.
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS:

  Data were collected via semistructured interviews. Qualitative analysis using a descriptive phenomenologic process, horizontalization, was used to derive categories and themes that represented the data. The dynamic-biopsychosocial model was used as a theoretical framework to guide this study.
RESULTS:

  Six predominant themes emerged that described the participants’ experiences after ACLR: (1) hesitation and lack of confidence led to self-limiting tendencies, (2) awareness was heightened after ACLR, (3) expectations and assumptions about the recovery process influenced the decision to return to sport after ACLR, (4) coming to terms with ACL injury led to a reprioritization, (5) athletic participation helped reinforce intrinsic personal characteristics, and (6) having a strong support system both in and out of rehabilitation was a key factor in building a patient’s confidence. We placed themes into components of the dynamic-biopsychosocial model to better understand how they influenced the return to sport.
CONCLUSIONS:

  After ACLR, the decision to return to sport was largely influenced by psychosocial factors. Factors including hesitancy, lack of confidence, and fear of reinjury are directly related to knee function and have the potential to be addressed in the rehabilitation setting. Other factors, such as changes in priorities or expectations, may be independent of physical function but remain relevant to the patient-clinician relationship and should be considered during postoperative rehabilitation.

 

Do concussion protocols in youth hockey go far enough?

CBC Sports, Jamie Strashin from

… “What we see is damage that is there at the three-month time point, which is long after all of these kids went back on to the ice,” says Dr. Ravi Menon, who is the Canada Research Chair in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Menon and his team chose to look at players currently participating at the Bantam level (15 years old), which is the first year Hockey Canada allows bodychecking. It’s also the year where the number of documented concussions begins to become more prevalent.

He says it was intially hard to attract players and families to participate in the study.

“It depends on where you are in the pecking order of hockey. We first approached the highest-level bantam league players and their parents and coaches were not particularly interested in participating,” Menon recalls. “When you probed them on this they thought their kids had a shot at the NHL and they thought, I don’t really want a record of concussions should my son suffer one.”

 

Australia’s first sports brain bank launched to find head injury and disease link

Brisbane Times, Esther Han from

Colin Scotts has suffered thousands of head knocks over his football career, but he can recall the worst – the dizziness morphed into pain, blocking his ability to absorb and answer basic questions such as where he was.

His brain had “shut off”, but his team encouraged him to get back onto the field, not realising that what he desperately needed was time to rest and heal.

“After our professional football careers, yes, there are issues with obesity, drugs, and we’ve been put down because ‘we can’t get back into society because of our egos or we don’t get the money’,” said Mr Scotts, the first Australian to be drafted into the US National Football League (NFL).

 

NBA mourns death of Zeke Upshaw, G League player who collapsed during game

Yahoo Sports, Dan Devine from

Two days after collapsing on the court during a G League game and being rushed to a hospital, Grand Rapids Drive forward Zeke Upshaw died Monday morning. He was 26.

Upshaw was standing on the court in the final minute of Saturday’s game between Grand Rapids, the G League affiliate of the Detroit Pistons, and the Long Island Nets, the minor league club of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, before he fell to the floor, team representative Sarah Jbara told Mlive.com. Medical personnel took Upshaw, a 6-foot-6 swingman who played college basketball at Illinois State and Hofstra before spending a couple of seasons playing in Europe, off the court on a stretcher and to a local hospital.

 

“What’s my risk of sustaining an ACL injury while playing sports?” A systematic review with meta-analysis

British Journal of Sports Medicine from

Objective To estimate the incidence proportion (IP) and incidence rate (IR) for ACL injury in athletes.

Design Systematic review with meta-analysis

Data sources The PubMed, CINAHL and SPORTDiscus electronic databases were searched from inception to 20 January 2017.

Eligibility criteria for selecting studies Studies were included if they reported total number of participants/population by sex, total number of ACL injuries by sex and total person-time by sex.

