Applied Sports Science newsletter – May 15, 2019

… “Here you have to act quicker and make faster decisions,” Adams said, adding that the answer is a short version of what could be a long and complicated response.

“In the Bundesliga you have to perform on the highest level on every matchday,” he said. “This is a huge challenge and makes you better in the end because you compete with some of the best players in Europe.

… “I’m way stronger than I was last year,” McCaffrey said. “The faster I can get, the better as well. You can always get bigger, faster, stronger.

“I don’t have any choice. I have to.”

This transformation has come about thanks to a workout program that best resembles one for an elite track athlete and a nutritional program focused on increasing bulk and decreasing body fat.

Malik Barrow never truly believed he was done playing football, even when he announced his medical retirement in October.

At the time, he didn’t have much of a choice. After tearing his ACL for the third time last spring, Ohio State’s team doctors would not clear him to return to the football field. He wanted to complete his degree and graduate from Ohio State, so he accepted a medical scholarship in order to continue his education even though he could no longer play for the Buckeyes.

Barrow’s goal of getting back on the football field, though, never went away.

“I never stopped working,” Barrow told Eleven Warriors in an interview last month. “Even when I did tear my ACL, I would still go to the gym, do as much as I could, until I get too tired or everything starts to hurt, and that’s when I knew. But I never stopped working.”

… With the help of five fellow spring marathoners—Noah Droddy and Roberta Groner (Rotterdam) and Jordan Hasay, Lindsay Flanagan, and Jared Ward (Boston)—I put together some tips for a successful post-marathon break. As tempting as it may be to dive right into your next build-up, you’ll be better served in the long run by taking a true reset. Here’s what we suggest.

… When we stop allowing ourselves a rest day or recovery day, the body gets frustrated because the equation is stress + rest = growth… without the rest, you’ve just got stress! Here are a few signs that you’ve been neglecting rest.

Elevated resting heart rate.

Take your resting heart rate each morning for a week or so to get an idea of what is normal for you. An elevated heart rate can indicate exercise-related stress caused by increased oxygen flow to repair torn muscles. Five to 10 beats over per minute could indicate that you’re in need of rest.

… “It was just an amazing to finally show people, this is what we can be. We can definitely rely on that performance for what we’ll look like this year,” Horton said. “It’s a great feeling; that’s all I can say. We know each other well. We have that chemistry. Last year, it was about building chemistry. This year, we have that chemistry already.”

There will be plenty of questions about what is coming up behind those five senior starters. One of the team’s top reserves, Austin Troxell, will miss the entire 2019 season after suffering a torn ACL for the third time in his football career. Outside of him and Brahms, the rest of the players set to be on the roster in 2020 — Tashawn Manning, Brodarious Hamm, Kameron Stutts, Alec Jackson, Prince Micheal Sammons, Jalil Irvin, Keoindre Jones, Kamaar Bell and Justin Osborne — are a mixed bag of lightly regarded recruits, converted defensive linemen and incoming true freshmen, none of whom have much, if any, playing experience.

But those are questions for later. After a challenging start to the 2018 season, there should be no concerns about Auburn’s starting offensive line going into the 2019 campaign.

… Our first and perhaps most predictable finding was that idea overvaluation is a bigger problem than undervaluation, with 74% of all ideas in our dataset overvalued, versus 20% undervalued and 6% more or less correctly valued. Two factors drive this overconfidence on the part of ideating employees:

Status

In another relatively predictable finding, our data show that the ideator’s bias is, on average, 53% stronger among employees who work at a higher versus lower organizational level. Ideas by managers are overvalued, on average, by 42%, whereas those of frontline workers are, on average, slightly undervalued (by 11%). This matches our intuition: we instinctively feel that an idea is likely to be more overvalued when submitted by a manager in contrast to a frontline worker.

A group of Wichita State University students has invented a way for young basketball players to improve their shooting.

The Boost Hoop is a funnel that attaches to the top of a basketball hoop. It requires players to put more arc on their shots while also improving accuracy and confidence.

The hoop was designed by the Boosted Ideas Lab and recently won the Shocker New Venture Competition. The four students on the winning team are Logan Cassity, Andrew Haden, Isaac Wilson and Jason DeGarmo.

Finland’s professional hockey league, Liiga, is implementing a full player and puck tracking system for the 2019-20 season. Liiga partnered with Finnish provider Wisehockey on a pilot program in one arena last year and will begin a new five-season agreement.

Wisehockey, a division of Tampere-based Bitwise, is powered by Quuppa’s sensor hardware and its own cloud analytics. Liiga franchise Tappara was a testing partner this past season. Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League also has tested the Wisehockey system at the KHL All-Star Game and in a few subsequent regular season games.

“Digitalization of Liiga is a unique achievement, and its value will be recognized on the international market,” Wisehockey CEO Tomi Mikkonen said in a statement, adding: “During the last season, the real‑time data we gathered was used in completely new ways not just on arenas but also in television and betting services. Together with Liiga we are looking for more innovative collaboration and new partnerships.”

This workshop focuses on gaining feedback from the public on a range of safeguards which could be put in place to enable your medical data to be shared for research, whilst keeping your identity and privacy safe. [video, 1:29:20]

The Edmonton Oilers ponied up big money to land Ken Holland, and with the cap changing how much big budget organizations can spend on players, could it mean more money starts to get spent on the architects behind the on-ice product?

All Belgian Pro League teams are getting free 4k cameras and cutting-edge analysis software as part of a groundbreaking deal that national manager Roberto Martinez believes will give the country “a head start over the competition”.

The league-wide deal has been agreed by the Belgian Pro League, the Royal Belgium Football Association (RBFA) and video analysis firm Hudl.

Baseball has evolved over decades and even centuries in the way its been played. Change is to be expected. But this season has tilted the scales in a way we’ve never seen before, with a troubling number of record-setting trends indicating the game is going in a more extreme direction than ever before.

… In college, on a team’s seventh foul of the half, the opposing team goes to the bonus, which means they get a 1-and-1 (make the first and you get to take the second). On the 10th foul, a team goes into the double-bonus, which is an automatic two shots on every free throw trip.

But in the NBA, teams get two shots after the fourth (defensive) foul. That’s a huge difference, and it gets even more drastic in the final minutes. In the last two minutes, a team can “give” one foul. But after that, it’s an automatic two shots. Even if a team commits its first foul of the game with 1:30 left in the fourth quarter, the next foul is two shots.

That bonus discrepancy is pretty huge when you look at the math.

… State Del. Shelly Hettleman said the bill was a direct result of the “unfortunate and tragic death” of Jordan McNair, a 19-year-old University of Maryland athlete from Randallstown, Maryland. McNair was an offensive lineman at the College Park campus who collapsed after a preseason conditioning drill and later died last year.

Investigations found that there was a delay of more than an hour before 911 was called to attend to the freshman football player. McNair’s death led to calls for changes at the University of Maryland.

Hettleman said House Bill 876 “requires each higher education institution in Maryland to develop a system whereby their student-athletes can express concerns about what is happening on their team to somebody outside of the athletic department.”