Applied Sports Science newsletter – August 13, 2019

… Down in the minors this season, a player has stood out for doing the opposite of what Astudillo was doing—the anti-Astudillo, if you will. Gareth Morgan, an outfielder currently playing with the Angels Double-A affiliate, is putting up some eye-popping numbers. A 2014 second round pick and former Mariners prospect (he was released about two weeks into the 2019 season), Morgan has always stood out. Originally from Canada, his performance from season-to-season wavered. He stands with an athletic build of six-foot-four and 265 pounds, part of the reason he was once a formidable prospect.

“Morgan was a Canadian high school product that was watched closely on the high school showcase circuit for years before the M’s gave him a well-over-slot $2 million in the 2nd round last summer. Morgan checks all the boxes physically with a musculara 6’4/220 frame, a low-effort smooth cut, 65 raw power and an above average arm that fits in right field. He’s also a fringy runner underway and he’s played some center field in pro ball, but that won’t happen many more times.”

Las Vegas Aces All-Star Liz Cambage was all smiles heading into Sunday’s game against the Connecticut Sun.

From pre-game warmups, to the opening tip, to the end of a 21-point, 12-rebound performance in the Aces’ 89-81 victory, nobody would have guessed she’s been dealing with mental health issues for roughly half her life.

But after a self-penned article on The Players Tribune entitled “DNP-Mental Health,” everyone knows.

One of the big questions that could swing the entire 2019 NFL season has few answers in the way of historical evidence: How will Tom Brady and Drew Brees (and, to a lesser extent, Philip Rivers) fare as they hit ages when few — if any — quarterbacks have ever been good before?

Brady turned 42 a week ago and Brees hit 40 in January. (Rivers turns 38 in December.) Both were very good last season, with each finishing among the league’s top eight QBs in numerous statistical categories including ESPN’s Total Quarterback Rating, Football Outsiders’ Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement and Pro-Football-Reference’s Approximate Value — where each posted a score of at least 14.

Speaking to the last figure, it was the first time since 19601 that three QBs aged 37 or older each produced that much AV in the same year. Being an old passer has never been so good. But no matter how much water Brady drinks, Father Time will get his ‘W’ eventually. Brady, Brett Favre, Warren Moon and Vinny Testaverde are the only QBs to ever put up 10 or more AV in a season at age 40 or 41, and no QB in history has ever recorded more than 5 AV at age 42 or older.

So, given that we know the end will come sooner or later… what will that decline look like for this current generation of aging quarterbacks?

Boosting academic success does not have to derive from new teachers or curriculum; it can also come from changing students’ attitudes about their abilities through a short online intervention, according to the latest findings from the National Study of Learning Mindsets published in Nature on Aug. 7.

The experimental study involved more than 12,000 ninth graders in a national, representative sample of 65 public high schools across the United States. It showed that an intervention emphasizing a growth mindset — the belief that intellectual abilities are not fixed but can be developed — can improve key predictors of high school graduation and college success, especially when a school’s culture supports the treatment message.

“The research cemented a striking finding from multiple earlier studies: A short intervention can change the unlikely outcome of adolescents’ grades many months later,” said David Yeager, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of psychology at The University of Texas at Austin. “It also showed us something new: Higher-achieving students don’t get higher grades after the program, but they are more likely to take harder classes that set them up for long-term success.”

… Today, we look closer at the cross-over skills from other sports to baseball while touching on some long-term athlete development (LTAD) topics. Playing multiple sports or practicing a wide variety of tasks may or may not help prospective baseball players.

When former Cincinnati Bengals strength and conditioning coach Chip Morton was not retained by Zac Taylor’s new regime, he took his 34 years of experience to a familiar place.

With a third son, Aaron, on Moeller High School’s football squad, he offered up his services as a volunteer on new coach Todd Naumann’s staff. Having served with Athletes In Action and had kids in a faith-based school, he proudly wears a Moeller shirt featuring Philippians 4: 13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”.

Background Agility in general and change-of-direction speed (CoD) in particular represent important performance determinants in elite soccer.