Results Fifty-eight studies were included. The IP and IR of ACL injury in female athletes were 3.5% (1 out of every 29 athletes) and 1.5/10 000 athlete-exposures over a period of 1 season-25 years. The IP and IR of ACL injury in male athletes were 2.0% (1 out of every 50 athletes) and 0.9/10 000 athlete-exposures over a period of 1–25 years. Female athletes had a higher relative risk (RR) for ACL injury compared with males (RR=1.5; 95% CI 1.2 to 1.9; P<0.01) and a higher incidence rate ratio (IRR) of ACL injury compared with males over 1 season–25 years (IRR=1.7; 95% CI 1.4 to 2.2; P<0.010). When accounting for participation level, the disparity in the IR between female and male athletes was highest for amateur athletes compared with intermediate and elite athletes (IRR=2.1; 95% CI 1.3 to 3.4; P<0.01; I²=82%). Amateur female athletes remained at higher risk of ACL injury than did with amateur male athletes. In studies where follow-up length was <1 year, female athletes had a higher IR of ACL injury than did to males (IRR=1.7; 95% CI 1.3 to 2.2; P<0.01). Where follow-up was 1 year and beyond, there was no sex difference in the IR of ACL injury (IRR=2.1; 95% CI 0.9 to 4.8; P=0.06; I²=65%). Summary/conclusions One in 29 female athletes and 1 in 50 male athletes ruptured their ACL in a window that spanned from 1season to 25 years. The IR of ACL injury among female athletes in a season was 1.7 times higher than the IR of ACL injury among male athletes and the IP of ACL injury among female athletes was 1.5 times higher than the IP of ACL injury among male athletes. The reported sex disparity in ACL injury rates is independent of participation level and length of follow-up.

 

Most football players returned to NFL after Achilles tendon repair

Healio, Orthopedics Today from

About 73% of players returned to the NFL after Achilles tendon repair, according to a recently published study in Foot and Ankle International.

“Achilles tendon injuries in the NFL are common season-ending injuries that require a surgical repair,” Joshua D. Harris, MD, told Healio.com/Orthopedics. “Our study of 95 NFL players showed that it was also a career-ending injury in nearly 28% of those analyzed. Although postoperative performance was worse in running backs and linebackers (vs. pre-injury), there was no difference in postoperative performance or number of games played for any position (with the exception of linebackers) compared to rigorously matched control players in the league.”

 

Concussion testing doesn’t work as well for athletes with disabilities.

Slate, Nicole Wetsman from

… In an ideal situation, concussion testing is personalized. Every athlete takes the test and gets a score at the start of the season. If their coaches or trainers suspect a concussion, they can take the test again, see how it compares to their healthy baseline, and then continue using the test to track recovery back to their healthy score. But baselines for each athlete aren’t always available because not every school has the resources to individually test every student. It’s also possible that someone might get a concussion during preseason before their team goes in for baseline testing. In those situations, athletes’ scores after a suspected concussion and throughout recovery would be compared to the standardized range of healthy results for their gender and age.

But for athletes with learning disabilities, those standards can’t reliably guide diagnosis. At their healthy baseline, athletes with disabilities have lower overall scores than their peers on Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT). ImPACT, one of the most commonly used concussion tests in high schools and colleges, is primarily comprised of cognitive tests, so it’s not surprising that a mild cognitive disability would make the test that much more challenging.

 

Top Sports Leagues Heavily Promote Unhealthy Food & Beverages, New Study Finds

NYU Langone Health from

The majority of food and beverages marketed through multimillion-dollar television and online sports sponsorships are unhealthy—and may be contributing to the escalating obesity epidemic among children and adolescents in the U.S., warn social scientists from NYU School of Medicine’s Department of Population Health and other national academic health institutions. The descriptive study published online March 26 in the peer-reviewed journal Pediatrics.