Objectives The objectives of this study were to determine the effects of a 6-week neuromuscular training program on agility performance, and to determine differences in movement times between the slower and faster turning directions in elite soccer players.

Materials and Methods: Twenty male elite soccer players from the Stade Rennais Football Club (Ligue 1, France) participated in this study. The players were randomly assigned to a neuromuscular training group (NTG, n = 10) or an active control (CG, n = 10) according to their playing position. NTG participated in a 6-week, twice per week neuromuscular training program that included CoD, plyometric and dynamic stability exercises. Neuromuscular training replaced the regular warm-up program. Each training session lasted 30 min. CG continued their regular training program. Training volume was similar between groups. Before and after the intervention, the two groups performed a reactive agility test that included 180° left and right body rotations followed by a 5-m linear sprint. The weak side was defined as the left/right turning direction that produced slower overall movement times (MT). Reaction time (RT) was assessed and defined as the time from the first appearance of a visual stimulus until the athlete’s first movement. MT corresponded to the time from the first movement until the athlete reached the arrival gate (5 m distance).

Results No significant between-group baseline differences were observed for RT or MT. Significant group x time interactions were found for MT (p = 0.012, effect size = 0.332, small) for the slower and faster directions (p = 0.011, effect size = 0.627, moderate). Significant pre-to post improvements in MT were observed for NTG but not CG (p = 0.011, effect size = 0.877, moderate). For NTG, post hoc analyses revealed significant MT improvements for the slower (p = 0.012, effect size = 0.897, moderate) and faster directions (p = 0.017, effect size = 0.968, moderate).

Conclusion Our results illustrate that 6 weeks of neuromuscular training with two sessions per week included in the warm-up program, significantly enhanced agility performance in elite soccer players. Moreover, improvements were found on both sides during body rotations. Thus, practitioners are advised to focus their training programs on both turning directions. [full text]

The positions we take in our sleep can have implications for our health, including affecting the symptoms of conditions such as sleep apnea or carpal tunnel syndrome. But most of us sleep under blankets in dark rooms, where it’s hard to study our natural sleeping poses.

Researchers at Northeastern are combining different sensing technology with machine learning techniques to monitor a sleeper’s position even under the covers in total darkness. Their work could make this monitoring easier for doctors and less invasive for patients.

“As healthy adults, we spend almost one third of our life in bed, if not more,” says Sarah Ostadabbas, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern. “For patients that are in hospitals, the elderly, and young kids, it can go up to 100 percent of the time. We can bring the power of computer vision and artificial intelligence to make the process of understanding human behavior in bed easier.”

The Canberra Innovation Network is partnering with the United States Embassy to stage a sports tech innovation day on 27 August in Canberra focusing on the practical application, commercialisation and scale up of sports technology from Canberra to worldwide markets.

Non-contact anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) rupture is mostly caused by a pivot shift mechanism including valgus collapse and internal tibial rotation. In female athletes, the incidence of ACL rupture has been reported to be significantly higher than in their male counterparts. However, to date, there have been limited reports and controversy regarding sex differences underlying injury mechanisms of ACL and severity of injury. In this study, we hypothesized that 1) in patients with non-contact ACL rupture, the incidence and severity of pivot shift injury, which are determined by injury pattern on MRI, would be significantly higher in females, and 2) anatomical factors associated with pivot shift injury would be significantly associated with female sex. A total of 148 primary ACL ruptures (145 patients) caused by non-contact injury mechanisms were included in this study. Among them, 41 knees (41 patients) were female and 107 knees (104 patients) were male. The status of the osseous lesions, lateral and medial tibial slope, depth of the medial tibial plateau, collateral ligaments, and menisci were assessed by MRI and compared between sexes. The severity of osseous lesions at the lateral tibial plateau, lateral femoral condyle, medial tibial plateau, and medial femoral condyle were comparable between sexes. There were no significant differences between sexes in the location of tibial contusions (p = 0.21), femoral contusions (p = 0.23), or meniscus tears (p = 0.189). Lateral tibial slope was found to be significantly larger in females (8.95° vs. 6.82°; p<0.0001; odds ratio = 1.464), and medial tibial depth was significantly shallower in females (1.80mm vs. 2.41mm; p<0.0001; odds ratio = 0.145). In conclusion, females showed greater lateral tibial slope and shallower medial tibial depth compared to males, however it did not affect the sex differences in injury pattern. [full text]

FIFA has a Medical and Research Centre (F-MARC) which has designed a comprehensive programme targeting muscle strength, kinaesthetic awareness, and neuromuscular control during static and dynamic movements to decrease injury risk for soccer players. A number of meta-analyses now exist on how effective FIFA’s programmes to prevent and reduce injury actually are, with various degrees of injury reduction reported. This research aimed to carry out a systematic review and to meta analyse the existing meta-analyses so that a conclusion can be drawn on how effective the injury programmes are. Relevant studies were identified by searching five databases for the period January 1990 till 1 July 2018. Results of each meta-analysis were combined together using risk ratios (RR) in a summary meta-analysis. QUOROM checklist and AMSTAR 2 assessment were used to assess the quality of reporting and methodology in the meta-analyses. Four meta-analyses met the inclusion criteria covering fifteen primary studies. All four meta-analyses scored quite highly on QUOROM, but two were rated by AMSTAR 2 as moderate quality and two were found to be of critically low quality. An overall risk reduction of 34% [RR= 0.66 (0.60 – 0.73)] for all injuries and a reduction of 29% [RR= 0.71 (0.63 – 0.81)] for injuries to the lower limbs were revealed by this meta-analysis of meta-analyses. Combining every previous meta-analysis into a single source in this paper produced decisive evidence that the risk of injuries while playing soccer is reduced as a result of FIFA’s injury prevention programmes.

… Looking at the Premier League between 2013 and 2018, we can see that of all sequences, 7% that contained a progressive carry resulted in a shot. This is a significant rise on the 2% of sequences that did not contain such an action.

The question then is, are some players more capable of carrying the ball in the opposition half and how can we identify these carriers? Looking at where successful progressive carries occur (defined as when the player retains possession), we see that the highest density is on the wings, which is unsurprising.

Nearly half of the league’s teams enter this season with new play-callers as they try to replicate the Rams’ offensive magic. What will determine who succeeds in a world where the coaching phenom is football’s most precious commodity?

The NBA schedule is a little bit easier on players.

Fans might be catching a break — and some more sleep — as well.

The league announced its 2019-20 schedule on Monday, featuring another dip in back-to-back games for teams and a major change in the number of nationally televised games starting at 10:30 p.m. on the East coast. Golden State and the Los Angeles Lakers will start several games a half-hour earlier than usual, while broadcasters ESPN and Turner are going to earlier start times on many of their midweek doubleheader nights.

Such a change has been on NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s mind for some time, especially since roughly half of the nation’s television homes are in the East time zone — but now, a number of the league’s biggest stars play on the West coast. It wasn’t uncommon for nationally televised midweek games to end around 1 a.m. or even later last season, and that was not good for ratings.

A former linebacker for the University of Southern California wasn’t an employee of the National Collegiate Athletic Association or the PAC-12 Conference and isn’t owed payment for his work on the football field, a federal appeals court panel ruled Monday.

Lamar Dawson sued the NCAA and the PAC-12 (formerly the Pacific Coast Conference) in 2016, claiming they owed Division I football players payment as employees. Monday’s opinion, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, affirmed a San Francisco district court’s 2017 dismissal of the case.

“Dawson cannot demonstrate that the NCAA or the PAC-12 had the power to fire or hire him,” Chief Judge Sidney Thomas wrote in the opinion. The panel had hinted in October that it wouldn’t revive the lawsuit. Dawson’s allegations, Thomas wrote, “demonstrate that the NCAA functions as a regulator, and that the NCAA member schools, for whom the student-athletes allegedly render services, enforce regulations.”