Researchers analyzed Nielsen statistics of televised sports programs among children 2 to 17 years of age. The study found that, among the 10 most watched sports organizations, such as the National Football League (NFL), most of the food products were rated “unhealthy” under the guidelines of the Nutrient Profile Model (NPM), a profiling system that identifies nutritious value in the United Kingdom and Australia. (The U.S. does not have a comparable measurement system.)

 

Questions Of Race, Fairness Complicate Student-Athlete Pay Debate : NPR

NPR, Lulu Garcia-Navarro and Gene Demby from

Every year, March Madness brings in big ratings and a ton of money for the NCAA, the TV networks and the coaches. But what do the players get? Supposedly, a free education. It’s a perennial debate. Should we pay student athletes? But let’s look at this debate through another lens. Those student athletes, particularly the ones on the best teams – many of them are black. But the coaches who train them, the schools they attend, the audience who watches – mostly white. It’s a dynamic that raises all sorts of questions about big-time college sports, race and fairness. NPR’s Gene Demby and the Code Switch team tackled this in a recent podcast. And he’s come on the program to talk about it. Welcome. [audio, 4:55]

 

A.L. Preview: Watch Out, the Houston Astros Got Better

The New York Times, Tyler Kepner from

… “We’re aware of everything, how hard it is to win back to back,” Altuve said. “But it’s not impossible. We’re going to do the best we can to make it happen.”

No team has repeated since the Yankees won three titles in a row from 1998 through 2000. This is the longest stretch in major league history without a repeat champion, but the Astros have everything they need to change that. Only two of their starters exceeded 200 innings last season: Verlander (242⅔, including the postseason) and Cole (203). Only two position players, Altuve and third baseman Alex Bregman, played more than 140 games in the regular season.

“Physically, our guys are fine,” Manager A.J. Hinch said. “The mental part of it will be our biggest challenge.”

 

The Past, Present, and Future of Baseball’s Most Daring Defense

The Ringer, Ben Lindbergh from

Outfield shifts remain baseball’s final defensive frontier, but they’re also surprisingly ingrained in the sport’s history, a testament to one of the constants in a game often defined by data-driven change: the quest for an edge

 

Mark it down: These things will happen in 2018

MLB.com, Mike Petriello from

3. The fastballs you see will be thrown even harder, and higher
Part of why we’ve seen more strikeouts across baseball is because hitters don’t care about them like they used to, but part of it is because pitchers simply throw so much harder than they used to.

 

Passing Decisions in Football: Introducing an Empirical Approach to Estimating the Effects of Perceptual Information and Associative Knowledge

Frontiers in Psychology from

The importance of various information sources in decision-making in interactive team sports is debated. While some highlight the role of the perceptual information provided by the current game context, others point to the role of knowledge-based information that athletes have regarding their team environment. Recently, an integrative perspective considering the simultaneous involvement of both of these information sources in decision-making in interactive team sports has been presented. In a theoretical example concerning passing decisions, the simultaneous involvement of perceptual and knowledge-based information has been illustrated. However, no precast method of determining the contribution of these two information sources empirically has been provided. The aim of this article is to bridge this gap and present a statistical approach to estimating the effects of perceptual information and associative knowledge on passing decisions. To this end, a sample dataset of scenario-based passing decisions is analyzed. This article shows how the effects of perceivable team positionings and athletes’ knowledge about their fellow team members on passing decisions can be estimated. Ways of transfering this approach to real-world situations and implications for future research using more representative designs are presented. [full text]

 

Should We Predict Development and Performance?

Steve Magness, Science of Running blog from

There’s growing trend within track, and sports in general, to defer to statistical/algorithmic decision-making. Whether it is in terms of countries funding athletes, companies choosing athletes, or coaches deciding “potential.” We all are falling into the allusion of certainty. Yet, few of us–myself included– even have the statistical expertise to realize what we are doing. Maybe in the sport of baseball, where former statistical experts are hired for nice sums, but in track, we are almost always amateurs doing an experts job. But the main problem doesn’t lie in knowing statistics or not, it lies in the assumptions we don’t know.

 

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